I totally agree. When I was E-mng, it was hard striking up a conversation in Hokkien with the young locals there. Most of the school kids in E-mng yap with each other in Mandarin. I have a friend who grew up in E-mng until college, but she still prefers to speak in Mandarin.aokh1979 wrote:I think I have slightly different opinion here, maybe because I come in contact with people who do not really carry a typical accent anymore. Those people are not good in Hokkien though they speak it daily.
To me, Taiwanese are more easily understood than Xiamenese. I live in Xiamen for 7 years now, I visit Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, too. Sad to say, Xiamenese may be the "standard" for Minnan in China, but Xiamenese may also be the 1st Minnan variant to extinct if younger parents give up Xiamenese and speak to their children in Mandarin. I have seen so many of these people. Both husband and wife are local Xiamense grew up in Old Town area (where Xiamenese was most widely spoken), but speak to their children completely in Mandarin without any single word in Minnan. I observe my colleagues everyday, none of them can hold a comversation entirely in Xiamenese, at least 30% will be spoken in Mandarin very naturally. People say Xiamenese may die away in 20 years. With the growing speed like this today, I foresee it's going to be 10 years.
From my stints in Cuan-ciu, I found the locals, both young and old, commonly use Hokkien in their everyday speech. I remember the first time I hopped into a taxi with my cousin who lives in Cuan-ciu, I was surprised that he immediately gave directions in Hokkien to the driver. However, in Cuan-ciu, you can find a hodge podge of variants of the Cuan-ciu dialect, b/c of the people of the surrounding areas who have moved to Cuan-ciu. For example, you can hear both "berh" and "beh" for want "khyr" and "khi" for go, etc. Pls excuse my romanization.