Chinese languages

Hi!
I am interested in learning the Southwestern dialect spoken in the capital of Sichuan province.
Could somebody tell me the main differences qua phonetics, tones(...) between the madarin ( putonghua ) and the dialect spoken in Chengdu?
I appreciate in advance your help,
TX!

Marco

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C'mon mate, you need to post this in chinese... the only way you're going to get a handle on this is to talk for a while to a chengdu ren. But anyway...
The accent is a lot more nasal, with a lot of hard z sounds. For an example of this, try zzuo! the local 'cao!' (not for mixed company) The vowel sounds are slightly different, flattened out, try san (3) to rhyme with the english 'man' or 'plan', sounds a little like the changes in american english to my (australian) ears.
And like in a lot of southern China, the h in the sh and zh sounds vanishes, so ten and four are identical save for the tones. It's worth noting that for ten and four the tones are reversed too, so make sure you get a finger sign with the number 'cause this is a very common misunderstanding.
There are also a few distinctive sentence structures too. A very common one is the emphatic use of hen at the end of a sentence, hao de hen for v. good, yuan de hen, very far, etc. (long ee sound in the de) Another is the use of bu at the end of a sentence to make it a question, eg ni zhidao bu? to ask if you know something.

Despite all this Sichuan hua is very close to putonghua, much easier to pick up than other dialects. There are definite patterns in the 'conversion' of putonghua into sichuan hua and if you've got some mandarin it won't take you very long at all to be able to have a quick conversation with your cabbie.