Mr. Leung's blog post on "Foreigners speaking Cantonese" inspired me to do some further research to assist my own little ongoing 'project' which started sometime last year.
Earlier this year while I was back home for the first time in three years, I noticed an increase in foreigners (by this, I mean mostly white people). There's foreign exchange students around TWTC, Caucasian men (teachers, sons-in-laws, expat...), and even Muslim girls at the supermarket.There's a popular nightly talk show which features "foreign brides" as guests on TV, and even a Taiwanese (Min Nan/Hokkien) language teaching program co-hosted by an American.
It may not seem like such a big deal in this multicultural society, but bear in mind that I'm talking about a country with 23 million people (similar to Australia), of which 98% are ethnically Han Chinese and 2% Aboriginal. Rarely could you spot a white guy on the streets outside of certain areas of Taipei City (excluding Mormon missionaries. Many of them travel to Taiwan around 18 years of age).
Anyway, back on topic.
I've gathered some videos found on YouTube for my own reference and anyone else interested. For the moment, I did not include the many videos of people practicing Mandarin songs (some of them are quite interesting). I also did not include videos of people from language backgrounds other than English.
I will continue to update further info/delete dead links whenever I can be bothered to.
My notes are written primarily for myself just as a reminder, so there's absolutely no offense intended even though I may comment on some speakers' pronunciation...etc. (From a general linguistics point of view, there are no right or wrong anyway).
