Originally Posted by
Taiwaned
I know what you are getting at but most of the Universities and Mandrin languages classes teach "Beijing hwa".
If you actually go to the Mandrin schools here, they all teach "Beijing hua" but good teachers actually diferentiate the difference between Mandrin in N China, South China and Taiwan. You are right that Beijing hua sounds harsher but all is acceptable in the end.
Sorry, but disagree. It 'putonghua' which is taught in both Taiwan and China, and they don't differentiate betw N, S or Taiwan. Both in Taiwan and Mainland, they still teach the rolling 'r' but on the streets where you practice, depends on your location. If you're in beijing, it will definitely be more accentuated then if you're in say shanghai or taipei (and definitely in kaohsiung).
Southern taiwan is a lousy place to study because major dialect spoken is actually taiwanese. Best place, imho, remains National Taiwan University, site of the former 'stanford' program (which has since moved to mainland, tsinghua u). My former classmates in grad school all went through there, and many of them are lao wai who are tenured Asian Lit and Lang professors stateside. And they still believe NTU remains tops....