Audio clip for Secondary Research

Here is the Chinese reading of the book I listened to for my secondary research. I thought it would be important to include at least one audio clip because this probably demonstrates the most correct or accent-free example of Chinese since it was recorded to be published and enjoyed by Chinese speakers throughout the world.

Reflection

I think that reflecting back on my original language belief, my research actually supports it. At first, I thought that language represented your history and now I still believe that because depending on which language you use, you express your roots and people might even be able to determine what you've experienced in your life. If that doesn't make sense, imagine if you heard someone speaking in Taiwanese, you might be able to determine that it's pretty possible that they are an older generation and that they most probably live in Taiwan.
But after all my research I've realized that Taiwanese speakers might have different accents depending on their age or what region they live in. I especially want to know if the Taiwanese they speak in that one region in China is different than anything you would hear in Taiwan becuase the two groups don't ever really mix together to combine dialects.

Recommendations

I think that for further research it would be really interesting to record an older person and a younger person speaking both languages to determine whether or not they speak them differently because of the difference in their usage habits. Also, if I ever redid this experiment, I would like to go more in depth with my research of Taiwanese's origin and if it could have evolved from Chinese a long, long time ago.

Final Conclusion

I have learned so many things about the Taiwanese language from the data I've gathered from both my secondary and primary resources.
From my internet and book research I learned that Taiwanese was first spoken as a way for the ancestors of Taiwan to protest and separate themselves from the Chinese government at the time. Also, I learned that there are many differences as well as similarities between Chinese and Taiwanese. One difference is that Taiwanese is more nasal and cannot be written. But on the other hand, both languages originated from people who once lived or do live in China and both are tonal languages. Specifically from the book on CD, I heard that some words in Taiwanese are just modified Chinese words but would be totally different if you'd just learned both languages.
From my primary research I learned that the older you are the more people typically speak in Taiwanese because I think that back then, Taiwanese was used more commonly. While on the other hand, Chinese is the language of choice for the more modern crowd and is used for formal events such as school or interviews.

We can learn from my research that if you were to ever want to visit Taiwan, there is no need to go searching for a guide to Taiwanese language because Chinese is now recognized as the most commonly used language. But, if you plan on interacting with the town elders or someone's grandparents, it might be helpful to find a translator for it's easier for older people to express themselves using Taiwanese.

My mother reading the same passage in Taiwanese

My mother reading aloud in Chinese

The two Wu Generations

I want to give visual examples of the older and younger generations so that you can really understand who are the ones that use Taiwanese more and those who prefer to go by using Chinese. Actually, all the people in these pictures, except me and that little dude in the blue, speak both languages but for most of Taiwan there would be a language usage difference between the two generation.

This is the younger crowd of the Wu family.

Here's the more aged generation.