I think overcompensation is certainly a factor – I’ve certainly met waitresses and taxi drivers in Dongbei who’ve seemed to lay on their best pǔtōnghuà for me and thrown in lots of extra ’sh’ sounds where often they’re normally lacking, and often where there should just be a plain ’s’.

If that sounds like I’m mocking ’semi-literate’ service personnel, that is certainly not my intention. With some discussion on the recent Mandarin Study Programs post about the most effective way to learn Mandarin, I perhaps should be careful about admitting that I would never have got anywhere with learning Mandarin if the wasn’t for the patience and encouragement of countless waitresses and taxi drivers.

This means that I, too, frequently say ‘chuzhuche’, but it doesn’t seem that surprising with the ‘zu’ sandwiched between ‘chu’ and ‘che’. I think for many true North-easterners, it’s not a case of substituting one sound for the other, as much as simply only having one sound in that region of the mouth – any sound in that region is perceived by speaker and listener alike as ‘that’ sound, even when others hear significant variation. A parallel might be the difficulty native English speakers have distinguishing the Chinese ‘x’ and ’sh’ and the other similar pairs.

I just wanted to perhaps throw a bit of a spanner into that zh->z discussion above: A lady i met last year who’s from dongbei but who’s lived the last few years in Beijing, actually pronounces a lot of “z”s as “zh”s. Now, it’s been a while since i saw this lady, but the clearest example i can remember is 出租车, which she very clearly said as “chuzhuche”. I remember there were numerous other instances where she did the same z->zh thing, which i can’t remember right now, along with occasional instances of zh->z, and possibly a sh->s or two, which i also can’t remember.

I wondered whether perhaps she was just overcompensating as an out-of-towner trying to fit in, or whether it’s something that’s actually been observed…Useless? I’m sorry…i’ve actually only spent a handful of days in BJ myself, ever.