At the end of the class, we received a notice from the department, asking us third-year Chinese majors to actively register for this year's Putonghua proficiency test. The Mandarin test is only available to juniors and seniors, and the students who apply for the test are mainly Chinese. The main direction of employment in Chinese as a foreign language is to become a teacher in a Confucius Institute abroad through Hanban, or to engage in the education industry in China according to the characteristics of the major. And both of these must require a certificate: "National Putonghua Proficiency Test Grade Certificate". Moreover, they all need to be Class 2A or above.

I don't have a scientific plan for my future, but under the constant care of professional teachers, I still decided to test my Mandarin level with the mentality of giving it a try, after all, I was nicknamed "Little Luojing" by Lao Zhao back then, and it is always good to have an extra certificate.

Putonghua is a modern standard Chinese with Beijing pronunciation as the standard pronunciation, northern dialect as the basis, and exemplary modern vernacular writings as the grammatical norms. So, even if it's a true Beijinger, they don't speak standard Mandarin.

The test venue is in the West District, and the examiners are all teachers in the department, and it is said that only those who hold a certificate of first class B or above are qualified to be testers. Compared with English level 4 or 6, the Putonghua test does not require much preparation, as long as you can recognize words, but you also need to read the pronunciation accurately. Because of this, everyone in our dormitory signed up. As natives of the north, Lao Zhao, Da Biao squad leader and Lin Ye are not worried about the test at all, they should eat and drink, and anti-terrorism and FIFA will play correctly. Eric was a little apprehensive at first, because he often inadvertently popped up dialect words when he spoke, and some two-syllable words were also flattened and indistinguishable. But under Lin Ye's words, he also completely relaxed, and continued to watch TVB, the Cantonese version.

I grew up in the South, and I have a disadvantage in my own right, and due to the influence of dialects, many people have a flat tongue and a tone that wants to go far. Even our Chinese teachers struggled to speak standard Mandarin, while other teachers had even heavier accents, and some of the older teachers taught in dialects. Television has been an important way for me to learn Mandarin since I was a child.

However, through the study of professional courses, I also learned that according to the development and change of phonetics, the Wu language in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions retains many elements of Middle Ages, which was brought over by the great migration of the population in the Central Plains during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty. In a sense, many of the dialects I speak at home are "bulk" Tang Dynasty official dialects. Later, when Jingkang was in trouble, people ran to the south again, and the ancient sounds in Cantonese were more intact, and even the disappeared sounds were there. This is why people always think that Cantonese songs are very good and have a special charm. In addition, many ancient poems do not rhyme when read in Mandarin, but read very smoothly in Cantonese. There are even rumors that Cantonese almost became the Mandarin of the whole country back then.

In the south, my Mandarin is still superior, and I am always called up to read the texts in Chinese class, and when I first came to Chahachong, because I didn't hear the feeling of the Southern sketches of the Spring Festival Gala from my mouth, everyone once had doubts about my southerner identity. However, the indistinguishable nasal voice has always been my weakness, and this habit needs to be changed over time. When I was a freshman, I didn't enter the campus radio station because of the indistinguishable nasal pronunciation, so I paid special attention to this part in my daily life.

Fortunately, Mandarin has long been popularized in the Chahachong area, and it is a northern dialect area, so through the long-term influence of the surrounding language environment, I have been able to distinguish the pronunciation of the general front and back nasal sounds with the nasal cavity, but the premise is to know the pronunciation of this character. For this, I have to thank the automatic error correction function of the Sogou Pinyin input method, which allows me to unconsciously remember the complete pinyin of those commonly used words.

However, there are always two sides to things. Although the Mandarin spoken by the people of Cha Ha Chong is not very obvious in the entire northeast region, there is no strong smell of bud rice stubble. However, under the influence of Manchu and the Shandong dialect that later broke into the eastern part of the country, there is still a difference between the standard Mandarin, and the syllables of some words are weakened and fall off very seriously, such as "what to do" is said "ganha". The intonation of speech is sometimes very different, for example, the "wei" in "satellite road" is used to being pronounced as "wěi" in the colloquial language of Chahachong; The "broadcast" of "broadcast" is customarily pronounced "bē". So in this complex language environment, I don't have much confidence in myself, I feel very far from the goal of Level 2 A, and I think that if I take the Mandarin test in the south, I will pass it easily.

By default, the order of the exam is according to the student number, and I am relatively high. The content of the test paper was sent to us in the preparation room, and when I got it, I quickly scanned the words related to the front and back nasal sounds, ong, an, and ang are easy to distinguish, and the difficulty is yin, ying, en, eng. I turned up the power of my host computer to the maximum, desperately marked the virtual pinyin on the test paper, and then kept reciting silently in my heart.

After the first few female students had finished the test one by one, I walked tremblingly to the pronunciation classroom, opened the test paper in front of several teachers, calmed down my mood, and then began to read monosyllabic words aloud. The monosyllabic words are very simple, and 100 of them can be read quickly, but when it comes to the double syllables, I accidentally pronounce a wrong note and get a pimple.

Before the exam, the professional teacher told us not to get a pimple, and if we did, we should continue to read directly, and never go back. The secret to not getting a pimple is naturally to reduce the speed of speech and not be nervous. After a very short pause, I simply skimmed over the mistake, readjusted the pace of speech, and resumed the exam.

But exams are always nervous, both sides of the test paper have already been wet with the sweat of my hands, both hands seem to have lost consciousness, only the cold brought by the volatilization of sweat will remind me that I still have two hands. After two more pimples, the two syllables are finally read, and the next step is to read the short passage. Sentences are not like words, they only appear fluent when they are punctuated and paused, which also makes the error rate exceptionally high. Because my mouth couldn't keep up with the speed of my eyes, I mispronounced the words again, and the speed of my speech became faster and faster, and as soon as I spoke fast, mistakes kept coming: eating words, swallowing sounds, and not having time to distinguish between front and back nasal sounds...... However, no matter how long the sentence is, it has punctuation after all, and a full stop saved me from fire and water, and after a gentle breath, I began to slowly slow down my speech, adjust my tone, and finally read the whole content of the test paper in a smooth manner.

The last question is that there is no text to speak, and you need to play on the spot, so self-introduction is the best content. After all, the first thing you have to learn in college is to introduce yourself, through the exercise and continuous enrichment of the freshman and sophomore years, this content has long been familiar with the content, and I have also prepared before the exam, and I began to talk about it after simply typing an outline in my heart......

The results of the exam came out quickly, and the next day we were notified to get the certificate, and luckily I got a second class A, which is at the upper middle level in the class. Only the female classmate from Beijing in the class got the first grade B, which is the highest level. To our surprise, Lin Ye was only second-class like Eric, and was ridiculed by Lao Zhao and Da Biao's squad leader, saying that he had lost the face of the northerners. The next year, he took the exam again and finally proved himself with his strength.

I was very happy to get the certificate, I looked at it again and again, confirmed it again and again, and did not forget to look at the words "second-class A" again when I put it in the cabinet. It turns out that I speak Mandarin not badly, and if I take the exam in the south, I guess I can also get a first-class B. I happily turned on my computer and started playing the game, but I forgot something important......