How different are pronunciations for Taiwan than Peking Standard?

I think the current pronunciations are from ChinesePod.com and I know she's from Shanghai, but I would prefer to have an option for non-PRC pronunciations. I don't expect it to be a priority for you guys though.

However, it would be nice if you guys enabled in the API some way of letting people plug-in their own pronunciation sets. Perhaps some Taiwan university will give away some speech set free for public domain.

Of course, I plan to use a HK set myself. :)

Hello

Some words may have a slightly different pronunciation or tone but officially speaking, Taiwan and China follow the same standard. The "Mandarin" I'm learning is the same as you guys are learning in Shanghai or Beijing.

Unofficially of course the mandarin can be very different from a region to an another (just like someone from Texas would have a very different prononciation than a NYC guy) and yes Taiwan "accent" can sometime be quite different (IMO much clearer than some mainland one) but really nothing special, once you know that:

是 (SH) is pronounced like 四 (S)
吃 (CH) like 次 (C)
You need to add a lot of 啊, 喔 and shall never use 兒

You can speak Mandarin in the Taipei's way :)

Some exemple took from youtube:

Funny ad: http://youtu.be/wcqduE_huss
The famous and often hilarious 康熙來了: http://youtu.be/NwZc5vqVoB

I've studied in 4 different Chinese speaking areas and I find what Torue says to be very accurate. In China everyone I knew always bragged how good their Putonghua was based on national test scores. But always receded back to a local accent in daily conversation. In Taiwan people naturally are speaking perfect Putonghua. The only exception would be the closer sound of Shi-Si and Chi-Ci and the more casual 啊's at the end.

Yes, I agree for those 是 and 四. I learned some words to speak first before I turned to learn writing here on Skritter. And the biggest surprise for me was that in fact 生氣 - is using 生 which is in fact sh, while I heard it said here as sen, and totally no any shh sound. Similar is with 火車 and many others. Huo Che is pronounced as "c"e and not "ch"e. And yes. 啦,吧 - is added to all and every time :)
是啊 for example I hear tenth of time daily