Tag Archives: Taiwanese

Waiting on Tenterhooks:「剉哩等」 chhoah leh tán

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I found this Taiwanese phrase in the CNA article ‘The Legislative Challenge: Can Taiwan Keep Up with the TPP‘ from March:

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「從TPP智慧財產權專章觀察，加強維護原廠藥權利，對於國內研發型藥廠無非增添保護羽翼，但國內學名藥廠卻「剉哩等」。」

Observing the TPP chapters dedicated to intellectual property rights, strengthening protection for the rights of original drug producers  will undoubtedly increase protection for domestic drug producers who engage in research and development, but domestic generic drug producers will be waiting on tenterhooks.

Unusually for a Taiwanese phrase used in a Mandarin sentence, there was no explanation in brackets afterwards, which suggests it’s pretty commonly used and understood. The first two characters used are just rendered phonetically with similar Mandarin characters:

Mandarin pronounciation: Cuo4li5deng3      Taiwanese pronounciation: chhoah leh tán

One Chinese-language blog I found suggested that the original Taiwanese character for 「剉」 is 「瘛」(chi4), a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) term for “clonic convulsion”, but here it means to shake or shiver (with nerves). The leh is sometimes represented by 哩 or 咧 in written form, but the original Taiwanese character is unknown. It is used in a similar way to 「著」 in the phrase 「坐著看」，i.e. Verb A 著 Verb B (to do Verb A continuously while doing Verb B). 「等」is the original Taiwanese character.

Photo by AFGE [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

MRT Poetry: ‘Flower’ by Bi Guo 捷運詩句：碧果的〈花〉

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I found this poem entitled Flower (花) by Taiwanese poet Bi Guo (碧果) on the MRT:

花

僅差一步

就是

 

界

外

脫去衣裳可以走了

 

Flower

Just one more step

Is

 

The

Beyond

One can leave after shedding one’s garb

I also liked the stylized way the author’s name was written on the poster.

Bi Guo was born in 1932 and is the author of several poetry collections, including A Heartbeat Afternoon, A Changing and Unchanging Canary, Corporeal Awareness and Poetry Belongs to Eve. He has also published a collection of essays, a novel and a play. You can hear him reading some of his poems in Chinese below in a video by the Culture Bureau of the Taipei City Government:

 

 

A Foreigner By Any Other Name: 阿凸仔/阿兜仔/阿啄仔

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Zanni_maskI came across the (somewhat controversial) Taiwanese phrase for (non-Asian) foreigner 「阿凸仔」 in a book I’m reading at the minute:

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檢查過了一圈，這屋內看不出有什麼不尋常之處。總不會是照片中的人在說話吧？明明聽到的那句是中文，可這些都是阿凸仔啊！

He checked all around but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It couldn’t have been the people in the photographs talking, surely? The words he’d heard had clearly been in Chinese, but they were all foreigners!

There are a lot of weird and wonderful stories about the origin of the term 「阿凸仔」, from the rather far-fetched concept that it was adopted from the Japanese pronunciation of the English “a dog” to the more common theory that it refers to the high-bridge noses of non-Asians compared to Asian people. I tend to put more stock in the latter theory.

The Taiwanese Ministry of Education dictionary uses the characters 阿啄仔 and the pronunciation as a-tok-á, which translates to “Beaky” – as in “You’ve got a beak on your face, Beaky,” or as the MOE puts it:

因為洋人的鼻子高挺，所以用「啄」(tok)來代稱洋人。

Because Westerners’ noses protrude, so 「啄」(tok) “beak” is used to refer to Westerners.

There’s also a synonym 啄鼻仔 tok-phīnn-á (beak-nose-diminutive particle), which I’ve yet to hear mentioned in conversation or see written down.

Whether you like the term or hate it, it’s something you’ll hear a lot in Taiwan – generally no harm is meant by it, but if you hear a 「死阿啄仔」 sí a-tok-á (fucking foreigner/dead beaknose) followed by a list of other expletives, it might be time to start running.

The term has even been re-appropriated by a Spanish guy called Jesus living in Taiwan, on his Youtube channel  「阿兜仔不教美語」 (This foreigner doesn’t teach American English). I would advise you all not to troll him by leaving comments on his videos asking where he teaches English… (Mwahaha).

Mask image courtesy of Tom Banwell under a Creative Commons License.

Penang Hokkien – Zhangzhou with a twist 檳城福建話

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Recently when flicking through my Facebook feed I saw this photo taken by my friend Tariel in Penang in Malaysia.

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Photo Provided by Tariel Dzharkimbaev

What caught my notice was the speech bubble in the top right corner:

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「教你讲（講）福建」- “[I’ll] teach you [to] speak Hokkien” which is romanized as “Kah Lu Kong Hokkien”.

In Taipei one would normally hear this pronounced as “kà lí kóng Hok-kiàn” (Click each word to hear).

What struck me, was the that the 「你」 which I’d always heard pronounced “lí” in Taipei had been romanized as “lu”.

In Penang they mainly speak the Zhangzhou (漳州) dialect, similar to the dialect of Hokkien spoken in the cities of Tainan and Taichung, Yilan and Yuanlin. In this dialect words like 「你、豬」 end in the consonant “i”, whereas in the Xiamen dialect, they can end in Continue reading →

Wang Gong wuz here ’15 尪公進天公繞境

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Saw this torn poster around the Wanhua district while out to lunch. It’s a path marker left by a parade to welcome the Gods of Loyalty (尪公) into the Palace of Heaven. The gods of loyalty were two Tang dynasty generals Zhang Xun (張巡) and Xu Yuan (許遠) who were honored by Emperor Suzong (唐肅宗) posthumously for their loyalty in dying defending the Tang dynasty during the Battle of Suiyang against Yan troops. Interestingly, this was quite controversial as they are said to have encouraged cannibalism during the battle.

「尪公」 or Gods of Loyalty is a common way to refer to the 「保義大夫」 or “senior officials upholding justice,” which you can see written at the center of the torn poster.

I found a helpful description of the events (and other events) in Taiwanese folk religion at this site. Here’s the description of the 迎尪公 (Welcoming the Gods of Loyalty) parade:

十二日為保義大夫祭典。尪公，即保義大夫俗稱。據傳，保義大夫為驅除田園害蟲之神，俗信其神輿過處，附近害蟲將盡死滅，因此，迎神輿須通過田中畦道。保義大夫之神輿極小，僅以兩人抬扛。祭典當日，住戶例均供祭牲禮，並供五味碗，犒賞其部下神兵，遊行隊伍，均甚壯大。

The tweflth day [of the fifth lunar month] is the ceremony of the senior officials upholding justice. Wang Gong is the colloquial name for the “senior officials upholding justice.” Apparently the “senior officials upholding justice” can help to get rid of pests in farmland and people believe that wherever the palanquin of the gods passes will lead to the death and destruction of pests and insects in neighboring land, so the palanquin has to pass through the paths around fields. The palanquin of the senior officials upholding justice is quite small and is carried by only two people. On the day of the ceremony, offerings are made by local residents, offering a variety of sweet, sour, bitter, spicy and salty dishes to reward the celestial troops and give strength to those taking part in the parade.

Not sure why it is torn – if this is tradition or someone concerned that the extremely dirty reflector on the traffic light pole was being blocked from sight

Sing to speak Taiwanese: Part 3 (Chorus) ‘The hustle and bustle is all a dream’ 會唱就會講台語：〈繁華攏是夢〉第三段（副歌）

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This is a continuation of Part 1 and Part 2. My favorite part of the song which also contains some useful vocabulary for those 3am calls to your ex to tell them how heartless they are and everything you’ve done for them. I’ve posted different versions of the song in each post, so here’s the 北七樂團’s version, although there’s another song at the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeF46XxOu2k

I’ve reposted the lyrics as they appear at KTV below as a reminder:

Continue reading →

Misappropriating money in Taiwan – 挨錢 or A錢?

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111223A錢 e chîⁿ (click syllable to hear) means to steal or misappropriate money, but there has been debate online about what the “A,” pronounced “e” (click to hear) actually stands for, with some people attributing it to an abbreviation of an English word and others assuming that it represents a Chinese character. After looking online I found around three theories in total.

1. The first I found pretty unconvincing, essentially that this is an abbreviation of the English word “abuse”. Why this word would come to Taiwan when it isn’t really used in this context in English is anyone’s guess, maybe “appropriate” would be more convincing. I don’t think that verbs like this would be adapted from English however, not to mention that “A” means “adult” or “porn-related” in Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan.

2. The second two examples posited two separate characters as the Taiwanese for “A.” One was a random poster on Forumosa in English, who said:

It is a false adaption from Taiwanese. “A錢” should be “挈錢”(qie4 qian2).

The Taiwanese for 挈 (to lift/ to raise) is kho̍eh though, so it doesn’t really fit.
The second was on the comments section of a messaging board for UCPenn which stated it was 掖:

From what I have found, A錢 originally comes from 掖錢 (pronounced as yē qián in Mandarin), 掖 means “to hide under armpits and take away.”

But 掖 is pronounced iā (click to hear) in Taiwanese, so this doesn’t seem to fit either.

3. The third and most convincing argument is from the Taiwan Language Blog which posits 挨 or the now defunct ae98ca21-1  – both of which can mean “to meet with” or “to push,” to pull” or “to grind.” The blog states that the use of the term in the sense of misappropriation and specifically in the verb-object phrase A錢 began to appear in newspapers at around the end of 1999. The blog owner suggests that in this context means to pull, and by extension to shift about or to take a bit from this to make up for that, which can by turn be extended to misappropriation of money:

“e（挨）”有“拉”的意義（如前述的挨弦仔，e-hien´-na`，拉胡琴），e-lai´-sak-k‘iʟ 也就有拉過來推過去的意思，也就是“挪東補西”，把那邊的錢挪過來補這邊的坑洞的意思了。

All in all I have the most faith in the third solution. If anyone else has a clearer idea let me know in the comments section. Feel free to contact me with any cool Taiwanese words or phrases you hear and want featured on the blog.

LKK/老扣扣/洛可可/老硞硞 láu kho̍k-kho̍k Out of touch/ fuddy duddy

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LKK/老扣扣/洛可可/老硞硞  láu kho̍k-kho̍k (audio available here) Out of touch/ fuddy duddy

This is an adjectival phrase that most commonly appears using the roman letters LKK . It means old and out of touch and has the sense of being behind the times or of an older order. Surprisingly the roman letters often appear in news articles and novels as opposed to the Chinese characters. This took me by surprise as I thought that using roman letters was usually something quite informal – like the 火星文 that features widely on BBS.

OldPeople

When I asked my coworkers for examples, one of them cited Andy Lau’s attempts at street dancing as LKK.

I also found the following examples on the internet:

為了不讓自己顯得ＬＫＫ，我決定在生活中多學習新世代用語 (I have decided to learn phrases used by the younger generation, so as not to not appear so out of touch)

from the Liberty Times in which it is used as an adjective.

這屆海峽兩岸圖書交易會將邀請知名作詞人方文山、製作人王偉忠等人出席相關活動，吸引年輕人參加，讓圖交會不再「LKK」。 (Renowned lyricist Vincent Fang and TV producer Wang Wei-Chung, among others, will attend this year’s Cross-strait Book Fair, in order to get young people to attend and to prevent the book fair from being out of touch with the younger generation.)

from CNA, in which it’s used as an adjective.

And this rather more current example from ET Today:

網評／得網路者得天下　屁孩成就國民黨LKK的慘敗 (Social media: Whoever rules the internet, rules the world; the brat generation succeed in defeating the out of touch KMT)

In this last example I had to rearrange the words in the translation, but essentially LKK is an adjective here too, describing it as an “out of touch crushing defeat”.

Feel free to contact me with any cool Taiwanese words or phrases you hear and want featured on the blog.

Photo credit: Politics & 2P

Font Matters 字體異型

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I’ve noticed certain interesting irregularities in Chinese fonts. The book I’m reading at the minute (《馬橋詞典》; the edition was originally published by 聯經出版社/Linking Books) in Feb. 2011, and this copy is the second printing) uses the form of the character 感 seen in the top line of the image below, as opposed to the one on the bottom. The character on the top line has a 丿that encloses the entire character, as opposed to the one on the bottom line in which the heart radical at the bottom is separate.
ganI’ve noticed similar differences in other characters before and was curious if anyone else had spotted any other slight differences that come to mind. Also curious if this is influenced by historic instances of difference in the way the character can be written.

The interesting thing for me as a Cangjie user is that it should technically change the way the character is written in Cangjie, as instead of 戈口心 it should follow the example of 威 (戈丿一女) and be written 戈丿一心, although obviously this is just a font.

Which form do you come across the most in the books you are reading? What are the names of the different fonts that use this form?

‘The Face Changer’ by Wu I-Wei in Unbraiding the short story

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When I was still a student at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, an American professor came to visit one of my professors and, as one of the two resident foreigners in the department, I was enlisted to see what it was he wanted over dinner. The professor was Maurice A. Lee (see picture second left) and he was hoping to organize a conference in Taiwan, unfortunately our research institute didn’t have the funds to make it happen, but we had a nice chat.

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Some years later, Taiwanese author Wu I-Wei (吳億偉) asked me to translate a short story for him called ‘The Face Changer’ (〈換照者〉), which it turns out has been published in a new anthology edited by Maurice A. Lee called Unbraiding the Short Story, which includes short stories from all around the world. Looks like an interesting read, here’s a quick sample of Wu’s story:

The face changer had been born without a face. His mother said that he’d wanted it that way. Back when he was in his mother’s womb, she was unable to make him whole, and he had to face the world lacking. The only favor his mother granted him was helping him decide which part of his body to go without. Floating in his mother’s amniotic fluids like a corpse, he saw his arms, his two feet, and his body, he felt reluctant to part with the bits he’d already seen, but that only left his face, the only thing he couldn’t see, after his tacit response to his mother’s question, he cried out, and then came into the world.

 

He scared the doctors and nurses in the room when he was born, each of them guessing as to what the child would look like when he grew up. This would be the reason that he would later change his face so much, but it wasn’t because he wanted to shock everyone, with a face that could never be pinned down, but rather that he wanted all their guesses to come true, to satisfy all of their imaginings. Before his face-changing days, back when he was young, he faced a lot of challenges. His mother was worried that he’d scare people, so she drew a face for him. Lacking in imagination as she was, however, the eyes, nose and mouth she drew were those from your average picture book, his features all curved in shape, with eyes like rainbows, and a mouth like an upturned rainbow. If his mother had remembered, she would have drawn a little dot for his nose too.

 

What a splendid face she had drawn him, it always looked so happy that whenever his teacher saw him, she would pinch his cheeks, asking him why he smiled all day long. He couldn’t open his mouth to say anything, so he could only smile in response. As his expression was dictated beforehand, he became the nice guy in his class, and gave the impression of having a particularly good temper. If people hit or cursed at him, he’d still smile away. Sometimes a teacher would intervene, then seeing that the look on his face hadn’t changed a fraction, they would say how innocent he seemed, like an angel…

 

換照者一生下來就沒有臉。他母親說這是他自己要求的，早在娘胎的時候他母親便無力給他一個完整的身體，他得缺陷的面對這個世界，他母親唯一能幫忙的，就是讓他決定要缺少哪個部份，像個浮屍般漂在母親羊水中的他，看到自己的雙手，看到自己的雙腳，看到自己的身體，這些看得到的他都不想放手，只剩下臉了，他唯一看不到的東西，悄悄回答母親的問題後，哇的一聲，就見到這個世界了。

 

據說剛出生的時候他嚇到在場的醫生護士，大家紛紛猜測這小孩長大之後會長怎樣，這可以說是他日後之所以換照的遠因，但絕對不是因為他想要跌破大家眼鏡，擁有一張他們猜不到的臉，而是他要大家的猜測紛紛成真，滿足每一個人的想像。在這之前他年幼當然也受到了一些挑戰，他母親怕他嚇到大家，幫他畫上了一張臉，只能怪他母親想像力貧瘠，他的眼睛鼻子嘴巴就是那種在一般畫冊中看到的，臉上五官都由弧線所構成，眼睛像彩虹，而嘴巴則是反過來的彩虹，若是他母親記得的話，會在彩虹的中間補上一點，那是鼻子。多麼燦爛的臉啊，看起來永遠那麼快樂，學校老師看到他，總喜歡捏捏他的臉，摸摸他的眼睛，嘴巴，你怎麼一天到晚都在笑，他沒有辦法張口說話，只能微笑以對。由於他的表情使然，成為班上有名的好好先生，沒有脾氣，不管別人怎麼罵他打他，還是笑容滿溢，老師幾次幫他解圍，看到他表情沒有一絲一毫的改變，直呼他真是天真，如天使般……

Wu has won numerous awards including the United Daily Press Literary Award for Fiction, the China Times Literary Award for Fiction and Essays, the United Literature Monthly Literary Award for Fiction, and the Liberty Times Lin Rungsan Literary Award for Short Essays. He published his new collection of essays, Motorbike Days (《機車生活》), in 2014 and is now a PhD candidate at the Institute of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and regularly reports the latest German literature news for Taiwanese magazines and newspapers.

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Still working on reviews, not given up on the blog, expect more content soon.