I have an old friend in the UK. He’s Chinese (from Shandong), and he loves to annoy me by talking about political stuff, in which I have no interest.
So I want to get him back in a friendly way. He recently wrote to me that my Taiwanese must be improving, and that I could write to him in Taiwanese next time and that he would understand it.
What I need is a couple of phrases in Taiwanese, written using traditional Chinese characters, which he’s guaranteed NOT to understand. So I guess that means using quite a few of those sound-loan characters rather than ones in which the meaning is the same in Mandarin and Taiwanese.
I don’t want anything too insulting or political. Just a couple of sentences which will confuse my friend. Can anyone help?
Hello joesax,
How about this:
挖底歹丸家金厚，待一馬哦幾甸甸。哩底陰溝後抹?五銀瞎胚吼襪喔！
I’m fine here in Taiwan. I’ve learned some Taiwanese.
How are you in UK? Write me if you have free time.
If you need the pronunciation, I’ll try to mark the phonetic spelling to you later. Tell us what your friend reacts
[quote=“DoD”]Hello joesax,
How about this:
挖底歹丸家金厚，待一馬哦幾甸甸。哩底陰溝後抹?五銀瞎胚吼襪喔！
I’m fine here in Taiwan. I’ve learned some Taiwanese.
How are you in UK? Write me if you have free time.
If you need the pronunciation, I’ll try to mark the phonetic spelling to you later. Tell us what your friend reacts :-)[/quote]Thanks! The pronunciation would be interesting if you have time, but for now that’s fine for what I need. I just want to prove to my friend that he can’t really read Taiwanese!
[quote=“DoD”]Hello joesax,
How about this:
挖底歹丸家金厚，待一馬哦幾甸甸。哩底陰溝後抹?五銀瞎胚吼襪喔！
I’m fine here in Taiwan. I’ve learned some Taiwanese.
How are you in UK? Write me if you have free time.[/quote]
That’s Taiwanese speech approximated using Mandarin pronunciations of characters. It’s not “written” Taiwanese.
[quote=“DoD”]Hello joesax,
How about this:
挖底歹丸家金厚，待一馬哦幾甸甸。哩底陰溝後抹?五銀瞎胚吼襪喔！
I’m fine here in Taiwan. I’ve learned some Taiwanese.
How are you in UK? Write me if you have free time.
If you need the pronunciation, I’ll try to mark the phonetic spelling to you later. Tell us what your friend reacts :-)[/quote]
:bravo:
噹好,噹好,斜都十菜噹好…Hakka should be one of Taiwanese ,too.
Very good.
[quote=“Chris”][quote=“DoD”]Hello joesax,
How about this:
挖底歹丸家金厚，待一馬哦幾甸甸。哩底陰溝後抹?五銀瞎胚吼襪喔！
I’m fine here in Taiwan. I’ve learned some Taiwanese.
How are you in UK? Write me if you have free time.[/quote]
That’s Taiwanese speech approximated using Mandarin pronunciations of characters. It’s not “written” Taiwanese.[/quote]Oh right. It was really written Taiwanese I was after. I know some of the characters for that are the same in meaning but others are based on the sound. So whatever I write should have a good proportion of the latter, but should still be acceptable written Taiwanese in fairly common usage.
Chris, you are right. But if you write in really Taiwanese (or i should say Minnanese) by Characters, the chinese falk in UK may understand. Cuz classic Taiwanese writting is very similar with accient Chinese usage.
Or there is romanised Taiwanese invented by church or preist long time ago and used widely. Maybe someone can help joesax for that.
[quote=“DoD”]Cuz classic Taiwanese writting is very similar with accient Chinese usage. :p[/quote]That could be alright for my purpose, actually. The combination of the “archaic” usage and the traditional characters could make it pretty hard for him to understand. But if he does manage to understand it, that’s fair enough – he’ll have made a good effort to do so and I’ll still have made my point.
Could anyone post a few lines of a poem or something like that?
OMG, you beat me, Taiwanese, though i’m not Minnanese. I’m second generation of Mainlander.
I asked my classmate.
We guess the sentence should be like this:
阮查某人伊欲互阮一個阿啄囝仔. and it means
My woman she wants to give me a foreign kid.
俺 is I in Shangdonese. Which is the place joesax’s friend come. He must understant.
Actually, I was trying for 我的女人將要給我一個大鼻孩子 or “My woman is about to give me a big-nosed (foreign) child”. I figure there’s enough Taiwanese-only words in there (查某人, 阿啄仔) to throw off the Shandong friend. I had to look up the Taiwanese equivalent of 將要, which I got as 倚欲.
[quote=“sjcma”]Actually, I was trying for 我的女人將要給我一個大鼻孩子 or “My woman is about to give me a big-nosed (foreign) child”. I figure there’s enough Taiwanese-only words in there (查某人, 阿啄仔) to throw off the Shandong friend. I had to look up the Taiwanese equivalent of 將要, which I got as 倚欲.[/quote]
Well, no big-nosed kids on the way but that should give him a laugh, at least once I explain it to him!
My wife speaks fluent Taiwanese, Mando also of course, but she adamantly refuses to teach me or the young cowboy any of it.
Strange, eh?
I’m picking up a word here and a phrase there, but she is of no help. Says its “low language.”
While I understand what she is trying to say, I think this is hilarious of her.
I like the reaction I get when I use my limited Taiwanese. Always a smile…and not a patronizing laugh, as some may be quick to add.
