dok actually means pointy. you might hear people say piN-a dok-dok to which the appropriate response is mo piN-a “flat nose” 
:)
the initial “a” often preceds names, and the final “a” often is attached to nouns like the mandarin “zi” haizi, chezi, etc. there you have it!
dok actually means pointy. you might hear people say piN-a dok-dok to which the appropriate response is mo piN-a “flat nose” :)
the initial “a” often preceds names, and the final “a” often is attached to nouns like the Mandarin “zi” haizi, chezi, etc. there you have it![/quote]
Interesting. :loco:
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]I’d always seen 阿凸仔, but yes, the 凸 is not read that way. I’m not sure the reasoning for this one. Using 多 or 豆 is just a sound substitution from Mandarin. We can’t really say that any of these are wrong, as there is no standard of what is ‘right’.
Brian[/quote]
Well using 凸 is actually just a sound substitution from Mandarin, even if the character choice seems more appropriate.
We can expect the government to begin standardizing Holo and Hakka characters this year. There should be a book with their early suggestions on the standard form of the 300 most common “lost character” (or “disputed character”) words.
Given the Mandarin Promotion Council’s tendencies, only a character with a historical basis for being used will be used. If they were going to have to simply make up a character for a word, they’ll probably choose to use romanization only.
[quote]閩南語字彙整理與研究
漢語方言中，閩南語在音韻、詞彙及句法上，皆有異於其他方言。因此閩南語本身有許多特異之處，且可從古漢語尋求其來源及解釋，進而了解其與古漢語之間，彼此有深遠而密切之關係。
… 又因目前研究閩南語的深度及廣度，均處於不足的狀況下，許多確有本字之語音，卻被誤以為「有音無字」，而另造方言字；亦有「一些語音」之本字，引起極多爭議。基於以上原因，則必需作進一步之研究，以了解真象，確立事實。…[/quote]
Also there’s some information on that book they’ll publish for those 300 characters here (the article is mostly about a fake book that’s been put out already which tries to look like the Ministry of Education’s official idea).
[quote=“rice_t”][quote=“Bu Lai En”]
I’d always seen 阿凸仔, but yes, the 凸 is not read that way.
[/quote]
I would suggest that tok is a variant reading of 凸.[/quote]
I don’t think so. I checked 3 dictionaries (which is, of course, no real guarantee), and tok was nto a reading for 凸.
[quote]They mean 凸, but they say 卓 which means high, erect, outstanding. This would be a rare example of Taiwanese taking the piss in a polite way.
What do you think?[/quote]
An interesting theory, but it seems odd to me that they would mean 卓 but say 凸 when 凸 doesn’t even have the same pronunciation. My guess is that this may be a case where the original character is just lost for now. We’ll have to wait for a suggested standard to b esure, but in the mean time I’d use 阿卓仔. It has the right reading and got 600+ Google results itself! 
阿啄仔 would be my second choice.
I agree. The only thing I would like to add is that - and of course you know that - this is a non-standardized language. There are loads of regional differences and the language is still changing.
I found another word without a character, tuh, which can be used together with tok and which has the same meaning. That is closer to Tut (?) and may be the variant reading I was thinking of. There was also a discussion about final stops in this thread. Perhaps this is another explanation for some Taiwanese omitting the final stop.
Conclusion:
As a working theory I would not rule out that tut, tuh, and tok are all variant readings of ?. However, there is no proof for it an it may be utter nonsense.
Do you - or anybody else - have an idea how far the term a-tok-a goes back in history. For how long has it been used?
There are loads of examples in both, Mandarin and Taiwanese for playing with the pronounciation of a word or a phrase in order to make fun of it. But again, what do I know, after all it is just a theory and there is no proof for it.
Perhaps a-tok-a originally didn’t even mean “big nose”. Think about it, when the Taiwanese or the Fujianese (do they also say a-tok-a in Fujian?) saw foreigners for the first time, the first thing they noticed may not have been their big noses, but their tallness and they called them the “big guys”. Only later they noticed that they have big noses indeed. So perhaps the pronounciation never changed, but the meaning did, from big guy to big nose.
OKOK, another weird theory… no proof whatsoever.
Do you actually write in Taiwanese? Poehok, poehok.
凸 does that the reading Tut.
[quote=“rice_t”]Do you - or anybody else - have an idea how far the term a-tok-a goes back in history. For how long has it been used?[/quote] Not I, sorry.
Well, I think we may have an answer to this question. 倬 tok (zhuo2) has the first meaning “顯著,龐大的” (First example given is from the 詩經: “倬彼雲漢.”
That should take care of our questin of both pronunciation and meaning.
Remember everone, use 阿倬仔!
Well, not often and VERY poorly, but some people do. Some even blog in it.
There’s a new restaurant in Banqiao: the Miss UK Cafe ㄚ度仔 異國美食 (Miss UK Cafe a-tok-a yìguó měishí).
I see nobody here has suggested 阿逗仔 as the appropriate characters for this lovely word. That’s how I’ve seen it in the Liberty Times and have taken to writing it. I just Googled it and got more than 200,000 examples of its use.
We use this one .
This was discussed last year in this thread.
The 逗 in 阿逗仔 appears to be a phonetic loan from Mandarin. The dictionary version is 阿啄仔. The character 啄 matches both the meaning and pronunciation. Of course, language is fluid and evolving so what may technically be wrong can eventually be right if everyone starts using it.
EDIT: Here’s a link that shows the usage of 啄.
Not more than 200,000. Just 3,960. Quote marks around the query are necessary for more accurate results.
For some comparative counts, see A nose for foreign food?. But I clearly need to add some more versions to the list there.
Thanks, sjcma, for turning up that other thread. I’ll be sure to add it, too.
The above explanation is one I would deem definitive. 
I called my husband ah douk ah as term of endearment last night.
He is my Ah douk ah, I can call him that if I want to.
So, don’t give me any flack about calling him “pointy nose”.
The pointy nose, Koreans spent thousands of dollar try to duplicate it.
I Googled “Taiwanese for big nose” this morning, guess what I stumbled on.
I actually enjoy discussions about Taiwanese.
I think it is the most undervalued language.