Chinese Characters I Always Forget How to Pronounce

My former Forumosa icon!
Here’s a fun one: When they get to the people and place names, see how many of those characters you’re familiar with :astonished:

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I always hear it pronounced “gui lie”.

I think 龜 can be jun or gui, but for this word I think people use gui in Taiwan, no?

I don’t even know how to pronounce this

Chinese_;)

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Dang you for giving me that ear :worm:!

:joy:

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That’s because they’re pronouncing it wrong.

The people who pronounce it wrong do, and the people who pronounce it right don’t.

It’s pronounced gàn, of course.

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There are some characters that in my mind I know the correct pronunciation, but when I see it, the first reading that pops into my mind is still wrong.

Can’t really think of one now though, except for 滑稽 being said to be pronounced as 骨.

There is however other crap like this:
https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:台灣常見誤讀字列表

Which I find is absolute nonsense from the MOE. No one talks like that, at least not before they forced it on the students.

If native speakers say it that way then is it really wrong? I’d rather be understood and pronounce things the way everyone else does, then have to lecture people on why they’re wrong every time. Languages evolve they aren’t static.

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Yeah, my wife rolled her eyes while I was showing her the MoE’s dictionary with it as ‘jun’

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This one is controversial. Don’t get me started on it.

Well, that one the MoE isn’t wrong. It’s been pronounced as jun for a long time, and not just some old fart trying to force Mandarin pronunciation square pegs into Song dynasty fanqie shaped holes. The jun pronunciation ultimately came from the kun pronunciation that I showed in my response.

That is preserved in Taigi but written in a different character 皸 in the Japanese dictionaries.

jun is the way I’ve heard it from everyone since I was a kid. It’s how people said it on TV, how my Late Immigrant nanny and teachers said it, and how all my Early immigrant families say it at home as well. I’ve only started hearing kui-lie in the last few decades.

What really wraps my brain is how you should pronounce 乳酪 and 薄.

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I’ve said it both ways, and had people correct me both ways.

If you want to know why, I wrote something on this phenomenon.

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Reminds of 奶酪 in China. That doesn’t sound very appetizing to me. The Taiwanese western bastardization of cheese sounds much nicer.

The funny thing is most people in Taiwan have decided on one pronunciation for 乳酷 luo and another pronunciation for 奶酪 lau.

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I’d say about 30% of people pronounce it correctly, usually the more educated. The rest just don’t realize that 龜 is a 破音字. I’ve never had anyone misunderstand me when I pronounce it correctly, and it’s always pronounced correctly on the news. I would never correct someone for pronouncing it gui though.

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I think most people pronounce it wrong because it sounds better that way. :slightly_smiling_face:

You would pronounce it as bo in 薄弱 though, right?

Yes. Some readings are fixed in specific usage. Although the distribution seems pretty random.

I mean, exploding chicken definitely sounds much cooler!

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I don’t think I’ve heard anyone except very elderly waishengren pronounce thin as bo.