It’s pretty clear that the first and last characters are 阿 and 仔 respectively - both pronounced “a” in Taiwanese, but with different tones. They’re respectively a very common prefix and suffix in Taiwanese.
But what about the middle character?
The middle character would have to contain features that make a+?+a sound like “adogah”. That means it would have to sound like “dog”, or more accurately according to Taiwanese phonology, “tok”.
I’ve seen these:
a) 阿啄仔 (Taiwanese: a-tok-a; Mandarin: a zhuo zai) 啄 means “peck”, but apparently 啄鼻 means “hook nose”.
b) 阿卓仔 (Taiwanese: a-tok-a; Mandarin: a zhuo zai) 卓 means “high”. Compare “gao bizi” - “high nose” = “big nose”.
c) 阿凸仔 - 凸 means “protruding”, so the meaning is there. However, I don’t think the Taiwanese for 凸 ends with -k. Indeed, I believe it ends with -t, but I can’t confirm it.
d) 阿兜仔 - 兜 means “sack”. This is a common one written rendition, and the middle character is pronounced “dou” in Mandarin. But that sound is merely a Mandarin approximation of “tok”. Mandarin doesn’t have final consonants like the other Chinese dialects do.
e) 阿豆仔 - 豆 of course means “bean”. See the comment for d) above. 豆 is “tau” in Taiwanese, not “tok”.
I asked the resident Taiwanese speaker and she didn’t hesitate - she wrote
阿逗仔
. However, the only readings I can find for 逗 in the dictionary are ‘tāu’ and ‘tùi’.
Of course for many things in Taiwanese there is no standard, and the 台文華文線頂辭典 has it as
阿啄仔
(your first choice).
I think this is a cautionary tale in finding characters for Taiwanese - Taiwanese has never been codified as a character-written language. So the the correct answer is - there is no correct answer. See, that was helpful, wasn’t it?
[quote=“Taffy”]I asked the resident Taiwanese speaker and she didn’t hesitate - she wrote
阿逗仔
. However, the only readings I can find for 逗 in the dictionary are ‘tāu’ and ‘tùi’.
Of course for many things in Taiwanese there is no standard, and the 台文華文線頂辭典 has it as
阿啄仔
(your first choice).
I think this is a cautionary tale in finding characters for Taiwanese - Taiwanese has never been codified as a character-written language. So the the correct answer is - there is no correct answer. See, that was helpful, wasn’t it?[/quote]
Doesn’t the fact that that an online dictionary exists shows that it has indeed been codified? But unless this standard (or any other standard) is promoted by the government, it will never stick. I’m not holding my breath though. Standardizing Mandarin romanization is apparently hard enough.
[quote=“Chris”][quote=“sjcma”]I think Taffy has it right with 阿啄仔.
Here are the romanizations that I found:
啄 tok1
卓 toh1
凸 phok1[/quote]
Where did you find your romanizations?
Seems like 阿啄仔 is looking like the best candidate.[/quote]
Actually, Taffy’s link to that Taiwanese/Mandarin dictionary is superb and has all the romanizations as well. For myself, I often use the Chinese Character Dictionary for my single character lookups. It’s superb and includes all sorts of archaic variants as well as romanizations in Cantonese, Hakka, and Taiwanese.
Credit goes to Cranky Laowai for the dictionary find - I’d seen it ages ago but it was he who reminded me of it.
Taiwanese has been codified by the guy who wrote the dictionary. I guess what I mean is that there is no standard, nor is there likely to be one in the future. sjcma - what do you make of the mixed orthography (Taiwanese/POJ) stuff? Do you prefer it that way?
Very good question. In practice, the answer is ‘hardly at all’. When they do, there are a number of competing systems, including zhuyin (bopomofo) adapted for Taiwanese and various forms of Pinyin.
Unfortunately for Taiwanese, there is no widely accepted standard like there is for Cantonese. The success of Cantonese standardization with its very own subset of dialect characters (around 300, I believe; eg. 冚,冇,咗,etc.) is due in large part to government action (Hong Kong). I’m willing to bet that Taiwanese requires a similar amount of its own unique dialect characters in order to have a complete character based orthography unless it wants to borrow heavily from existing characters (which I don’t think is a good way to go as it would increase ambiguity).
As for mixed orthography, most Chinese languages (including Mandarin, Cantonese, Minnan, Minbei, Hakka, etc.) can be adapted to use such a writing system much the way the Japanese have done. It is one way for Taiwanese to fill that gap although Cantonese decidedly did not take that route. IMO, mixed orthography can take a couple of routes. One is to simply use POJ in places where characters do not exist or cannot be clearly determined. The second is to go the way of the Japanese and give a much broader role to the syllabary. If you go any further than that, you end up with all POJ much like Hangul or Vietnamese.
As someone that’s always read characters, feel comfortable around characters, and read Cantonese and Mandarin in characters, my preference is to have an all character based orthography for Taiwanese. And please, no simplified characters!! . Granted, my Minnan abilities are next to none, nonetheless, that’s my personal preference for all major Chinese languages. For a very small minority of Chinese languages that have not been (or minimally been) influenced by classical Chinese, a syllabary orthography would seem appropriate.
See, that was helpful, wasn’t it?
. Granted, my Minnan abilities are next to none, nonetheless, that’s my personal preference for all major Chinese languages. For a very small minority of Chinese languages that have not been (or minimally been) influenced by classical Chinese, a syllabary orthography would seem appropriate.