Is Hoklo (dialect) worth learning to speak here? Funny TV ad inspires

Is Hoklo (dialect) worth learning to speak here? Funny TV ad inspires

Search window at Youtube will land you there:
旺TV數位有線電視- 18銅人(電視安全篇) .

ORIGINAL WANG TV AD HERE:

youtube.com/watch?v=-opVATldOFw

with ENGLISH SUBTITLES NEW here and also subtitles in ABC lomaji for the Hokol text, new video made by Taiwanese professoer in Taiopeui
youtube.com/watch?v=A7SyASpX_nM

A recent video and TV advert in Taiwan about a 23 year old man from Ohio teaching English in buxiban and asked to
speak Hoklo in a TV ad, [despite confessing to not knowing a word of it]. And he did it. Something about telling parents
not to let their kids watch porn or violent channels, see sidekick with nosebleed, Taiwanese humor for sex-obsessed male,
borrowed from Japanese manga…

NOTES: The Ohio native had only been teaching for four months when he was chosen in September last year to help make a short “parental advisory” TV advertisement for a cable television station. The humorous commercial advises parents that if they want to block any TV channels that show porn or violence, a local cable firm can do so for free. The ad shows the man dressed as a medical professional and using humorous Hoklo idioms and slang expressions.
He shares the spotlight with a Kaohsiung man who plays the role of a chubby child intent on watching pornography.

My tongue-in-cheek opinion: If your idea of a good time is remembering the pronunciation and tone (of 7 possible) of each word, then remembering how most every word in a sentence changes its tone depending on how the words are strung together, then I say go for it.

Personally, I’ll take the guy in the video’s easier method of having someone write the words I should say on a cue card :wink:

I value the time spent learning market hoklo: enough to haggle over prices. Wished I knew more to gossip with the neighbors, but workwise? Unless you are going to host a talk/game show, I don’t think so. As said, for an ad, they write the stuff on cue cards.

Oh, I really wished I’d learned, but I always reasoned that gúoyǔ gave me enough trouble.

Edit: that sounds kind of cryptic: I meant that it was difficult.

It’s worth it if you’re going to be here a long time IMO, but tough. My parents-in-law speak Taiwanese and only that which has been a considerable impetus. Mine is still pretty half-assed though. Tough. If you dropped me into a completely Taiwanese speaking place I’d pick it up quick though lol.

Taiwanese is actually easier to speak for the western tongue then mandarin, believe it or not.

And if you can speak some taiwanese, its always good for a laugh.

Im not sure if you should strive to be fluent when the younger generation in Taiwan cant speak it either (which is sad).

most young people under 30 in Taipei (even those with taiwanese parents) can hardly speak taiwanese. Luckily the ones down south still often do.

Otherwise the language could die out.

Even I who used to speak it fluently have gotten rusty over the years and prefer to speak mandarin.

[quote=“tommy525”]Taiwanese is actually easier to speak for the western tongue then mandarin, believe it or not.
[/quote]

not lol. Mandarin is like Asian language lite.

I was not sure about this issue so I asked my Taiwanese wife. She agrees this is a Chinese dialect but I think you will find many dialects across China.
First, try learning Mandarin, then Taiwanese, then Haka, then all the 14 dialects of the First Nation’s People and then I would think about other dialects. Perhaps language learning would be best aimed at Farsi or some other language that is not a dialect.

“Dialect” is a political, not scientific, term which emphasizes similarity over difference. China and Taiwan call other languages dialects of Chinese (some people even group indigenous languages into this category, absurdly) because it promotes the idea that everyone is part of the Chinese Nation or the ethno-cultural entity known as Greater China. Minnanese/Taiwanese/Hoklo is no less a language than Cantonese or Mandarin, and each should be properly called a variety of the Chinese language family.

That being said, I think it’s very sad that Taiwanese is dying out. It is, however, very challenging for most Westerners to learn Taiyu if just because we don’t have access to resources, i.e. people to converse with in it. All I can say in Taiwanese is “I don’t speak Taiwanese. I don’t know what you’re saying.” This raises more questions than answers, though.

Edit: Found this gem on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy

[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“tommy525”]Taiwanese is actually easier to speak for the western tongue then Mandarin, believe it or not.
[/quote]

not lol. Mandarin is like Asian language lite.[/quote]

but phonology-wise Mandarin is a lot more difficult for most European language users. Sounds like tsʰ ©, tʂʰ(ch), ts(z), tʂ(zh), ʂ(sh), ɻ ~ ʐ®, y(ü) are difficult to master even after years of living in the environment. Other than ts and tsh, I can’t think of a Holo sound that is difficult for native European language speakers.

Holo system that I prefer (also the MoE standard)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%A2i-l%C3%B4

Mandarin sounds don’t seem that bad to me. Taiwanese has the glottal stops and nasal sounds as well, but not too hard either. What makes Taiwanese hard IMO is the brutal tones and sandhi.

Maybe it’s just me, but as a random example, for a new learner, “zhege dongxi duoshao qian” (the first thing I ever said in Chinese here if I remember right) still seems a lot less foreign and difficult than “jit-e mi-giaN luazue jiN”

[quote=“Tempo Gain”]Mandarin sounds don’t seem that bad to me. Taiwanese has the glottal stops and nasal sounds as well, but not too hard either. What makes Taiwanese hard IMO is the brutal tones and sandhi.

Maybe it’s just me, but as a random example, for a new learner, “zhege dongxi duoshao qian” (the first thing I ever said in Chinese here if I remember right) still seems a lot less foreign and difficult than “jit-e mi-giaN luazue jiN”[/quote]

Uh, actually the jiN is not said. Most say Cheh guazeh (this how much?) Native Taipei taiwanese differs from Taichung Taiwanese and Kaohsiung Taiwanese and Ilan Taiwanese.

Used to be able to tell where they came from , from their taiwanese.

I speak “classical” Taiwanese, according to my Taiwanese girlfriend. IN other words, I must be pretty Ancient !

It can be said that way, and you can just say “duoshao” in Mandarin too. My point is that, to me, any particular Taiwanese utterance is likely to seem more difficult and foreign sounding than the equivalent Mandarin. YMMV

glottal stops is a piece of cake for European language users, you used a couple of them in your sentence above, stops, as, has, not, but… etc… nasal shouldn’t be that hard either.

tones is hard, yes, but it requires a lot of memorization, doing it in mandarin or Taiwanese doesn’t make much difference, I don’t think it is easier just because there is 4 not 7. You have equal amount of remembering to do. Frankly, most native European language speakers have trouble mastering mandarin tones as well… It’s just a difficult feature of tone based languages in general. Sandhi is a bitch though…

I don’t agree that those sounds compare well to the -t, -k and-p finals. I agree it’s nothing earth-shattering to master though. Neither are the Mandarin sounds you mentioned though. Taiwanese has “soft” and “hard” b- and g- initials as well, and the ng- and j- initials. To me, picking up new consonants is probably not going to be a big issue. The Mandarin “ü” vowel is probably the hardest of the lot.

[quote=“hansioux”]
tones is hard, yes, but it requires a lot of memorization, doing it in mandarin or Taiwanese doesn’t make much difference, I don’t think it is easier just because there is 4 not 7. You have equal amount of remembering to do. Frankly, most native European language speakers have trouble mastering mandarin tones as well… It’s just a difficult feature of tone based languages in general. Sandhi is a bitch though…[/quote]

True, not easy in Mandarin either. The extensive sandhi tone changes in Taiwanese are a challenge though. Well, no foreign language will be easy to learn in the end.

But ← that t sounds just like the -t final in Holo though (think 別 pat ). The -k is not similar to book finals because -k in Taiwanese is an English g ending. So Tug would sound pretty similar to tha̍k 讀. Same goes for -p, where it is an English b. Explaining it like that gets difficult though, because there are so many ways to pronounce some English alphabets.

If that’s the case, people really should pronounce my Chinese name better… it has 資(zi) in it…

You are talking about p, ph and b, also k, kh and g. I think these sounds are all in English as well. I am guessing your j is ts (which is z in pinyin). One has to learn that one regardless :stuck_out_tongue: [EDIT] I think you might be talking about [dz] (j), I was guessing you mean [ts] because you used j to spell tsit-ê. I have no idea how challenging [dz] would be to English speakers, but it sounds close enough to the Z in zoo.

Ng initial perhaps seems more foreign, but it is not a hard sound to make, just open your mouth when you say hmm, and you are half way there.

Aside from Germans, most Indo-European language speaker have issues with ü. I tried to teach my Indian classmate to speak 魚 Yü, and for the life of her she cannot get it. I then discovered if you first say Yi, drag it on and say u (in German, or oo in English), then you would end up with ü. She was able to follow this and say 魚 for a week, before she forgot and went back to can’t say ü if her life depended on it.

[quote=“Tempo Gain”]
True, not easy in Mandarin either. The extensive sandhi tone changes in Taiwanese are a challenge though. Well, no foreign language will be easy to learn in the end.[/quote]

True… darn you natural languages (shake fist)

I agree with Tempo Gain about the tones. The thing that really makes Taiwanese more difficult to learn than Mandarin is not the pronunciation or the greater number of tones, but the more complex tone sandhi patterns. It has even been argued that Mandarin’s simpler tone scheme evolved partially through the historical influence of the Mongols and Manchus in China, who no doubt initially found it hard, as we do, to master the more complex tonal schemes of earlier Chinese.

I probably am biased considering my first language actually IS Taiwanese :slight_smile:

But I maintain that i have almost never met a furringer who spoke mandarin with no trace of an accent, but I have met at least two furringers who spoke taiwanese with a perfect and i mean perfect taiwanese accent.

So i deduce that Taiwanese is actually easier on the western tongue then mandarin. Of course you do need to memorize it well and be careful of the exact tones.

[quote=“hansioux”]

If that’s the case, people really should pronounce my Chinese name better… it has 資(zi) in it…[/quote]

This is probably more of an issue with the vowel. I don’t think “za” “zang” or “zuo” would be as hard.

No I meant the initial sound in 日, though admittedly in all cases I can think of this just gets an “l-” in Taipei these days.

I’ve always guessed as much, none of those northern languages would be tonal, right?

As I understand it, Mongolian and Manchurian are non-tonal.