so i have been chatting with some taiwanese girls here on msn and yahoo messenger…
it seems that they have been using some special sms symbols which are japanese in nature…
can anyone decipher them for me?,
ㄣ = ?
Interesting, you are the second person I’ve see who interprets those symbols as Japanese.
They are not Japanese in any way. Taiwan uses a phonetic coding system to represent the pronunciation of Chinese characters. The system is commonly calle BoPoMoFo because those are the first four of the 37 phonetic characters. There are also four tone marks which are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and neutral. First tone has no associate mark in Taiwan. Officially this system is called Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (MPS) as well as some other names like 發音 fa1 yin1 or ㄈㄚㄧㄣ using the characters you thought were Japanese.
Many (well, me, anyway) speakers of the Indo-European languages prefer BoPoMoFo because the roman letter system called Han Pinyin, produces words that are rather misleading about pronunciation for Indo-European types.
The short answer:
They’re not Japanese, they’re the Taiwanese version of pinyin.
ㄣ = en = 嗯
ㄇ = m = at the end of a sentence, if you’re lazy, you use it for 嗎 or 嘛
ㄉ = d = 的
ㄛ = o = 喔
can’t think of any others right now…
Joschka, I can see why people would think they were Japanese. Like the Japanese kana they’re based off the basic strokes for writing Chinese characters.
Also, you forgot that the Taiwanese call it 注音符號 (zhu4 yin1 fu4 hao4) (double check my tone on the 注 there… is that a 破音字？）
what about laughter? as in ha ha?
[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]The short answer:
They’re not Japanese, they’re the Taiwanese version of pinyin.
ㄣ = en = 嗯
ㄇ = m = at the end of a sentence, if you’re lazy, you use it for 嗎 or 嘛
ㄉ = d = 的
ㄛ = o = 喔
can’t think of any others right now…
Joschka, I can see why people would think they were Japanese. Like the Japanese kana they’re based off the basic strokes for writing Chinese characters.
Also, you forgot that the Taiwanese call it 注音符號 (zhu4 yin1 fu4 hao4) (double check my tone on the 注 there… is that a 破音字？）[/quote]
I can never seem to remember that name; I think only my Chinese teacher ever uses it. (I checked and you got the tone right on ㄓㄨˋ)
哈哈 is usually laughter
one that was popular amongst a few of my friends was 科科 for a while… but it’s kinda a nerdy thing (it got popular with people trying to emulate a creepy laugh)
呵呵 = huh huh = laughing (I think… I always read it as the English ‘hehe’ for some reason, which is wrong)
Japanese people stick a ‘w’ at the end of sentences for a ‘hehe’, and some Taiwanese copy.
edit: and Joschka, thanks 
I spent a while thinking about it there XD
someone used one of those symbols for laughter when chatting with me…
Which one? You’ll need to be a bit more specific… sorry!
what is ㄎ?
well someone used a special symbol for 哈哈 when chatting with me… i hope to reproduce that particular symbol again…
well someone used a special symbol for 哈哈 when chatting with me… I hope to reproduce that particular symbol again…[/quote]
Was it ㄏㄏ? That would be the equivalent to “HH” in English for HAHA. the ㄎ you mentioned earlier is pronounced “ke” and is also a form of (creepy) laughter, I believe
ㄏ = h = 呵呵 （not 哈哈）
ㄎ = k = 科科