Very recently–in fact, today–I was reading an English-language discussion of Taiwan politics on another site. During the discussion, one participant said to the other, “Another LDS from you.”
I thought, “Well, that’s certainly grossly unfair–digressing far from the issues in order to attack one’s opponent’s religious beliefs. Besides, how does he even know that the other fellow is a Mormon?”
So I did some Googling, limited to the same site, using the attacked person’s username and the letters LDS, looking for any reference to the Mormon faith of the person in question. Lo and behold, I found an earlier post in which the very same person who was recently attacked for being a Mormon accuses his opponent of “offering LDS to the opposition.”
So the person who was attacked for being a Mormon had earlier attacked someone else for being a Mormon. I thought, “I guess that means he’s not a Mormon. Maybe this isn’t even about the Mormon religion.” Then I thought, “Hmm, this somehow sorta reminds me of that LP thing from 2004.”
And that led to the thought that LDS might be an abbreviation for some Taiyu/Minnan phrase.
So I Googled around, resorting to Google Translate a lot for help in coming up with search terms, and I found this definition:
LDS=攪豬屎。不懂就被下一代投票幹掉了!
Jiǎo zhū shǐ. It looks like “stir pig feces.”
I got that here: 現在年輕人的俚語... @ 牛之家 :: 痞客邦 ::
After plugging that into Google Translate, I saw that that interpretation made sense of the LDS comments. But I also saw that the hanyu pinyin abbreviation would be JZS, and the Wade-Giles one would be CCS (chiǎo chū shǐh). So I was even more suspicious that LDS was not Mandarin, but rather Taiyu/Minnan.
So I Googled around some more, and I learned that 攪豬屎 was a literal interpretation of 拉豬賽 (lā zhū sài, “pull pig contest”?), according to this person:
http://city.udn.com/51944/2127931
But a hanyu pinyin abbreviation of that would be LZS, and I guess a Wade-Giles one would be LCS (lā chū sài).
Anyway, I still don’t know what the unabbreviated LDS would sound like in Taiyu/Minnan. ‘Cause as much as I don’ know Chinese, I really don’ know Taiyu.
So how’s y’all’s holiday goin’? I’m guessing it’s more exciting than mine.