I’m looking for a source that has a list of all characters that have both a colloquial and literary reading in Taiwanese. It would help if it also included the context under which each is used.
多謝
I though almost all characters in Taiwanese had separate Colloquial/Literary readings.
Some have three readings: 香 is hiuN, hiong and phang (though phang is technically 芳)
If you’re looking for a simple online database (or even a printed list), I don’t know of such a thing, unfortunately. If you do find one, please let me know!
A good dictionary with pronunciations labelled 文, 白, and 俗 is Xiamen University’s 普通話閩南語詞典. I have the Taiwanese version, which was printed by Taili (台立). The pronunciations are written in a romanization based on Hanyu Pinyin. Here’s a sample entry:
[quote=“Chris”]I though almost all characters in Taiwanese had separate Colloquial/Literary readings.
Some have three readings: 香 is hiuN, hiong and phang (though phang is technically 芳)[/quote]
Many have one reading only. To nitpick, nothing technical there, phang is simply 芳. It might be an example of a character with only one reading, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a literary reading “phong.” I’ll have to check my dictionary 
That looks like a good dictionary! I may have to go look for it. All the dictionaries I have seen show both pronunciations when applicable.
Taffy, thanks for the suggestion.
Yesterday, I stumbled upon a small TV segment called 廣州話 (Cantonese) and they were introducing various words and phrases that were common in Cantonese, but not in Standard Chinese. After a few clips of the actual phrase being used in pop culture, the camera flips over to a linguist who then goes to describe the meaning of the phrase, its origin, the way it’s commonly written today, the way it should be written (本字), its literary reading (文語), its colloquial reading (口語) and examples and context of when to use each.
Anyway, that got me thinking about whether there’s a comprehensive source for Taiwanese that has the same level of information that was presented in the TV show. Of course, a free online source would be great, but I’m willing to shell out money for a hard copy as well.
Check your email, sjcma.
Not comprehensive, but I did find a source in my e-pile of Taiwanese stuff sitting on my hard drive.
Great link Taffy!
[quote=“Taffy”]Check your email, sjcma.
Not comprehensive, but I did find a source in my e-pile of Taiwanese stuff sitting on my hard drive.
ntnu.edu.tw/tcsl/Holo/holo.htm[/quote]
In the link given by Taffy above, there’s a document that starts off with the following:
漢語方言有著文白異讀的現象，台語的語音也是如此，表面上觀察可以大別為因使用場合的不同而有不同的語音現象，即所謂的「讀書音」、「口語音」的區分，然而，深究其中的根源，則牽涉到語言的歷史層積，造成了同一義素而有不同語音，又同時存在的複雜現象。文白混雜的結果隨時代層層疊積，益使「文白異讀」一詞變得不夠精確，這類異讀的語詞乃為在不同的時空所發展出的不同形式，而不再是場合不同而各採不同語音。
語言教學上，特別是作為第二語言教學時，這種歷時的因素造成文白異讀，學習者對於此類差異必然相當困擾，[color=#BF0000]何時使用文讀音？何時使用白話音？是學習困難度極高的部分[/color]，…
My thoughts exactly (perhaps someone else would like to translate). Having been surrounded with Cantonese as the lingua franca of the Chinese communities here, I’ve come to get a feel for what should be pronounced as colloquial and what should be literary for Cantonese. It’s more like a rule of thumb, but with so many exceptions that sometimes one wonders if that rule of thumbs still holds.
Some of the difficulties can be illustrated in a simple sentence: 我想玩玩具。In Cantonese, the first 玩 is colloquial while the second 玩 is literary. There’s also the issue of interference from another Chinese language. For someone from HK who was schooled primarily in Cantonese, they will pronounce the first and second 玩 differently. For someone from Guangzhou, the birthplace of Cantonese, I’ve noticed that the younger generation pronounces both 玩’s as colloquial. My theory is that although many Guangzhou locals were raised speaking Cantonese at home and in their communities, having a Mandarin only education limits their exposure to the “proper” usage of literary readings. Madarin does not have two reading of 玩 in the example above, giving the Guangzhou Cantonese speaker further reinforcement that there’s nothing wrong with pronouncing both 玩’s the same in Cantonese.
I wonder if Minnan in Taiwan has faced the same problems that Cantonese has faced in Guangzhou with respect to colloquial vs literary.
Anyway, I find this aspect quite interesting. My quest for a source was simply to try to see if I can figure out a rule of thumb for Taiwanese and whether that rule of thumb is similar to Cantonese (which I suspect it is).
So what’s your Cantonese rule of thumb?
An example that’s often used in the literature about Taiwanese is 人. The literary reading is jîn/lîn, which is a cognate of Mandarin rén. The colloquial is said to be lâng, but many doubt that this represents a different reading of the same character - although a benzi is also hard to come by for it. Ignoring that for a moment, there seems a clear division in this case between registers - the literary is higher-register: “lí-jîn” 女人 vs “cha-bó͘-lâng” 查某人. However, in other cases the division is not so clear.
The origins of a lot of Taiwanese morphemes can be difficult to identify. Take “bah” (meat), for instance, no-one I’ve asked seems to have the faintest idea where it came from. Someone wrote to me asking my opinion on it (I had none) which prompted me to start poking around. The best guess I’ve heard so far is that it’s from an Austronesian layer of Southern Min (way way pre-Taiwan). There are no such problems with “jio̍k”, which is the literary reading of 肉.
Maybe, maybe not:
language.psy.auckland.ac.nz/aust … .php?v=103
(Proto-Austronesian: sesi/isi; but Siraya: wat; Sediq wawah)
Of perhaps from another Austronesian root. The b- points to an ancient m- (or perhaps a borrowed w-) initial, and the final glottal -h points to an ancient final stop.
I too suspect it’s not a word of Chinese origin. Unfortunately, my ABC Etymological Dictionary sheds no light on this (or the origins of lang).
[quote=“Taffy”]So what’s your Cantonese rule of thumb?
An example that’s often used in the literature about Taiwanese is 人. The literary reading is jîn/lîn, which is a cognate of Mandarin rén. The colloquial is said to be lâng, but many doubt that this represents a different reading of the same character - although a benzi is also hard to come by for it. Ignoring that for a moment, there seems a clear division in this case between registers - the literary is higher-register: “lí-jîn” 女人 vs “cha-bó͘-lâng” 查某人. However, in other cases the division is not so clear.[/quote]For Cantonese, it’s pretty much the same – higher register point to a higher probability of a literary reading. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions and cases of ambiguity, even amongst native speakers.
[quote=“Taffy”]The origins of a lot of Taiwanese morphemes can be difficult to identify. Take “bah” (meat), for instance, no-one I’ve asked seems to have the faintest idea where it came from. Someone wrote to me asking my opinion on it (I had none) which prompted me to start poking around. The best guess I’ve heard so far is that it’s from an Austronesian layer of Southern Min (way way pre-Taiwan).[/quote]The Tagalog word for hog is “baboy” and it’s “babi” in Indonesian/Malay. Seeing how when people say “bah”, they almost always mean pork, that explanation certainly makes sense on the surface.
I think one difference is that Taiwanese does not exist in written form in the same way Cantonese does. For the average person reading and wondering how to pronounce an unknown character won’t come up. You can’t really “directly” translate words from Mandarin to Taiwanese with much confidence either. Different characters are used too often. In the end you just have to learn, for example, that adult is “dua-lang” while “university” is “dai-hak.” The same is true for native speakers as well. Ultimately it seems to me that very little confusion is really caused. Reading Minnan in characters would be another story for a learner I’m sure, and not the easiest procedure even for a native speaker.
That could be an explanation, but not necessarily. Such differences can crop up in all kinds of ways. Indeed a colloquial reading seems natural for such an everyday item. Southeast China with all its Han dialects is a perfect example of how such changes can multiply over time. Interestingly Minnan has no colloquial reading of “玩” as far as I know, entirely different words are used. The same is true for 玩具, different words are used.
I’ve read that Southern Min also has an Austroasian layer. I remember “gaN/giaN” for child was explained in that way.
I have a book somewhere that has a section on the origins of “lang.” I’ll have to dig it out. I remember the author’s final conclusion was that it was unclear, though he made an argument for 儂.
Some Googling has revealed that the Proto-Austronesian word for “wild pig” was *babuy and for “domesticated pig” was *berek.
So it seems plausible. I’d like to know if more rigorous research has been done into this.
Some Googling has revealed that the Proto-Austronesian word for “wild pig” was *babuy and for “domesticated pig” was *berek.
So it seems plausible. I’d like to know if more rigorous research has been done into this.[/quote]
This is also as far as I have got with it. It’s plausible, and certainly a better guess than what else is on the table, but far from conclusive.
I’d like to see that book - a couple of dictionaries I have use 儂, but I haven’t heard any convincing evidence why it should be so before now.
I think that you (Tempo Gain) are right in saying that the difference between Cantonese and Taiwanese is that Taiwanese has not been habitually written down. Henning Klöter’s great book Written Taiwanese mainly looks at romanised Taiwanese, but in the sections on characters he also emphasises the difficulty (and speculates on the futility) of searching for benzi for Taiwanese.
I couldn’t say whether this is a general trend in Taiwanese too. It will be interesting to see where your research leads you.
I’d like to see that book - a couple of dictionaries I have use 儂, but I haven’t heard any convincing evidence why it should be so before now.[/quote]
I’ll look in my old book box tomorrow. I think he said that the pronunciation and tone fit, the definition in one of the classic dictionaries was “farmer,” and with the preponderance of farmers in society it could have come into use.
[quote=“Tempo Gain”]I think one difference is that Taiwanese does not exist in written form in the same way Cantonese does. For the average person reading and wondering how to pronounce an unknown character won’t come up. You can’t really “directly” translate words from Mandarin to Taiwanese with much confidence either. Different characters are used too often. In the end you just have to learn, for example, that adult is “dua-lang” while “university” is “dai-hak.”[/quote]I think in this particular example, the level of formality and commonality of usage comes into play. For more formal terms such as 大學, 大專, 大陸, 大夫, literary readings are expected. For a common term such as 大人, both characters having colloquial readings (tōa-lâng) is not a surprise. However, if 大人 is being used to mean a judge, as is common during imperial times, such a formal term would take on the literary reading of tāi-jîn.
Finally got this out. The book is “台語文學與台語文字”, by 洪惟仁. Parts are written in Taiwanese, mostly all characters with little romanization. About “儂,” he gives a number of classical and historical references to support it, showing connections between the words 人, 民, 農 and 儂. He also says that using 人 for both jin5 and lang5 creates too much confusion. It seems to me that there are many characters you could say the same thing about, but he doesn’t mention that
Great reference, thanks!
[quote=“sjcma”]I’m looking for a source that has a list of all characters that have both a colloquial and literary reading in Taiwanese. It would help if it also included the context under which each is used.
多謝[/quote]
This is a very good site as it provides both readings and reveals a lot of original minnan characters.
A lot of minnan characters have both literary and colloq readings. The colloq is based on old chinese while the literary is based on middle chinese sounds.
儂 cannot be the correct character because the meaning is ‘Me’. 人 is the correct character for the colloq sound and the meaning is correct too. The consonant is ‘L’ and the rising tone is correct too.