Taiwanese'isms in your Mandarin

“Bei-chi” or “Be-chi”, if you will pardon my romanization, is the Taiwanese pronunciation of “Bai-chi”. Or you could also say “kong-e” while referring to idiots. If it’s a kid, you can say “kong-gia”, which is the Taiwanese equivalent of “shahaizi” or “stupid kid”.

a-doh-ah has a negative connotation in the sense that any word that refers to foreigners has a negative connotation because of the latent us-and-them perspective of insular coutries with one dominant ethnic group. it’s not a cuss word or anything, otherwise parents wouldn’t teach it to their kids. the people who apologized to you were probably apologizing for singling you out as a foreigner rather than for using that word. i mean, if they were pointing at you, laughing, and shouting “honored foreign guest” at you, would it be that much different?

as for the japanese thing, everyone i know who goes around speaking taiwanese in public LOVE the japanese. i mean, on the list of prefered ethnic groups for your taiwanese kid to marry, japanese rank right below taiwanese…way ahead of mainlanders…and probably ahead of waishenren. :slight_smile:

SPP? LMAO

That’s new to me. I heard the Taiwanese government published a booklet outlining some frequently-used words on the Web. Does anyone know where I could get a copy? I saw some of them while I was in the States. Hilarious! Not that I got all of them! :unamused:

[quote]pai sei (sorry)
wa m zai (wo bu zhidao)
“a ma! li ho” (hi grandma)
ba zang (rou zong)
a nei (zhen de)
Extra “huh” in my sentences
[/quote]

[quote]All the examples you mentioned are Hokkienisms, not Taiwanisms. A lot of the real Taiwan-only words seem to be derived from Japanese, many of them in turn derived from English, e.g.

baku=back up (a car)
shiodo=crazy (from shoto sakito - short circuit)
otobai=motorbike (from “autobike”)
ladio=radio)
banana, tomato (obvious)

Anyway, my habitual Hokkienisms are ane ho (OK) and bo bunde (no problem.) Sorry about the spellings, folks, I’ve only learned these by ear.
[/quote]

I know very little about Hokkien, but you’re out to lunch here. All of the examples mentioned here are Taiwanese.

I was thinking about getting a shirt with a-do-a printed on the front in characters and wearing it around town. That way nobody needs to point it out.

If you really don’t like it, one useful response I don’t see mentioned (and much better than baichi) that works well is:

be ken xiao
(second word high tone, the other two low) and the k sounds like a ‘g’, pronounced like in the word ‘again’

“xiao” is a useful word for scolding like “what the …” for example:
di khua xia “xiao” (you look what “xiao”=what the hell you looking at?)

It might also help if you have an intimidating physique and are not outnumbered, or you just have the balls and pissed off enough to say.

Another thing I thought of is to make the word only allowed to be used between foreigners themselves, and not by anybody else. This is like what black people do in America with some words. They can call themselves something like brother, but nobody who is black is allowed to (or…?)

So why not foreigners adopt the word for themselves, and if we ever hear a Taiwanese use it, just yell at them.

Here’s one for the daring ‘li goh qi’, meaning what you looking at. Careful as it’s usually followed with ‘wa gali pa’ I’m gunna hit ya.’

Dua koh dai - fatso

As for A donga - pisses me off sometimes, but then I just don’t like being singled out on racial grounds. I find ‘meiguo ren’ kind of worse but I did get a chuckle out of a young girl saying “Mama, ni kan, ying wen lao shi” (I’m not).

On the thread, I was quite chuffed when I ran into some mainland Chinese back in Oz who asked me how Id gotten a Taiwanese accent. Pity my pooor old Chinese teacher didn’t feel the same " I told you you’d get an awful southern accent if you went there too long"

HG

I believe the A word came from the Japanese, and it is a direct conversion from the English words “A dog”. The Japanese used it to called white people.

For several years, I was convinced that every single sentence uttered in Taiwanese contained at least one “gallygong” (liberally interspersed with "a-nay"s.) It put me into the habit of referring to typical Taiwanese speakers as “Gallygongs”.

It didn’t take long before “a-da” and “key-hsiao” became staples of my limited Taiwanese vocabulary – perhaps because I often heard these words directed at myself?

All you scholars of Taiwanese, please excuse my unscholarly attempts at Romanization.

From the explanations of my boyfriend, and the outraged looks I get even from close friends whenever I use the word, I understand it is very strong. And with a clear sexual content. :blush:

Like in “[color=green]Li le khua sha hsiao [/color]?” (“what the fck are you looking at ?"), or “[color=green]li le kong sha hsiao [/color]?” ("what the fck are you saying ?”).


While on a trip in mainland, in Beijing, I stopped in a shop and was chatting with the boss, when suddely he asked me if I was from Taiwan…
I was very pleased that my Chinese sounded from any place in particular !
Apparently, in Beijing, you very seldom use the expression

I was told that “Kua sa xiao” literally translates as "What sperm are you looking at? :shock: Was also told that, in no uncertain terms, them’s fighting words. :x

My Taiwanese is almost non-existant, so I hope you can decipher the words from my spelling. :frowning:

A-bi’a, dong suan” was the standard cry at rallies for Chen Shui-bian. But during the presidential campaign even the decidedly unfolksy Lien Chan tried to get in on the Taiwanese “dong suan” (“achieve victory,” or something like that). Very weird, that was.

I didn’t watch any of the rallies on the news this year, so I don’t know if the practice continued across party lines. I wandered by a rally last week for the New Party, which would among the least likely places to hear Taiwanese on the platform. (Go ahead and read “Taiwanese” both ways, if you like.) I had to flee the rally, however, before listening much, because Wang Chien-shien started to sing. Ouch! :shock:.

I’ve picked up “dagay” (

Why does the term HONG DING, for cross-dressing actors in Taiwan, use the words RED and SUMMIT as the defining terms? Can anyone explain?

Does it mean any wannabe actor or just crossdressing ones?

Lie-key lim ga-bee
Lets go dirnk coffee…

giah giah
Lets go

hey hey hey…hey ho ho ho ho ho hey ho
okay

ho jya ga bei shi = it’s so delicious I could die…

lim ga bei shi = it’s so thirst-quenching I could die…

as in …" it’s to die for "

Sorry if I mangle these, but

Wa gali gong (wo gau su ni)

Wa tiabo (Wo ting bu dong)

Jia babwei (ni chr bao le ma?)

Wa sai!!! (wow!!!)

Ho ta la (bottoms up)

heh, ho, hah, heh… (yeah, that sounds great. let’s get together for a beer at the pub down the street, say around 7? I’ll give some other buddies a call and we’ll make a night of it. my treat!)

oh I thought - I was told… “xiao”… was an equivalent to the vernacular F****.?
eg. “tong-xia-xiao?” What the F*** are you doing?
Well thats what my hearty colleagues ask me all day long - perhaps I am wrong?

no…
I guess xiao is equivalent for male genitalia.

ax

Actually, it means sperm. Go figger. :?

I guess you are right again Mr. Chairman.

ax