Actually, it means sperm. Go figger. :?[/quote]
I was told that it meant female genitalia. Damn it, Taiwanese giving me definitions for Taiwanese and I still can’t get it straight. 
"And it is better than being called a SHI ADOAH, right, a dead fucking big noser!
I heard that Japanese sometimes get called SHI NIPPOONA by taiwanese here, meaning “Goddamned effing japs!”
Actually the correct term for Japanese is A-BUN-AH (pronounce N-A separately), try to reduce the term Shi, which means death (you curse someone to death), when you put that term in front of any Taiwanese word, it’s like saying “f$%&king” in front of an object, noun in English, worse than damm.
“tong-xia-xiao?”
If I use pinyin, it should be pronounced cong sa xiao, this should be used to the minimum as well, one of the most offensive terms in Taiwanese next to screwing someone’s mom, you know what it is, 3-word verse, you can easily offend someone.
FYI, xiao means sperms for both male and female. Maybe I’ve not lived in Taiwan for so long and become a bit PC.
He’s BGG (Bay-Ge-Ge)-- well, most politicians are, but he’s really outstanding here.
I think BGG is
Bingo! I thought this would not be evident to everyone, as the witticism had apparently gone out of circulation, at least among the younger generations. Imagine James Soong’s wife can call him "
Some of the thuings I have learned over the time from listening to my fiance on the phone to her mom and her friends
wa = you
lan = We (us here)
um = We
tza bo = Boy
tza bo (bo is shaper the the third tone) = girl
ba g-in A = No need to say anything… its ok
ben kay kee= Welcome
bo bun day = No Problem (Mei Gian Xi)
lang = person
big go lang = American
gung he = Congratulations ( but the G sounds more like
TNT,
There is a formal romanisation for Taiwanese. It’s called church romanisation. You can see it in the Taiwanese textbook you buy in the Shida bookstore.
Aside from the fact that the subject of this thread was Taiwanese-isms that have come into everyday spoken Mandarin, that’s a good little list.
Just one little correction.
Wa (goa) is ‘me’, not ‘you’.
Brian
[/b]
[quote=“TNT”]Some of the things I have learned over the time from listening to my fiance on the phone to her mom and her friends
kwa sha xiao = is an adverb but actually means sperm
lee kwa sha xiao = what are you f*cking looking at?[/quote]
:shock:
At last some useful Taiwanese. Now I can understand what they are calling me at the night market.
Sweeeeeeeee oh!
Also there is a trendy new thing called Taiwanese Chinese that young people like to speak and use on MSN messanger etc
English I am from Taipei (I am a Taipei person)
Chinese:
tnt…some of those words i can’t unnderstand…
bo ya keen
ho jya ga beishi
toraku
bo hee hay ma ho
bon lah gwam sei ko
[quote]bo ya keen
ho jya ga beishi
toraku
bo hee hay ma ho
bon lah gwam sei ko[/quote]
I think considering the non-standard romanisation, you have to put the English translation there. I could understand TNT’s list, but none of yours (except that I guess Toraku is truck from Japanese from English).
Here’s a few of what I thinm is the most common everyday useful Taiwanese. Listen for it and you’ll hear it enough to be able to pronounce.
Jia ba boe (Chi bao le mei/Have you eaten yet?) - most common greeting
Jia ba (Chi bao/I’ve eaten)
A bei (Hai mei/Not yet)
Gau Chap (Zao an/Good morning)
Dou Sha (Thank you)
Phai Sei (Sorry)
Thia bo (Ting bu dong/I don’t understand)
M Chai A (Bu zhidao/I don’t know)
(PS The church romanisation ‘ch’ is more like the pinyin ‘z’)
Brian
Brian,
I’m not a churchman, so i don’t use church romanization. But it’s funny how we hear different things. Looking at your list this is how I hear things every day in Keelung:
Jia ba boe …JA BA BU AY?
(Chi bao le mei/Have you eaten yet?) - most common greeting
Jia ba … JA BA!
(Chi bao/I’ve eaten)
A bei (Hai mei/Not yet) …A BU AY…
Dou Sha (Thank you) …DOH SHEE-AH
Phai Sei (Sorry) …PAI SAY
Thia bo (Ting bu dong/I don’t understand) TIAH-BOH
Is it my ears, or are these 9 Taiyu tones hard for Western ears to HEAR?
There are only eight tones. However as two of the tones are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable there is really only seven. Two of the tones are short sounds–they have a stop at the end of them. So they are easier to distinguish.
Pronouncing the tones is really no more difficult than the tones in Mandarin. The main thing that makes the tones difficult in Taiwanese is that the tones usually change when a word is put in a sentence. This can be confusing when you are trying to learn the language.
Formosa,
Those differences are just differences in romanisation. We’re hearing the same thing. There’ll bemistakesin my ‘church romanisation’ too, as I don’t know it yet. The only exception is you mention “bo-ey” instead of “bei (or be)”. These are two different ways of saying the same thing. Also in Taiwan, there are two main variants of Taiwanese based ont he two parts of Fujian that immigrants came from. The ‘lesser’ ( the got beaten out of the best land) of the two groups settled on the East coast, centred around Ilan, so the Jilong Taiwanese you here might be closer to that. It’s also what my mother-in-law speaks.
brian
thanks wix, thanks brian. i just a bought a book at the local bookstore on learning Taiwanese, with church romaji added, too, for people like me who can’t read. but for the life of me, i can’t make those romaji out, they READ so weird. But when I hear people talk, it’s to copy them. My friends say I speak taiwanese so well! WHo are they kidding! It’s all BUSASA to me… but mostly i don’t use a book. just me ears. you too? is that how you learned this Fuji dialecti?
I haven’t learned it yet. I’m at the real beginner level.
You can’t learn from a book, but if you get the tapes it will help. Before I stated a class, I got a couple of tapes, converted them to MD and used to put small sets of words or phrases on loop while I brushed my teeth or whatever. Picked up a few things this way. The standardised romanisation helps, to jolt your memory when you’re reviewing. (Not that I ever do any reviewing - I’m a really bad student).
brian