What do Taiwanese people mean when they describe food as "Q"?

Hi,

I have come across this many times however I have always forgotten to ask about it. Today I saw it on the news once again.

I will often hear Taiwanese people describe some foods as being “very Q”, having a “Q feeling” or other descriptors all using this Q. They will also use the Roman letter Q in written texts and not a Chinese character.

Does anyone know what it means? Does it come from Taiwanese?

Thanks

It means the chewy texture which they like very much and which most westerners don’t really like.

A good example are ‘Mua JI’ sticky rice cakes formed from pounding rice into a rubbery mass.

Yes. There’s another thread discussing English that has been appropriated in Taiwan that explains this and “vs” among others.


ADMIN’S NOTE:

Now we have a QQPasta in the neighborhood …:unamused:

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Thank you. I have eaten those “Mua Ji” stick rice cakes that you refer to and actually I didn’t think they were too bad. :slight_smile: I have eaten worse.

So QQPasta is very, double sticky Italian style noodles?:lol:

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Now if only they could actually learn to cook it al dente (QQ)!

Not necessarily “chewy” but something like “soft to the bite without being mush either.”

Here are a couple of articles discussing it:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2252
http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?1,65877,66271

QQ can also refer to crying right?

No, that’s more like Koo, not Q (=Kyu)

only because QQ looks like tearful eyes.

Q comes from the Taiwanese holo word khiū. MOE has ordered it to be written as zdic.net/z/aa/kx/296A8.htm, but that’s cause they are brain dead. The much more likely candidates are 䊆, 糗 or 䵕

link are provided for a character not accepted by this forum, since it is not yet unicode CJK ext-C or above compatible.

Well lets put it as a range of chewiness from not mushy to rubbery.

good muâ-tsî are not supposed to be rubbery… that sounds like it is been sitting out for a long time.

from the Hanji choices 䊆, 糗 and 䵕, they all describe rice or grain being made into powder form. It’s likely the word started out to describe muâ-tsî itself.

Al dente would fit under the khiū description, but the word describe a wide range of chewiness.

Al dente cooked pasta in Taiwan? QQ … to cry for.

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sorry to revisit this really old thread, but there was a NYT article about this phenomenon that got me thinking about it again.

I now believe that Q in Taigi originated from khiû (written as 虯 or 鬈), which is used to describe curly hair. Its meaning got extended to describe food with a chewing yet soft texture because of how curly hair is soft to touch but bounces back in a springy way.

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QQ! Yeah!

No exAct English perhaps but I would say kinda sorta al dente

Oops mentioned above already

Al dente in Taiwan is like a mush! If you serve al dente pasta they complain that it’s under-cooked!

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It’s nothing like al dente.