What's the word for "magic" in Taiwanese?

Language Taiwanese and Hakka Corner
1

What’s the word for “magic” in Taiwanese?

Please

2

Mods might want to move this to Learning Chinese. :idunno:

Anyway, quick and dirty answer: Four out of five local colleagues didn’t know. The fifth says something like mo-su (sounds low, unstressed), or bian4 (falling) mo-su if you need a verb in front like ‘do magic’. The su is close to the Mandarin si3, die, and short and unstressed. Sorry, I can’t write the proper Romanization or tones for this and am only very roughly approximating it with Hanyu Pinyin; hopefully someone can fill in with the right Church transcription.

3

hmmm. you got me. I think we used the mandarin Mwoh shu in our family.

4

Thanks Dragonbones. You’ve just made me sound intelligent in front of my colleagues!

5

You hope. :laughing:

6

Moshu is usually prestidigitation-type magic or magic tricks.

Harry Potter or Gandalf magic is usually Mofa.

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Note that the OP is asking for the Taiwanese, not Mandarin.

8

oh…well…in that case I agree…I tend to hear Mosu as well.

9

Magic like magic tricks magicians performed in front of an audience, or like dark voodoo magic?

10

According to the Maryknoll Taiwanese dictionaries:

mo.^-su’t 魔術 as in magic tricks, wizardry
hoat-su’t 法術 as in Daoist （？） or Buddhist （？） magic (incantation, exorcism etc. )
sia^-su’t 邪術 as in black magic, sorcery, demonical magic

to perform tricks pian`

I don’t know how to do the tone marks properly for Taiwanese, optionally

mo.5-sut8
hoat4-sut8
sia5-sut8
pian3

Note 1: mo. is pronounced similar to how I would pronounce “maw”
Note 2: 5th tone is similar to the Mandarin 2dn tone, but due to tone sandhi it changes to 7th, which is like the 1st tone in Mandarin, but lower in pitch.
Note 3: 4th tone is a very brief falling tone in middle pitch level, but due to tone sandhi it changes to 2nd, which is similar to 4th tone in Mandarin.
Note 4: pronunciation of pian3 is somewhere between Mandarin bian and English Ben, its 3rd tone changes to 2nd, similar to 4th tone in Mandarin.

Edit: Note 5: 8th tone is at mid-level pitch, fairly short.

11

魔術… in mandarin it’s ‘‘mo shu’’, since native taiwanese speakers pronounce ‘‘sh’’ as ‘‘s’’, I guess it’s gotta be ‘‘mo su’’ in taiwanese. :roflmao: