One of the more amusing literal translations from Taiwanese is the phrase for crying –  lâu-ba̍k-sái, which literally means “flow eye shit.” It’s only really amusing as a foreign language speaker though, as for Taiwanese it’s obviously normal. 不甘/毋甘 (m-kam) is the phrase for 捨不得 in Taiwanese. So the phrase in the Taiwanese song above (愛人的目屎 by 黃克林) means “I can’t bear to see you cry”

Feel free to contact me with any cool Taiwanese words or phrases you hear and want featured on the blog.