The Taiwanese language has a lot of imported words from Japanese, but one of the most common and fun is “Asaburo” (often transliterated into Chinese as 「阿薩布魯」) used to refer to something messy or chaotic. Like, for example in this article:
The early-warning radar deployed on Dongyin Island isn’t a hodge-podge of low-grade copper and shoddy tin, but is rather an AN/FPS-117 3-dimensional air search radar, like those watching over the northern and southern extremes of Taiwan from an altitude of over 1,000 meters above sea-level at the Songshan and Dahanshan radar stations.
The funny thing about this word, however, is that in Japanese (朝風呂/あさぶろ/asaburo) it only refers to morning baths.
The running theory in Taiwan (and among my colleagues when I discussed it with them) is that this word was adopted to mean messy, as the idea of bathing in the morning is a messy thing to do. This touches on a bit of a cultural difference between Taiwan and the UK/Ireland as, although I remember having a bath every night before bed as a child, it was the norm for my entire family to shower in the morning before school/work once we were old enough to wash ourselves. In Taiwan, the general idea is that you should be clean when you go to bed, whereas in the UK/Ireland the general idea is that a shower in the morning wakes you up. If you’ve ever lived with a Taiwanese person, you’ll register their dismay if you choose to shower in the morning instead of before bed.
You can always shower twice a day, especially during the humid summers in Taiwan, to keep everyone happy.
The use of Taiwanese in this Ministry of Foreign Affairs post struck me as interesting. As the term 「換帖」 exists in Mandarin too, they used romanized script to ensure that it is read in Taiwanese. I guess this makes it harder for people in a certain country to work out what it’s supposed to mean, but I also wonder how many Taiwanese people would catch on:
「可以說是台灣的uānn-thiap–ê 的柯寧參議員」
You could say Senator Cornyn is bosom buddies with Taiwan.
“uānn-thiap–ê” describes a close friendship formed by a blood-brothers style pact, wherein two friends exchange cards with information on each other (name, age, place of origin, family history), to forge a kinship. Now it’s used to describe good friends.
Another, more common term to describe a close friend is 「麻吉」. The term is pretty common and was even used for the title of the film Ted in Taiwan 《熊麻吉》:
There are several folk morphologies for this term, from the stickiness of mochi cakes (pronounced similarly in Taiwanese/ muâ-tsî) to a corruption of the word 「默契」 (though no clear reason for the corruption is given). The most convincing theory is that it’s a corruption of the English word “match” in Taiwanese. Whatever its origin, it’s a pretty handy word to use and will let everyone know that you’re in touch with the popular culture references of 10 years ago.
I’m not sure quite what was going on with this angry red spoldge of red spray paint on the 「拍謝」 on the construction site sign below:
「拍謝」 is the informal way to write the Taiwanese term 「歹勢」 or “phái-sè”, which is the Taiwanese equivalent of the Mandarin term 「不好意思」 (sorry).
I’m curious about the motivations of the vandalizer. Are they against the use of Taiwanese on a formal sign? Are they against the borrowing of Mandarin sounds to represent Taiwanese, rather than the 「歹勢」 that is used more commonly? Or are they against the use of Chinese characters to represent Taiwanese at all? Or was it just a random stain that got on the sign somehow?
Given the history of its suppression, language tends to be a sensitive issue in Taiwan. Writer Huang Chun-ming (黃春明) even took off his shirt during a lecture back in 2011 due to a disagreement with Associate Professor Wi-vun Chiung (蔣為文) in the audience over the necessity for Taiwanese-language instruction for primary schools and Huang’s unwillingness to adopt Latin script to represent the Taiwanese language (as implied by the sign below).
Taiwanese writers don’t use Taiwanese language, but use Chinese language to create, oh the shame!
Ironically you’ll see Professor Chiung uses the Simplified version of the character 「國」 in his sign. Linguistic hardliners are not really my cup of tea, and I much prefer the hodge-podge of English, Mandarin and Taiwanese that the construction site sign portrays.
It’s always interesting to me to see which Taiwanese words people choose to use in otherwise Mandarin sentences, and it’s fun to speculate on the possible reasons behind the choice to switch, whether it’s humour, an attempt to sound down-to-earth or because the person being cited isTaiwanese.
I’ve become a regular listener to 台灣通勤第一品牌 (Commute For Me), and the largely Mandarin-speaking hosts used Taiwanese words and phrases from time to time.
Context: 我媽都說我們是很 好命hó-miā 了，不過我看到其他同學他們是更 好命hó-miā。你們這些 好命囝 hó-miā-kiáⁿ 齁。其實 好命囝hó-miā-kiáⁿ 是一個很負面的詞。 對對對，是在批評人家，酸的時候才講。 ( – My mum always said we were born with silver spoons in our mouths, but looking at my other classmates, they were even more like that. All you kids born with silver spoons in your mouths. Actually that term is quite a negative one. – Yes, yes, it’s critical of others, you only say it when you’re bitter. Listen here from 37:50
They’ve also been having fun with the Studio Ghibli movie stills on their Facebook Page (and in the comments section):
It’s time to start talking about sex
See the full post here:
There were a few other Taiwanese phrases peppered in there as well, but got blank stares when I tried to repeat them to my colleagues:
44:12 我信心put-tit – I didn’t have the confidence?
我媽有一陣子這樣子問我…….不一樣的事，還是問得我很煩。一直問我說，真的沒交女朋友？真的沒交齁？ màikāma-mapiáneh。問到有一年我跟她說我陽痿了。 (For a while my mum kept asking me… about something different, and she got me really annoyed because she kept asking. She kept asking, “Have you really not got a girlfriend? You really haven’t? Don’t lie to your mother now. She asked me so much I told her one year that I was impotent.) Listen from 45:26 – there were some Taiwanese interjections I didn’t catch just after this point, so appreciate any help.
In retrospect, I was perhaps a little harsh on the Commute For Me (台灣通勤第一品牌) podcast, as it has grown on me in the time since I penned this blog on Chinese-language podcasts from Taiwan. The interview style is quite intimate and discussions are quite frank, although you have to keep up to know who and what they’re talking about, as they don’t give their guests much of an intro.
Anyway, I was listening to their interview of hip hop artist Chunyan 春艷 and it was an interesting conversation about his life as an introvert in different subcultures (temple gangs, graffiti art, hip hop). More importantly, there was quite a lot of Mandarin-Taiwanese code-mixing, which is always fun.
I’ve listed some of the phrases below, although there were a lot more.
One of the most interesting was 𨑨迌 (normally the characters 企投 are borrowed to represent the sound):
𨑨迌 chhit-thô, which literally means to play or “遊玩” in Mandarin, but in the context of this conversation means getting up to no good in a gang context (what gang banging meant before porn redefined it), commonly referred to as “混” (hùn) in Mandarin:
“其實那裡就是不挑人 說真的 但我不能說這是陣頭 它只是一個𨑨迌(chhit-thô)” (Actually, they are not selective at all about people to be honest. But I’m not saying that this is really a temple parade (zhentou), it’s just messing around with gangs.) Listen here from 43:49
被ㄠ／被凹 phē au is an interesting one because the Mandarin and Taiwanese are similar enough that the bei is often pronounced in Mandarin, with the au being pronounced in Taiwanese. It means being forced into things or taken advantage of or “被勉強” in Mandarin.
你那時候去是有被挺的感覺 更多的時候是你要挺 對啊，因為是互相的 所有別的人來的時候你就要挺他 所以有時候會覺得被凹，對不對 挺你一而已 不過你要挺他五 (-So when you went there, you felt they had you back -More often it’s you that has to have their back -Yes, because it’s mutual, so anyone who came there, you had to have their backs -So sometimes you’d feel forced into things, right? -They have your back over something trivial, but you have to have theirs over something really serious) Listen here from 44:51
Another example is captured here in people trying to get engineers to reformat their computers for free (found on a jobs page on Facebook):
(Tell us how people try and take advantage of your profession! “You’re a doctor? You have time to do me a favor and take out this tumor, right?” “You just have to talk right, why don’t you just do me a favor and argue my lawsuit for me! It’s pretty easy for you as a lawyer, no?” “You’re an engineer, right? Can you fix my computer for me? You wouldn’t charge a friend though, right?”)
Other bits and pieces I thought were fun, was the use of the Taiwanese word for temple (宮kiong) in the context of a Mandarin sentence to indicate that the temple here stands in for gang affiliation – although it’s not explicit. The other one was a phrase I’ve heard a lot but couldn’t quite pin down. Looking it up in dictionaries, it is defined as “to stand up” but 徛起來(khiā-khí-lâi) seemed to imply being worked or hyped up here, which is why it stuck with me more.
我們這個宮(kiong)跟另外一個宮(kiong)的一個年輕人 有人有衝突，然後聽說等一下會有人來處理這件事情。 (A young person from our temple got into a conflict with someone from another temple, and some people were coming in a bit to sort things out. Listen here from 28:46
那我朋友就說，我要去打 不要啦 我要去我要去 他那時候就整個徛起來(khiā-khí-lâi)了 我要去我要去 (My friend said, I wanna go fight Don’t I wanna go, I wanna go He’d already gotten all worked up at that point I wanna go, I wanna go) Listen here from 29:09
Any additional suggestions welcome!
You can see the rap battle they repeatedly reference here:
The Taiwanese equivalent to 「兇」 (Mandarin xiong1 fierce/ferocious/tetchy/short-tempered) is generally written as 「歹」(dai3 in Mandarin) and pronounced pháiⁿ. However, recently, the substitution of the word 「派」(pai4) has been cropping up in otherwise Mandarin sentences, often in an indication of an underlying irony or sarcasm behind the comment.
This first came to my attention, when an acquaintance posted this meme in response to another person’s comments in a Facebook thread:
What the f.ck are you talking about?
咧 here stands in for the Taiwanese for 在 (Thanks for the tip Leon) 工 is standing in for the Taiwanese pronunciation of 講 三 is standing in for what 小 is standing in for the Taiwanese word for sperm, but here it’s just like using f.ck or hell.
Another friend then said “很派” in response. And given who the friend is, I’m assuming the sarcasm was intended.
魯妹拿出逗貓棒準備跟灰塵貓來場激烈的運動 沒想到貓貓一把搶走逗貓棒自己玩得很開心 還露出凶狠的表情 (The single loser that I am took out a cat teaser so Dusty could get some vigorous exercise, but with one swoop the cat took the teaser and started playing with it himself all happy, and even flashed me a fierce look.) With reference to this image:
Another example is when last year, Taipei’s subway lines all got their own Facebook accounts, and the Orange or Zhonghe-Xinlu Line (中和新蘆線) was called out as being 「很派」:
(Brave choice to borrow terms from sub-cultures to subvert stereotypes
And the most talked about on Facebook and most popular, was the vicious Zhonghe-Xinlu Line, which never shied from calling people 88-1 (87, Taiwanese pronunciation of 白癡). It’s character was based on the image of loyal temple brotherhoods (read: gang members). While it was interacting with internet users, its unique character had internet users lining up to be cussed out.)
Hmm… yeah, I’m not really clear on how that was subverting stereotypes either, but ok…
OK, before class is dismissed, time to set some homework: use the following words in your Facebook comments over the next week to try and add a little maturity and open-mindedness to the conversation:
For anyone keen on keeping up with current affairs in Taiwan but with a funny edge to it, I really recommend ‘Stand up, Brian’ (博恩夜夜秀). It takes its cue from Western late night formats and isn’t afraid to take the piss.
The show was crowd-funded and is run by young comics, so there’s a lot of contemporary slang and references which is quite fun to parse.
In this short clip, they’re taking the piss out of Taiwanese diet supplement advertisements. A woman says she’s lost her figure completely after having seven kids, but she uses the phrase 「走精」 (tsáu-tsing), commonly represented by the characters 「走鐘」 (presumably because they are pronounced the same in Taiwanese 「精」 (tsing) and 「鐘」 (tsing) ). The phrase can be roughly translated as “losing your former lustre/losing your sex appeal”. The sentence starts at 0:39 in the clip below:
(Mandarin: 我的身材在生完第七胎以後
After having my seventh (child),
Taiwanese: 著(就)規個（整個)走鐘(精)去啊啦
My whole figure has gone to shit.
When browsing a few of the Chinese-language posts that come up on my Facebook feed, I saw the following (public) post from China Times journalist Feng Kuang-yuan:
(1)
Yesterday I was discussing something with my daughter
This was whether or not we should plan out a menu for our house
That way, if guests visit
We can offer them a choice of dishes
We both thought this was a good idea
So we started to think of different sections for the menu
I was thinking of things like a range of hamburgers, of omelettes, of pasta
But the first range she mentioned was
a range of leftovers
I found an article in the ET Today from 2014 which helped explain the meaning of the Taiwanese word 「ㄆㄨㄣ」 (pun/phun). It explains that Chinese character (本字) associated with the term is the popular surname 「潘」 (Pān in Mandarin), which originally meant “the water leftover after washing rice”. The term can now be used to refer to leftover foods or kitchen waste that is normally used to feed pigs, so another translation might be “swill” or 「餿水 sou1shui3」(food waste) in Mandarin.
The character is pronounced “phun” (Click through to hear).
The ET Today article came out in the midst of the gutter oil scandals and apparently kids surnamed 「潘」 were teased at the time, being called 「ㄆㄨㄣ小孩」. Kids can be so cruel. A Taiwanese teacher cited in the article, suggested that an alternative character be invented to represent the word to avoid embarrassment for all the Mr and Miss Swills out there. He advocated the combination of the food radical 「食」 alongside 「賁」 (bēn in Mandarin). Although the latter means “energetic” on its own, he suggested it because it makes up the right part of the character 「噴」 (pēn in Mandarin), which means “to spray or spurt”:
Afternote (Nov. 16, 2017): 饙 fēn (to steam rice) is in fact already a character, so in this case the Taiwanese teacher cited in the ET Today article is suggesting borrowing this character for a new purpose, rather than creating a new character.
I was talking to my friend when he started talking about the vibe in Taipei bars, in the sense that people always complain about them every week, but still end up there anyway, due to fear of missing out. He said the following:
每周都出現在同樣夜店的人 嘴中總是掛著＂I hate this place＂ “so boring here”但還是每周都出現，「愛甲給細二」。
(The people who turn up at the nightclubs every week are always saying “I hate this place” and “It’s so boring here”, but every week they turn up, they pretend diffidence, but they love it really despite themselves.)
The Taiwanese phrase he uses 「愛甲給細二」 is likely 「愛食假細膩」 àichia̍hkésè-jī. This is equivalent 「貪吃假裝客氣」 in Mandarin, so “people who love to eat, pretending to be polite about it”.
There is also an alternate phrase with the same meaning in Taiwanese, which is pointed out at the Taiwan Language blog:
「iau(夭)鬼假細膩」 iau-kúikésè-lī which translates as “a glutton pretending to be polite”.
So after yesterday’s post on the Taiwanese term 「莊腳面」 ‘country bumpkin face’ chng-khabīn – I got inundated (read: I got like two comments) by information from Taiwanese friends trying to explain what kind of faces they are.
One 天龍人* friend used two alternative ways of representing the term in Chinese: 「增咖面」(phonetic rendering) and 「樁腳面」. He suggested any of the actors from shows in the 8pm slot on TV, like 《娘家》(Mom’s House), 《世間情》(Love) and 《嫁妝》(Dowry):
He also said it could be applied to non-Taiwanese people, and put forth Susan Boyle and Adele!? as two examples from the UK. He said that it’s because they look “dated”.
Another friend said it was a synonym for the expressions 「土」 (rustic) and 「台」 (folksy with Taiwanese characteristics).
*「天龍人」 is a term generally used in Taiwan to refer to people from Taipei, suggesting that they are elitist and look down on others. It takes its origins in the term “World Nobles” (Japanese: 天竜人 Tenryūbito)from Japanese manga One Piece and literally means “Heavenly Dragon Folk”, snobby arrogant elites who serve as the world government in the manga (hmm, snobby, arrogant, who would that remind you of…).
Let me just note here that I don’t endorse judging people on the basis of whether they are from an urban or rural environment and this is all meant in a lighthearted way.
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