Every week I do my #Taiwanese language homework, panic about how ‘I don’t know these words’, then realize that all the words I don’t know are the Taigi words that originated from Japanese
Also, I have to zoom in to see how to write some traditional characters, coz I’m getting old (and I actually only know how to write simplified)
@skinnylatte Some of the loanwords that went from English to Japanese to Taiwanese make me laugh... I recently learnt "má-chih" meaning "good friend", but originally from "match" (as in, two people can be a good match).
On the other hand, I'm sure the Malay and English in Malaysian/Singaporean Hokkien would make Taiwanese speakers laugh too!
@skinnylatte that's interesting, I didn't know that Japanese words were used in Taiwan. Makes sense with the history. Are there also Taiwan origin words and grammar as well as Mandarin?
@CaraBruar the Taiwanese language I’m learning is different from Mandarin. It’s more of an indigenous language there and has some words, terms, that don’t exist in Mandarin (closer to Classical Chinese); pronunciation is completely different, grammar too; lots of Japanese loan words in both Taiwanese and Mandarin.
This is also the first week I’m able to use a Taigi dictionary (not easy until you learn to romanize a specific way; and I only knew pinyin, which doesn’t help)
While I may never live in Taiwan, and am not from there, as a native speaker of Singapore / S Malaysia Hokkien, Taigi has the most developed way of romanizing and writing Hokkien. There is no other way of learning formally another southern Min language like this without going to graduate school (in China). I want to move from being a heritage speaker to being literate in it, though few are where I’m from.
@skinnylatte I was just thinking of this aspect of Chinese writing systems as I saw a Chinese restaurant lighted roadside sign here which in addition to the legible Roman alphabet and Chinese characters, had very small Chinese characters above that I think even someone literate in that writing system might find hard to read.
@glightly there’s a famous story of Chinese language PhDs going to restaurants and their friends think they’re making up knowing the language coz they can’t read some of the classical art or something (but they can, they just need special dictionaries and more time, which is better than for the rest of us)
@skinnylatte@glightly I get that with Japanese stuff. I read books, newspapers, and other printed matter but then someone decides I can’t really read Japanese because I can’t figure out some highly stylized calligraphy. 🤷♀️
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