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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Taiwanese Mandarin aka 台灣狗語

ECFA's cartoon character Yi-Ge speaks Taiwanese Mandarin. But, the blogosphere revealed that Taiwanese were swift in fighting back discrimination by the creative translation of the word “Taiwanese Mandarin”.

我跟一樣會說台語、英語;我還會說希臘語、但我只會說台灣狗

Update: HOT NEWS!

Taiwan’s MOEA adjusted study figures to hide the negative effects of signing ECFA:

Ministry distorted ECFA study: DPP from the Taipei Times

Interesting site:

RGE Asian Economies Blogs Aggregated

3 comments:

Άλισον said...

Did you read the link to the word 他? If not, you may want to go back to read it.

阿牛 said...

The phrase "Taiwanese Mandarin" is not a phonetic match for 台灣國語 if spoken in Taiwanese Mandarin; it ought to be 台灣 ㄍㄛˊ ㄧˇ

Not that anyone pays attention to such academic details. Let's just stick to mocking the Southerns and working class!

Last but not least, I don't know any person in Taiwan under 30 who *doesn't* speak with a "Taiwanese Mandarin" accent, though it's obviously different than the older generation's version.

Άλισον said...

I am not a linguistics or phonology specialist, but I do know that Yi-Ge's (or my) Mandarin will be understood by the people from both Taiwan and China whereas the dead dictator Chiang Kai-Shek's Mandarin was hardly understood by anyone even when he was making a speech.

And Ma’s 台語 vocabulary is nothing more than a few greeting words during the presidential campaign and far less fluent than Mr. Jon Huntsman, so before discriminating our language learning ability, Ma's people should check upon their idol Chiang’s Mandarin and Ma’s 台語 first!

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