MOE Completes List of Suggested Minnanyu Characters

On Friday, the Ministry of Education released its third and final “official” list of recommended Hanzi for writing 700 common Taiwanese words. I could quibble with some of them, but they’re mostly good, common-sense choices.

The second tranche is here, and the first here. You can even print out a one-sided or two-sided handout.

Gone to Texas

Posting will be very light for a few weeks.

Happy Fourth of July

The real deal

Chiung Wi-vun is one of a very small group of people using Taiwanese to write non-fiction essays and books.  He’s also a super-nice guy, and a Maverick.  If you’re interested in reading some real, living academic Taiwanese, he has made his latest book available for free in PDF form.

Eighth tone still not working

I’m tired of trying to figure out why, but the eighth tone is still not displaying right most of the time.  Please note, therefore, that whenever you see a ̍ followed by a consonant, it means the eighth-tone marker is there but is not showing up.

For example, ‘pe̍h‘ is the same as ‘peh8.’

radio taiwan: welcome to tai-gi world

 

Good basic site for Japanese-speaking learners of Taiwanese.  The links page is pretty extensive, too, though many are dead links now.  Which reminds me, I should put together a better list of links from this page.

Chicken coop city

I just found out that the old name for Keelung (基隆, or, in Taiwanese, Ke-lâng) was Ke-lang (雞籠), meaning “chicken cage” or “chicken coop”.  Fascinating. Still like “Beat-dog City” the best, though.

More Taiwanese “Rap” Music

It’s a song titled “Son of Taiwan” from a band called Machi.  Not great, but you take what you can get in this department.

Yes, I’m a sucker for Minnan Rap

This is from a band called Dcuzzy from Penang.  The track’s title is ”Ai Pia,” which is the start of the proverb “Ài piàⁿ, chiah ē iâⁿ“, meaning, roughly, “As long as you keep working hard, you’ll succeed.”

I guess I should say that, since they’re from Malaysia, it’s in Hokkienese, not Taiwanese, but honestly, it’s the same language.  Just don’t mention this to any deep-green academics you might know.

Did I mention you should buy this book?

Multimedia versions of each chapter of Tai-uan Guan-khi Po-tian can be found here.  I don’t know if they have been uploaded with authorization from the book’s author, National Cheng-gong University’s Chiung Wi-vun, but I will try to find out.  In any case, if you are a serious student of Taiwanese, I recommend that you buy this book/DVD when you have moved beyond the beginner stage.  It’s not in POJ, but it’s close enough, and POJ users would have no more difficulty with the system than Americans do with British spelling.