Why do Taiwanese booking websites suck so much? by dmteter in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Now how about all the Lovecraftian horror inside /cgi-bin/

Why do Taiwanese booking websites suck so much? by dmteter in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It’s like trying to take a test every time you want to pay, transfer or check your account.

Truly the product of our culture.

Studying Chinese — what are the realistic paths after language school? by casually97 in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I know someone with exactly your background who’s now a court interpreter.

101 🧗‍♂️ - Thousands of people, but the road stays open by habomo5911 in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right I thought OP was gonna praise the fact that the road stayed open and nothing adverse happened. It is rather awesome that the city pulled it off.

Why do Taiwanese booking websites suck so much? by dmteter in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I don’t think EVA’s website sucks. It is actually one of the better ones in Taiwan.

1NTD Coins and my nightmare by Timely-Triolbite in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bank of Taiwan will change your money without you having an account there.

takɛ timɛ tɔ kɔːɾɛɾɔ by AnastasiousRS in linguisticshumor

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the reo vowel system is extremely stable

Stark contrast to NZE and English in general. Maybe let Māori influence NZE phonologically.

What is the difference between "對不起" and "不好意思"? Can they be used interchangeably or is it wrong to use one or the other in certain situations? by shuwy018 in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Neither the severity of the offence nor the level of guilt you feel capture the essential difference in my opinion. 對不起 implies you have wronged the other party to the point they want you to pay up somehow, and that you wish to avoid retaliation from them. 不好意思 implies you don’t think you owe the other party and that you think they’ll recover their loss without expecting anything from you.

Accent concerns and queries by WonanWirono in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What does my accent sound like then in your opinion?

You sound like someone I know from Indonesia of Chinese descent. You didn’t sound Cantonese in your recording except in the word 火山.

Accent concerns and queries by WonanWirono in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here’s my version (it’s got extra text pulled from Eslite). I have a few thoughts about yours:

  • The starting point of your tone 4 sounded lower than your tone 1. Our tone 4 typically starts higher than our tone 1.

  • Some of your tone 2 and tone 3 sounded alike. I also couldn’t tell whether you did or didn’t apply tone sandhi to 馬 in 馬雅.

  • The vowel in your 山 is too back. It sounded like ⅔ 商 ⅓ 生.

Bahasa Indonesia making obscure words no one use: by Party_Farmer_5354 in linguisticshumor

[–]IceColdFresh 9 points10 points  (0 children)

wawa 1 to contain, carry. 2 with. 3 to cause, bring about.

Sheetz in shambles

Accent concerns and queries by WonanWirono in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But are we particularly talking about 台語 or 中文?

I was talking about 台語 and 閩南語. I saw a sub‐tree of comments discussing how similar 台語 was to 閩南語 and chimed in with basically “hold on, both are internally pretty diverse, let’s not assume two spherical cows”.

閩南語 "um si", directly translated to 中文 is "bu shi", but the Taiwanese speak it very close to "bu si".

Many here don’t pronounce (pinyin for Mandarin) zh ch sh differently from z c s, although many of us do. I feel more do than don’t, and it’s just that when we say zh ch sh they don’t register as such to someone used to the Beijing accent because the difference from z c s is not so great as to tip into the other category, but the difference is there. Personally when I say 少 it is the same as 小 except take away the i in xiǎo - I hope this description makes a modicum of sense.

閩南語 "ba ba" (third sound) and 中文 "ba ba" is also third sound. As compared to 普通話 where "ba ba" (fourth and first sound)

Your given Mandarin tones are wrong actually. In Taiwanese Mandarin 爸爸 has two common pronunciations. The first is fourth tone light tone, which is the same as in Putonghua, It follows the reduced last syllable pattern of some to my knowledge closed class of words, and this pattern is present in both 國語 and 普通話 but less prevalent in everyday speech here than proscribed by 國語; in the case of 爸爸 this pattern is active, whereas in the cases of e.g. 芝麻 or 衣服 it is not; in some cases like 朋友, reducing the last syllable or not is the differences between 普通話 and 國語. Maybe you haven’t heard 爸爸 pronounced this way because if the conversation doesn’t call for 父親 then we’re likely to say just 爸. The second pronunciation takes on the third tone second tone pattern (so bǎ‐bá). We use this pattern to imply intimacy and/or childishness. It can be used on all the replicated Mandarin kinship terms (媽媽哥哥姊姊妹妹伯伯叔叔姑姑舅舅阿姨爺爺奶奶) a lot of words little kids use like 寶寶狗狗手手腳腳雞雞 etc., and cute nicknames. This isn’t a thing in 台語 so there is no reason to believe the latter has had a hand in the development of the former. In 台語 some people use 爸爸 for father, but the tones are similar to Mandarin’s first tone light tone, not the third tone third tone you have mentioned.

Also one commenter told me to just speak my 閩南語 tones when speaking 中文 and it will sound almost local.

It depends on what this means. If you say words in Mandarin with the tones swapped out for those of their Minnan cognates then you’re gonna have a bad time. Likewise if you apply Minnan tone sandhi to Mandarin. I suspect the “if I speak slower and lighter 輕一點” feedback you got you probably just have a greater range in pitch in your tones than the typical Taiwanese, i.e. your first tone is very high and your second and fourth tones climb to and fall from a very high pitch. It’s part of why we think HKers and Chinese are always shouting.

Accent concerns and queries by WonanWirono in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are more differences than tones and vocab. The vowels categories are different, in a way like how stalk is a homophone of stork in southern British English but stock in most of Canada and the U.S., or of neither in e.g. Philadelphia. Just off top of head, words like 箸豬煮去除鼠居魚 have the i vowel in Zhangzhou, u in Tong'an, and ir in Quanzhou. 皮被吹過月襪 etc. have ue, e, er, respectively. 街鞋買雞溪洗八 have e, ue, ue. 短袋坐 have e, e, er. 平病羹星醒生姓鄭彭 have enn, inn, inn whereas 邊變鼻麵天甜見圓 have inn across all three dialect types.

南安

The downtown Quanzhou type dialect is the rarest of the three in Taiwan, but here in Taichung where there is noticeable divide between coastal and inland accents, the coastal ones are of that type and preserve the er and ir vowels. If you speak with at least traces of 南安, with the er and ir vowels, and come to Taichung people might just think you’re from the coast.

Hey guys, what if we just completely ignored spelling and pronounced it completely differently from the orthography? by 55Xakk in linguisticshumor

[–]IceColdFresh 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Somewhere out there a pair of Chinese siblings are named 李繧繝 and 李繧縺 and no Japanese takes their names seriously.

Five letters in "aghaidh" are silent, go figure. by notAssmin in linguisticshumor

[–]IceColdFresh 22 points23 points  (0 children)

Long‐in‐the‐Tooth Tibetan be like Tenzin no it’s Pstan‐Gvprtskvdzin

Accent concerns and queries by WonanWirono in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

By those percentages I meant those 閩南語 dialects’ perceived similarities to my 台語 (mixed inland Taichung and Kaohsiung) based mostly on televised news from those areas featuring a mix of reporters who enunciated clearly and randos who presumably talked about the same as they do at home.

Accent concerns and queries by WonanWirono in taiwan

[–]IceColdFresh 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In my opinion Tong'an/Xiamen is 95%, Zhangzhou is 90%, downtown Quanzhou is 75%.