Introduction to Taiwanese Vocabulary

The modern language that we call Taiwanese has been passed on for generations without a standardized writing system. Considered a branch of Hokkien, it is spoken natively by about 70% of the population of Taiwan, brought by immigrants from southern Fujian, mainly during the Qing dynasty. Taiwanese also contains loanwords from Japanese and the native Formosan languages, plus some Spanish, Dutch, and English.

Taiwanese has a literary layer that can be traced to the late Tang dynasty (ca. 618-907), and a colloquial layer believed to have branched off around the time of the Han dynasty (Old Chinese (ca. 0 BCE/CE). However, Taiwanese does not have a strong written tradition in Han characters or any other script. Until the late 19th century, educated Taiwanese speakers wrote mostly in Classical Chinese. Where Han characters have been used to record spoken Taiwanese, they are not always etymological or genetic; the borrowing of similar-sounding or similar-meaning characters is a common practice. The lack of a written standard and the difficulty in learning the relatively complicated characters posed a great barrier to written record of Taiwanese speech.

A system of writing Taiwanese using Latin characters called Peh-oe-ji, also known as "Church Romanization", was developed in the 19th century. The Presbyterian Church has been active in promoting Taiwanese and POJ since the late 19th century. In 1943, Liim Keahioong and classmates started work on a spelling system that evolved into Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), which is used by the Washington DC Taiwanese School and the system we use below.

Common Phrases

Main article: Common Taiwanese phrases

Lie hør

Hello!

Ciaqpar`bøe?

Hello. (Literally, "have you eaten your fill?")

Bøexbae!

Not bad.

Kafmsia!

Thank you.

Mxbiern-khehkhix!

You're welcome. / That's OK.

Lexicon

Main reference: Taiwanese Hokkien#Lexicon

Hokkien

As a branch of Hokkien, Taiwanese has many words with cognates in other Chinese varieties. False friends do exist; for example, zao 🔊 (走) means "to run" in Taiwanese, whereas the Mandarin cognate, zǒu, means "to walk". Moreover, cognates may have different lexical categories; for example, the morpheme phvi 🔊 (鼻) means not only "nose" (a noun, as in Mandarin bí) but also "to smell" (a verb, unlike Mandarin).

In Taiwanese, Harnji often have differing literary and colloquial readings (pronunciations). See Buun-peh-i-thak.

Some words just have no standard Harnji, and are variously considered colloquial, intimate, vulgar, uncultured, or more concrete in meaning than the pan-Chinese synonym. Some examples: laang 🔊 (person, concrete) vs. jiin 🔊 (人, person, abstract); zabor 🔊 (woman) vs. lwjiin 🔊 (女人, woman, literary); baq 🔊 (meat). See Taiguo Siong'iong 460-ji and Taioaan Banlamgie thuiciexn ioxngji.

Austronesian

Main article: Taiwanese words from Austronesian

Some Taiwanese terms originate from the Austronesian Formosan Aboriginal Languages. For example, asef 🔊, meaning "silly goose", is from Sirayan. Many Taiwan placenames came from these languages, including Taioaan 🔊, Alysafn 🔊, Kelaang 🔊, etc. It is said that 70 to 80% of Taiwan placenames are from the Formosan Austronesian languages.

Japanese

Main article: Taiwanese words from Japanese

The Empire of Japan ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. Extensive contact with the Japanese language has left a legacy of Japanese loanwords. Examples are: piexntofng, iafkiuu, piexnsor, huilengky, bixsox.

• otofbae 🔊 (from オートバイ ootobai "autobike", an "Engrish" word)
• pharng 🔊 (from パン pan "bread", which is itself a loanword from Portuguese).
• Grammatical particles borrowed from Japanese, notably tek 🔊 (from teki 的) and kaf 🔊 (from か), show up in the Taiwanese of older speakers.

Western Languages

See Also: 台灣閩南語用詞#西洋語言

Taiwanese has words that come from Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish via its history (see Hølaan ee Formosa). Aside from placenames (like Samtiaukag and Huokuiekag), most western words might be from English via Japanese (see Taiwanese words from English).

MTL	Notes
bihluq 🔊	from Dutch bier via Japanese
kaq 🔊	from Dutch akker (acre)
pak 🔊	from Dutch pachten (to lease)
phorngphuq 🔊	from Dutch pomp (pump)
angmngthoo 🔊	they called the Dutch "angmo" savages (紅毛番 or 紅毛)。
sapbuun 🔊	soap, from Portuguese: sabão

Getting started

Words you may recognize

MTL	Tai. Hanji	English Meaning
tee	茶	tea (from Amoy)
khaothaau	叩頭	kowtow (to kneel and touch the forehead to the ground in token of homage, worship, or deep respect)
kafmsia	感謝	cumshaw (grateful thanks, from Amoy)
sampafn'ar	舢舨仔	sampan (a flat-bottomed skiff used in eastern Asia and usually propelled by two short oars)
Jidpurn	日本	Japan/Nippon
Sekkhiaf	釋迦	sweetsop (sugar-apple), resembles top part of Gautama Buddha's (Sakyamuni) head

How to Count

There are two sets of numbers in Taiwanese, colloquial and literary. The colloquial style is used for counting. See Hokkien numerals.

Further study

• A Beginner's Guide to Taiwanese
• Taiwanese Hokkien