Taigie si symmih?: Difference between revisions

''Translation of the monologue read by Dr. Hok-chu Tiunn, aka Babuza, in the audio CD included with the book "Taioanji ABC".''

What is Taiwanese? Taiwanese is the abbreviation for Taiwan mother tongue. Taiwan mother tongue is all of Taiwan's many local languages, including Aboriginal (Indigenous), Hakka, and Holo. What is a language? Languages are the expression of ideas through voice. Mankind has already existed for one million to 850,000 years (200,000 years ago by mtDNA), written language for only six thousand years. Voice developed earlier. Written language then appeared, their purpose is to serve record of spoken language, not want to replace spoken language. Taiwanese language has taken from ancient Han ([[Old Chinese]]), Proto-Han (Proto-Mandarin, late [[Middle Chinese]]), and modern Han ([[Modern Chinese]]), such as the words for sun, ghost, water, river, horse, and bird.

Taiwanese also has a significant quantity of non-Han language, which are not possible to write with Han characters. We call bean (in Taiwanese) "byntau", hose as "horsux", melon as "Melorng-koef", and to drink wine as "sib". We say "Rear Car" as "li'ar-khaq". We call the sport of boxing "bok". These all come from English, as well as "Khaqkhii" of "Khaqkhikhox" ({{w|khaki}} pants). However, "khakhih" came to English through a Hindi/Urdu word (meaning earth-coloured or dust coloured). Soap, which we call "satbuun" is from the Spanish word "jabón". An agricultural measure of area that we call "kah" comes from the Dutch word "[[akkar]]", which is known in modern English as "acre". Bread, which we call "[[pharng]]", comes from Portuguese (pão, through Japanese).

From Japanese, we have "clear cut" (assari), "emotion" (kimochi), "order", "accompany", and even the very familiar Han characters meaning "performance", "creed", "sanitation", are all Japanese. We use the words "khimokiang" and "khimobae" (emotion), which are Japanese words taken into Taiwanese vocabulary.

About seventy to eight percent of Taiwan's place names are from Aboriginal languages. Kaohsiung's old name is [[Tvafkao]] (Takau, not Phahkao), which may be based on "Makatao", the name of the Makatao Aboriginal tribe that lives on Shoushan mountain. Pingtung's old name is Akaau (meaning monkey), which also derives from Makatao. Luotung is from Rutung, from Yi-lan's Kavalan language, and means monkey. If you simply dryly read the Han characters for "Keelung", you might say "Kilioong". However, the old name is "Koelaang" and is derived from the name of a tribe called Ketagalan. The two Han characters for Taiwan (台灣) are read "Tai'''oafn'''" (in Taiwanese [[POJ]]: Tai5-'''oan1'''), but in Taiwanese we always say "Tai'''oaan'''" (POJ: Tai5-'''oan5'''), based on "Tayouan"  from the Siraya language. Historical books wrote "Tayouan", which is not Han language (but used to be sinicized as 台員/台圓/[[Taixoaan|大員/大圓]]). All of the following thing names are from aboriginal languages: milkfish (moa-sat-bak), the word for pineapple is from bunglai/bonglai, the word for guava is from lapat.