Bungieen kab peqoe
Buun-peh-i-thak (文白異讀; lit. literary-colloquial different reading; Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters)
Literary vs colloquial
Reading pronunciations (thag'ym 讀音) of Harnji differ from spoken pronunciations/explications (gwym 語音/kayseq 解說). Banlaam dictionaries in Taiwan often differentiate between such character readings with the prefixes 文 (buun) for the literary readings, and 白 (pek/peh) for colloquial readings.
The colloquial (or vernacular) readings (白讀, peqthak) are basically used in spoken language and vulgar (ordinary/common) phrases.
The bulk of literary readings (文讀, bunthak) are based on pronunciations of the vernacular during the Tang (Toong) dynasty and mainly used in formal phrases and written language. So, literary readings are more similar to the pronunciations of the Tang standard of Middle Chinese than their colloquial equivalents.
The divergence between literary and colloquial is due to several strata in the Min lexicon. The earliest, colloquial stratum is traced to the Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE, Haxn); the second colloquial one comes from the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 - 589 CE); the third stratum of pronunciations (typically literary ones) comes from the Tang Dynasty.
Unlike other spoken Chinese varieties, characters used to read Zoanciw Hokkien have three different kinds of readings: literary (文 buun), colloquial (白 pek), and vulgar (俗 siok). For example, the readings for 肉 (meat) are: literary liak, colloquial hiak and vulgar baq; baq is the most commonly used reading.
Examples
The following examples<ref>Victor H. Mair, How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language, University of Pennsylvania</ref> show differences in literary and colloquial readings in Taiwanese Hokkien.
Harnji Readings
Template:HokkienLiteraryColloquial
Sorji (數字; Numbers)
| 1 | 2 | 3 / 三 | 4 / 四 | 5 / 五 | 6 / 六 | 7 / 七 | 8 / 八 | 9 / 九 | 10 / 十 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peh | cit (蜀) | nng (兩) | svaf | six | go | lak | chid | pøeq | kao | zap |
| Buun | id (一) | ji (二) | safm | sux | gvor | liok | pad | kiuo | sip |