Bungieen kab peqoe

Buun-peh-i-thak 🔊 (文白異讀; Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters)

Literary vs colloquial

Literary readings of Harnji are usually used in formal loan words or names, when reading aloud and in formal settings, while colloquial readings are usually used in vernacular speech. For example, 白 can be read either "pek 🔊" (literary) or "peh 🔊" (colloquial). The existence of literary and colloquial readings is a prominent feature of some Hokkien dialects and indeed in many Sinitic varieties in the south.

Unlike other spoken Chinese varieties, characters used to write 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.

Sorji (數字; Numbers)

This feature extends to Chinese numerals, which have both literary and colloquial readings. Literary readings are typically used when the numerals are read out loud (e.g. phone numbers), while colloquial readings are used for counting items.

	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

• Thag'ym/buun: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. 🔊
• Gwym/peh: cit,nng,svaf,six,go,lak,chid,peq,kao 🔊

For more detail, see Sorji and Tiexn'oe

Source

• Hokkien dialect#Literary_and_colloquial_readings