Re: OT: Translation (Was: Re: OT: Official language post)

On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 01:00:17PM -0400, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
> HS writes:
[snip]
> > > >> Chit-ma chia si sia tai-oan-oe e list. Tai-gi chin sui!
> >
> >Translation: wish(?) this were a Taiwanese-speaking (lit. "writing") list.
> >Taiwanese is very beautiful.
>
> In the first sentence, I took Adam to mean "Now this is a
> Taiwanese-speaking list."
OK, the tones weren't indicated for "chit-ma", so I wasn't exactly sure
what it was referring to. Also, it's one of the areas where my idiolect
differs from Taiwanese, so it's pretty ambiguous to me.

> > > >Sui?!... Sui?!... O peh kong. Li chin e khi siau.
> >[snip]
> >
> >Translation: Beautiful?! Beautiful?! <expletive deleted>. You really can
> >be insane!
>
> Why is "o peh kong" an expletive? For me, it's the same as "luan
> jiang", "hu shuo", "You're talking nonsense."
Ohhhh... you meant /kong2/! Heh well, that's what happens when you don't
indicate tones. :-) I thought you were referring to something else
altogether...

> Not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, I'll grant you, but an expletive?
Sorry, misunderstanding there. I thought you meant something else totally.
I guess the fact that /o peh kong2/ is not a common phrase in my
idiolect[1] contributed to the misinterpretation. That'll teach you to
omit tones in Taiwanese transcriptions. :-P

[1] Which would use /luanchu kong2/ instead, or something else much ruder.

> And what I intended in the last sentence was "You've really gone
> insane."
Argh, another omitted tone ambiguity. /chin5/ instead of /chin1/. You see
what happens when you get the tones wrong? :-P


T

--
This sentence is false.

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