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

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Tuesday, April 8, 2003, 20:06
On Tue, Apr 08, 2003 at 03:41:09PM -0400, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
> HS writes: > > >That'll teach you to omit tones in Taiwanese transcriptions. :-P > > Indeed it will :). Now, normally you know I'm fairly precise in my > tonal renderings, but since Adam started the atonal marking and it > was understandable to me, I simply followed his lead. So, blame Adam! > :)
Ah yes, the ultimate weapon of defense, the FOB.[1] [1] Finger Of Blame.
> Actually, there is a chatspace online where you can schmooze in > Chinese (Mandarin), no one marks tone, and it's fairly easy to divine > the meanings. Context is key, of course; lots of it is "Hey, anybody > there?" "So, what do you do?" usw. Not, "So, what are your thoughts > on eugenics?"
'Tis true, context is key. But it's also rather sensitive to dialectal differences and cultural backgrounds. I sometimes engage in a Hokkien conversation over email with a friend who grew up together with me; we don't mark tones (he probably doesn't even know what's a "tone number") but we can understand each other easily. Of course, anybody not from Malaysia (or even from Penang---we have our own idiosyncratic set of expressions and in-jokes outsiders wouldn't understand) would understand very little of it, probably less than 25%. It's filled with borrowings from English and Malay, has manglings and contractions that only a Malaysian Hokkien-speaker would understand.
> So, if you're not too embarrassed to indicate, what was the expletive > you had in mind? I do so love learning to swear like a Marine in > various langs.
[snip] I'd rather not say it, but it's in the swear-by/at-your-ancestors category. T -- I think the conspiracy theorists are out to get us...