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

>Yes, except do you know how to write sui?
The guy who compiled the "Guo2Tai2Shuang1Yu3Ci2Dian3", available in
Taiwan, has made some of these characters on his own; here, he uses
the "female" radical plus the phonetic from "sui2bian3" de "sui2".
Often it's a game of what the Japanese call "ateji", characters
glommed onto a word just for their phonetic value instead for
meaning. At karaoké clubs, I usually saw "sui" represented by the
character for "water". My mainland Minnanhua dictionary does a much
better job of finding characters with reasonably plausible
etymological links to the concepts at hand. Off hand, I don't
remember what "sui" would be.

>I do, but I don't believe it's among the standard character set.
>What about goan?
Usually represented by the "yuan4" of "yi1yuan4" (hospital). Compiler
proffers the same phonetic ("yuan", "origin") but uses the "person"
radical instead.

>  Or lan?
The Mandarin form, "zan2" (inclusive "we"). Compiler create a similar
character: "zi4ji3" de "zi4" with the "person" radical.

>Or lin?
Either Mandarin "nin2" (polite "you") or "ren4wu4" de "ren4" with a
heart underneath.

>Or in?
"I1" with a heart underneath. Compiler uses "yin1wei4" de "yin" with
a "person" radical.

>   There are characters for thes words, but Chinese typing programs
>only know Mandarin.  So all the most elegant parts of Taiwanese get
>left out and you end up typing bastardized Mandarin instead of real
>Taiwanese.   I drive my Taiwanese teachers batty asking them "What's
>the Taiwanese character for that word?"  About 80% of the time they
>know.  The other 20% its, "Okay, I'll look it up and tell you next
>week."
Still, I think at some point you're just going to have to reconcile
yourself to the fact that some words in dialect just may not have
characters. Like Cantonese, as other dialects gain some literary
street cred, new characters will be created or old ones will be
resurrected, and then they'll be codified into that dialect's system.
But I doubt Taiwanese is fully there yet. The characters used in
Taiwanese karaok