#Taishanese language

[languagexs]

Taishan Translation Service: Cantonese vs Taishanese Language Variations

The Untold Story of Taishanese Influence in America’s Chinatowns Taishanese, a lesser-known dialect of the Chinese language, has played a pivotal role in shaping the language and culture of Chinatowns across North America. This article delves into the fascinating history and significance of this linguistic gem, shedding light on its impact on the Chinese-American community and the importance of…

[sanyiang]

Good start! Already I'm starting to see patterns where some radicals are used in different places. Like how steam has the grass radical on top, maybe indicating a lid on a pot, and how good is made up of woman and child, and how flower has a person in it, maybe because they stand upright like a person

(this is absolutely just how I, personally, am going to try and remember them and might not have anything to do with how they were actually linguistically written down)

I have 18 here on this page, so I think the next few pages will be writing practice with them, trying to memorize them, just generally getting familiar. The video recommended doing all 55 in a week, but aha, that probably won't happen. I'll do my best with these 18 and see where we go from there.

The writing will be done while verbally speaking the word and the english translation, so I can hopefully drill them into my brain

[outragedtortilla]

[andhumanslovedstories]

Does anyone have advice for getting over the embarrassment of speaking a language you aren’t good at with other people? I’ve studied Spanish, I know a little bit of Spanish, I am trying to learn more Spanish specifically for healthcare providers, but when I’m faced with an actual primarily Spanish speaking patient at my job, I get so nervous and tongue tied I’m like “maybe ‘buenos noches actually means I’m gonna kill you with morphine….i better stick entirely to English.” I know it’s the embarrassment! I don’t wanna sound stupid! And because so many of my patients understand a little English, I can usually muddle thru basic conversations relying on them. Which sucks! I feel bad about that! I’m like “I don’t want to talk in a language I’m not fluent in, so I’ll make them talk in a language I’m not fluent in.”

Also to be clear, this is all for stuff like “do you need the bathroom” or “do you want a pepsi from the kitchen.” I will always use an interpreter for anything more complicated than basic needs. But it’s a pain in the ass to use the interpreter ipad, and no one likes it, including the patients. It’d be nice to use it less and to be able to have more of a rapport with my patients. The foundation of my whole nursing practice is casual small talk with patients to learn more about them and their needs, and my Spanish speaking patients don’t get that.

(Neither do my patients who speak Russian or Taishanese or Vietnamese or but like. I don’t expect myself to learn every language in the world. Right now I just want to learn the language I theoretically kinda learned.)

I’ve been really working on pushing myself to try to speak more Spanish, at least a little bit, but I just have this mental block that I can’t push thru. It’s like all the social anxiety I’ve learned to otherwise cope with or moved on from settled entirely in my insecurity about my language skills. It’s nuts. Then I feel guilty about it which makes the block bigger which I feel guilty about, do you see the pattern here. Has anyone have any advice or resources? Not just for learning the language—I would also really appreciate those—but specifically dealing with this language embarrassment?

[wild-pineapple-butt]

for mun meme:

8, 12, 13, 17

Munday Questions

8. Have you ever met anyone outside of RP? I have! There's a handful of people that I've met up with IRL from tumblr before! I live in NYC if anyone wants to meet up with me :3 I promise I'm friendly.

12. What is your first language? Chinese - Cantonese specifically or rather, should I say Taishanese which is a regional dialect that is sort of a branch of Cantonese lol. I speak 3 dialects of Chinese total.

13. How many languages do you speak? I speak 3 dialects of Chinese and English fluently. Japanese I can get by with basic conversation. English has now become my most preferred language and the language I'm most comfortable conversing in. Honestly, sometimes they all evade me haha.

17. What is your favorite food? Noodles. No doubt about it. I love it in every form. I always get asked if I could to choose only one food to eat for the rest of my life, what would it be? And it would be noodles. SO many options. SO many varieties. You can have it cold, hot, room temp, spicy, non spicy, savory, sweet - the list is endless!

[madamvoila]

anyone out there who can speak taishanese?? it’s a dying language but i love it T_T

[jyslifetimes]

Yin & Young Podcast EP 72 : William Gee Wong - Author of "Sons of Chinatown"

William Gee Wong (Bill) is a prominent figure in the realm of Chinese-American journalism and literature, recognized for his insightful contributions to the understanding of Asian American experiences. Born and raised in Oakland Chinatown in California, Bill's work often reflects his deep connection to his heritage and the diverse cultural landscape of his upbringing. Bill's narratives provide a vital perspective on the Asian American community's struggles and triumphs. Bill’s most recent endeavor is a memoir chronicling his own family’s immigration story as well as his life and career. Bill shares deep, personal insight into the Chinese American immigration experience during the early 20th century, the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and it’s impact on American society.

Bill’s website: https://www.williamgeewong.com/

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction to William Gee Wong (Bill) and his recent memoir, “Sons of Chinatown.”

03:40 Bill’s father, mother, and sisters’ migration story.

11:02 Angel Island and the paper sons, paper marriage scheme.

16:23 Bill’s father’s “altercation” with his paper brother over losing money in the lottery business.

22:20 Bill’s father and mother really wanted a son. Some favoritism for sons.

25:47 We share our connections to the Bay Area. Bill’s “Chinatown bubble.”

33:05 Cultural separation from Hoishan-wa and his father. A connection to the Chinatown mindset.

36:40 Chinatown Tongs

45:50 Los Angeles Tong/Benevolent Association.

49:00 Bill’s identity search as he moved from Chinatown to bigger, whiter America and navigating these spaces in the journalism world.

01:00:57 Returns to writing and starts a weekly column highlighting Asian American issues at the Oakland Tribune.

01:05:12 What does it mean to be Asian American? Bill highlights the many different groups and histories this label encompasses.

01:16:50 James shares stories about being asked about his identity.

01:20:25 Dan shares his thoughts on the “Asian American” label and Hollywood casting.

01:22:30 Bill’s conversation with his son when they visited Bill’s father’s ancestral home (spoiler alert for those who plan to read the book).

01:30:40 Angel Island is depicted in Berkeley Rep’s: Far Country.

01:33:00 What do you to stay balanced?

Walk around the neighborhood.

Weightlifting.

01:36:00 Language corner:

Taiwanese Hokkien (Reference: Mandarin and Taiwanese dictionary: iTaigi)

免客氣 mián kheeh-khì  - You’re welcome. (lit. Don’t be so polite).

緣投 iân-tâu - handsome, good looks.

無共款 bô-kāng-khuán - not the same, different

Hoishan-wa/Taishanese

哎呀/哎吔 aiya - oh my god!

Japanese

おもろい omoroi - interesting [in the Kansai dialect].

———

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Email: yinyoungpodcast@gmail.com

[loxare]

So

Over a year ago, a discord buddy found this

A cheap notebook that says Goals, but because of the overly fancy script, we all misread it as Goats. And we all agreed that Goats was better and that was about it for that conversation

I, being someone who can't leave well enough alone, made this

Behold

The Goatbook

[skiddo-xy]

Yue Chinese / Yue Language: A Chinese Language Family

Varieties of Yue Chinese (and Where They're Spoken)

The main varieties of Yue Chinese include Cantonese (most commonly spoken in Guangdong and Guangxi in China, Hong kong and Macau), Taishanese (spoken in Taishan, Guangdong), Gaoyang (spoken in southwestern Guangdong), Yongxun (spoken in cities in Guangxi), Goulou (spoken at the Guangxi-Guangdong border), Qinlian (spoken in coastal cities in Guangxi) and Wuhua (spoken at Guangdong)

As you can tell, most Yue languages are spoken in Guangdong and Gunagxi, China. A map of Guangdong and Guangxi are below:

(I also have another post about Guangxi!)

Writing System

Yue languages are written with Chinese characters - many Chinese languages are written with Chinese characters but are pronounced differently in each language/dialect. For example: the character 你 is pronounced as "nǐ" in Mandarin (not a yue language), "nei5" in Cantonese, and "nï" in Taishanese. Since the early 20th century, Chinese languages have been "simplified" to increase literacy rates. Some Chinese languages such as Mandarin mostly uses simplified characters instead of "traditional" characters today, though most Yue languages such as Cantonese and Taishanese still primarily use traditional characters.

Grammatical Features of Yue Languages

Note: this section will go into some details of Cantonese grammar, the most prominent Yue language. While Cantonese grammar rules will likely not be the exact same for each language in the family, they will be similar.

Most Yue languages have fairly simple grammar. There is no future or past tense and no noun gender. Like English, Yue languages are generally "SVO" languages, meaning that the word order is subject, verb, object. In Yue languages qualified elements precede the qualifier. For example, in standard Chinese the word for "guest" is "客人" (客=guest, 人=person) though in Yue languages it would be "人客" instead.

An Interesting Quirk About Yue Pronunciation

The pronunciation of Yue languages is considered to be the closest to Ancient Chinese of any modern Chinese language. For this reason, Yue languages are considered to be more "conservative".

Sources: Yue Chinese wikipedia, Cantonese wikipedia, Taishanese, Gao-yang, Yong-xun, Goulou, Qin-Lian, Wu-Hua, Yue Chinese omniglot, Liangguang map, Cantonese Britannica, Cantonese grammar.

[sanyiang]

Long time no post (whoops) but I found this! It's for Mandarin, but I think I can modify the beginning stuff especially to help me learn Taishanese. (The later stuff suggests adding tv shows and podcasts with more and more advanced language to your daily life, which is difficult when Taishanese has no movies and tv shows and few youtube videos or podcasts (yes I know I could add Cantonese which has lots of movies and shows but I'm not learning Cantonese yet))

I've taken my notes, now I just need to start making myself a plan of action. In the video, she suggests using Week 1 to get familiar with the tones, which I'm pretty familiar with in my general floundering already, but I could use a refresher

More to the point though, she recommends learning the 55 most common radicals in Week 2, so I'm going to google a list of those, write them all down, translate the pinyin to penyim, and then continue writing them all down until they're familiar. Here is a list with the 35 most common, which I will be using

I've got a notebook I'm not using and a bunch of pens, so let's get going

[artistsonthelam]

Omg. A waitress just came up to our table to see what was wrong and my mom and one of my aunts explained, “Oh we’re not arguing; we’re just loud.” 😂 #Cantonese #Toisanese #MothersDayDinner

[herorps]

Hey flo do you have a guide to naming Chinese characters?? So I can be ethnically correct !

i apologize for how late this is. i’ve had a very busy work day and i’m only now getting some downtime to sit down and answer this the way i want to answer this. i want to start off by saying that i am chinese-american and that what i say and how i name my chinese characters is based on my personal experiences in my community growing up and what i’ve gathered through long-sought out research and diaspora twitter. 

i also want to say that of course your ethnically chinese character can have an western name, it’s very common that we do, especially in modern times and in immigrant spaces, however i think we should be able to normalize using ethnic names. also unless you are adopted ( see: leah lewis ), in my experience you 100% have a chinese name on top of having a ‘western’ name, so if you want to give your character a western name it’d be accurate to give them a chinese name as well ( see: natasha liu bordizzo/liu chengyu ).

if you find this guide helpful, please like and reblog the post, validate me and if you have any questions/corrections/add ons please let me know! 

i would have you start off by reading this really helpful guide. it’s a little long winded and you don’t have to read all of it but they do a great job with describing the different romanizations of names and how they’re different across different dialects/regions. you need to first decide what context your character exists in, whether they’re from beijing or taipei or hong kong, their full name is going to be spelled differently based on what background you want to give them.

my mother’s surname is actually a great example of this. her surname is 湯 which in mandarin chinese is pronounced “tang” but because my mother’s family is originally taishanese, her last name is romanized “hong” everywhere that uses an english spelling. alternatively, if my mother’s family changed their romanization when they moved to hong kong, where they speak cantonese, her last name would have been romanized as “tong”. 

another example of this is chou tzuyu. because she from taiwan, the romanization of her name is chou tzu yu but if her family was from, like, shanghai her name would be romanized zhou zi yu. same chinese characters ( 周子瑜 ), but because they are pronounced differently across different languages and because she is taiwanese, the romanizations are different. 

so after you’ve decided what romanization you want to give them, the next step is to actually choose a name. i personally begin with the given name with all of my characters because i like attaching a meaning to the given name over the surname. and also surnames are pretty easy to find/figure out.

here is a guide that discusses a little bit about naming conventions in china, particularly about gendered names. i really like what tangelotime had to say about the fact that gender doesn’t really matter when it comes to naming because, in my opinion and experience, it doesn’t. i would say that what would be “gendered” is possibly the way a name sounds. idk how to explain this but there are some names that sound “girly” but more in the sense that it’s like girly vs. butch. and i can’t think of a good example of this so you’re just gonna have to ... idk go with your gut. but for the most part, chinese names are gender neutral. 

what tangelotime also said about how giving a chinese name is intense is absolutely true because there are so many things that parents may consider including chinese zodiac and fengshui and radicals in a certain character and what it means---it’s a sport that i do not have the effort for nor the intelligence to properly explain. however, i think the guides that i’ve linked so far do a good job in explaining that in a way that i cannot. here is another extensive guide, but this one discusses historical contexts ( for all u historical rpers heh ) and more importantly imo, the list of themes that a parent might take in creating a name. 

8/6/21 edit: i came across these pictographs of characters from mdzs that analyze the etymology by the radical that gives you a lot of insight to possible name meanings and to the written chinese language. 

additionally, here is a video by avenue x, an amazing creator on youtube who reviews c dramas and gives a lot of in depth cultural context for some of the shows she watches, that explains the names of characters from word of honor and gives the poetry references that the writers may have used. 

so if you’ve taken a look all the guides i’ve given you, good on you, i really appreciate you putting in all the work. now let me give you some examples of how different things may be taken into consideration when giving a chinese name. 

my given name is 安儀, romanized “on yee” because my family speaks cantonese. the first character means “safe” while the second character means “appearance,” so together my name means “safe appearance”. but, my mom also took into consideration the radicals of the characters as well. the first character looks like it has a hat or a roof on it right? that is intentional. the character underneath the hat is the character/radical for girl, so my mom wanted to make sure that her daughter had something over her that would protect her. hence why she chose the character 安. the second character in my given name consists of primarily two other words/radicals, 亻+ 義. the first radical is a variation of ⼈, the chinese word for “person,” and the second radical can roughly translate to “righteous” which means when put together, 儀 can mean “righteous person.” however 儀 can also come to mean “the appearance of a righteous person” if you consider all of the meanings i’ve given so far. my parents thought heavily about what my name means, not only on a translation level but also on a structural level. 

if you’re writing a family with multiple children, consider having a generational name. in short, generational names usually have a shared character among a single generation of family members. both of my parents and their siblings are named in this manner. my mom and her siblings all have the 華 ( wah ) character in their names. my dad and his brother have the 少 ( siu ) character and his sisters have the 美 ( mei ) character in their names. my grandparents ( both sets ) thought to give their kids a generational link in their names. 

now let’s look at jackson wang’s given name, 嘉尔, which he explained was homophonic in meaning. this is a tangent but chinese people love homophones and it’s why we don’t trust the number 4 but love the number 8. his given name, romanized “gaa yee”/”jia er”  is essentially a homophone for “plus 2″. he said ( in a video that i cannot find anymore ) that his grandfather named him because he wanted the meaning to be “a king with two guards to protect him”. jackson’s last name 王 (wong/wang) means “king” so “king” “plus 2″ is the intention his grandfather had in naming him. 

but if you’re really not versed in things like fengshui or poetry or you don’t have someone with chinese literacy available to you, the next best thing is to honestly ... take a look at media. whether that’s celebrities or film/tv/book characters ( written by actual chinese people pls ) and see what their names are ( or at least the romanizations are ). this will help you figure out what sounds appropriate and what sounds like you’re just mashing sounds together ( see: cho chang is she korean... is she chinese?? who the fuck knows ). and then finding characters that give off a meaning ( like my name meaning “safe appearance” ) is just fine imo. 

and honestly sometimes giving a name doesn’t have to be so deep. like fan bingbing’s name literally translates to “ice ice” and i don’t even know what her brother, chengcheng’s name is supposed to mean, i think their parents just think having the duplicated character is fun and cute. so don’t stress yourself out. 

also a lot of what i’ve gone over has pertained to the common 3-character name ( 1 character surname, 2 character given name ) but you can also consider a 2 character name ( 1 character surname, 1 character given name ) ( see: xiao zhan ) or even a 2 character surname ( see: ouyang nana ). 

so finally, to get you started, here is a short list of characters and their romanizations that you can take a look at.

thank you so much for bearing with me, i know this is a lot of information to take in but it is great that you are seeking this information out in the first place. i also know that this may seem very daunting, and even for me it’s daunting sometimes, but if you have any more questions, please let me know and if you have anything you’d like to add, please let me know. 

[esther-ti-designs]

Omg I only found out ur burmese which is hella cool bc I'm half burmese too. Can u speak it?

Haha nooo sorry!  I can only understand numbers (1 - 10), some foods (chips, ice cream, fish soup, coconut noodles, and some fruits) , and a few verbs.  I can speak Mandarin Chinese, though, but my mom’s family speaks Taishanese, a dialect similar to Cantonese, and Burmese.  My cousins from my dad’s side can speak Burmese because they were born in the country, and some cousins in non-English speaking households on my mom’s side speak a little Taishanese.  I’m basically the oddball in the family smh.

[namjinsgirl]

hi ~ just wondering do you speak or write chinese ?

i understand cantonese and the language i speak is actually a dialect that’s very similar to cantonese but it’s like?? kind of rare and a dying language asklfja i don’t know mandarin and i can’t read or write chinese at all but my entire family (parents, grandparents, etc.) know mandarin