January 1, 2008
有一 kang 我 tī 德國法蘭克福 ê 北區叫做 Kalbach ê 所在 teh 等巴士, 我看 tióh 車街路對面一 ê 看板, 有一 ê 廣告 kap 一般 ê 無 sio 像, 呣是 teh 廣告甚麼電影, 音樂會, 嘉年華, 馬戲團, 或是甚麼大賣會。 無 kah 甚麼相片, kan-ta 粉紅 á 色 ê 背景寫一寡字 na-tiānn。用嚴肅 ê 德語口氣按呢講:
December 20, 2007
(31-E) Test of PSC-4. Part 1
One day as I was waiting for bus at a bus stop in Kalbach, a northern district of Frankfurt, Germany, a billboard across the street caught my eye. It was not the usual advertisements for movies, concerts, festivals, circus shows, or special sales. No glossy pictures. Just plain words against a stark pink background. It intoned gravely:
December 11, 2007
December 11, 2007
December 5, 2007
(30-E) Two American friends rallying for “UN for Taiwan”
I would like to honor two American friends, Lucy (left) and her sister Maria, who joined a rally supporting Taiwan’s application for membership in the United Nations. On September 14, they joined about 100 Taiwanese-Americans to take a long and arduous ride in two chartered buses from Chicago to New York, arriving in Hammarskjöld Square the next morning. Despite the tiring ride, they were as high spirited as any of us, chanting, shouting and waving. They also walked among the ranks of demonstrators across Manhattan for a protest in front of the Chinese consulate office. After a few hours of rest, they returned with us to Chicago in yet another long and arduous ride. They did it out of their willingness to help the Taiwanese. To them it was for a good cause. They wanted to show support for the Taiwanese who have been shut out of the world organization simply because of Communist China. While world politicians for their self interest are kowtowing to the little emperor in Beijing, the ordinary American citizens like Lucy and Maria are showing them what is right and what is wrong.
December 3, 2007
November 28, 2007
(29-E) PSC-4: Old Norse -angr : Taiwanese -an
Now I would like to present a pattern of sound correspondence (PSC) between Old Norse (ON) and Taiwanese (Tw) to illustrate the simplification of word-final consonant cluster. The ON words in this PSC have a word-final -ngr whereas their Tw corresponding words with the same meaning are simplified to just an ending of -n.
In the following examples, the Tw words that lack a Chinese cognate are designated as Group-1 words (G1W). Those that have Chinese cognates are given their Chinese characters.
In the following examples, the Tw words that lack a Chinese cognate are designated as Group-1 words (G1W). Those that have Chinese cognates are given their Chinese characters.
November 26, 2007
November 20, 2007
(28-E) PSC-3: Latin/German -b : Taiwanese -m
Near the end of September my church held a retreat at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. As the organizer wanted to lighten us up a bit, he played a DVD movie entitled André Rieu: Live in New York. This was a pop music concert at the Radio City concert hall conducted by André Rieu, a Dutch maestro. The performance was entrancing and we all enjoyed the music. Among many songs presented in the show, three Italian orchestra members sang the famous song Libiamo from Verdi’s La Traviata, known in English as the Drinking Song.
November 8, 2007
(28-T) PSC-3 Latin/German -b : Taiwanese -m
Tī 九月尾, 阮教會有開一 ê 退修會 tī Wisconsin 州 ê Williams Bay. 主持者為 tióh beh hō· 大家放 khah 輕鬆一下, 伊 poann 一出 DVD ê 音樂電影, 叫做 André Rieu: Live in New York. 這是今年一位荷蘭人音樂指揮 André Rieu 先生 tī 紐約市 ê Radio City 開 ê 一場音樂會. 音樂演奏真 súi, 阮大家真欣賞. 內面有唱 Verdi ê La Traviata (茶花女) ê 一條真出名 ê 歌叫做 Libiamo (英語歌名: Drinking Song, 中文歌名: 飲酒歌).
September 28, 2007
(27E-2) Smallest unit of money: Latin nūmmus; Taiwanese hun 分
The Latin word for ‘coin’ is nūmmus. Its corresponding word in Taiwanese is hun 分, the smallest monetary unit. In the past it was represented by the smallest coin. In today’s monetary system of Taiwan it is a hundredth of a yuan, similar to a cent.
In Matthew 10:29 of the Bible, Jesus says, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?” The “penny” is rendered in the Taiwanese translation of the Bible as chít hun gûn (一分銀) in which chit 一 means ‘one’, hun 分 ‘the smallest unit of money’, and gûn 銀 ‘money’. The hun 分, like the “penny” in the English translation, captures the sense of the original Greek assárion (ασσάριον), which is the diminutive form of the Latin word as ‘a paltry coin’, the smallest unit of the Roman monetary system. The sense of the original Greek version is that, even though a sparrow is worth so little, yet none of them will fall to the ground without God’s will. So, Jesus continues, “Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.”
August 31, 2007
(27-E-1) Coin: Taiwanese hun 分, bûn 文; Old High German muniz; Latin nummus

In Taiwanese the smallest amount of money is called hun-bûn 分文 which is a pleonastic combination of two words, hun 分 and bûn 文. Both mean the smallest monetary units in different historical periods. In the old days a bûn is a round coin with a square hole in the center. In the present monetary system in Taiwan a hun is a hundredth of a yuan, similar to a cent to a dollar. The unit is so small that no coins or paper notes are in circulation. When the two words are combined together, the compound word hun-bûn分文 means ‘the least amount’, usually used for emphasis. Typical usages are in 4-word idioms:
hun-bûn put chhú 分文不取 – means “never touch a cent”. For example, the official is a man of such integrity that he “hun-bûn put chhú” from the public coffer.
August 13, 2007
(26-E) Pleonastic combinations in Romance languages and Taiwanese
In Romance languages and Taiwanese (as well as Chinese), a new word can be formed from two synonyms. This process is called “pleonastic combination” (Ref. 1). Let’s start with the example of the formation of the French word dès ‘since’ from Latin.
Latin de means ‘from’. So does Latin ex. In Vulgar Latin (the precursor of Romance languages), the two synonyms appeared together to mean ‘since’. An example is from Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIV, 5210 (from Ref. 1):
August 1, 2007
(25-E) PSC-1: Post Script
At the risk of giving you an impression that I am a chatty old man who never seem to know when to bring a conversation to an end, I would like to discuss a little bit more about PSC-1 before leaving the topic. This is because there is an important issue regarding how PSC-1 (i.e., loss of the word-final -s) came about.
The reason the issue came up is because the kind of lexical comparisons we have been making is diachronic, that is, comparison across time. (Not only that, we also compare words from two language families known to be unrelated, Indo-European vs Sinitic.) In essence, we compare words from the modern Taiwanese vocabulary with those of ancient Germanic, Latin and Greek lexicons. It would be more “comparable” if we could use the ancient form of Taiwanese (or Holó) words for comparison. Unfortunately, we lack such sources.
July 20, 2007




