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vijayjohn wrote:Of course. I think probably most Chinese characters are morphemes.
księżycowy wrote:I'm curious does Taiwan use the same character list as mainland China?
I've tried doing a bit of research on it, but I have yet to find a definitive answer.
I would suspect that even if they use a "different" list, it's largely the same. I just want to know if there are any differences.
And no, I'm not talking about the simplified vs. traditional thing here.
It's still worth pointing out that as far as the printed standards go, some simplified characters correspond to two different traditional ones. Reality on the ground is a little messy though.
księżycowy wrote:I think I just wanted to be sure, because I know that there are pronunciation differences, some words have been borrowed into Taiwanese Mandarin from Taiwanese Hokkien, etc.
linguoboy wrote:Those are very colloquial. I learned to speak Chinese using Taiwanese materials and they didn't include any Hokkien borrowings. I don't recall any English borrowings either, even though those are becoming common in the PRC as well.
linguoboy wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Of course. I think probably most Chinese characters are morphemes.
There are a few exceptions, e.g. 葡萄, 蝴蝶. Despite being two-character compounds, these are monomorphemic.
I'm not sure if the argument works the other way, e.g. is 甭 (from a contraction of 不用) analysed as a single morpheme or two?
vijayjohn wrote:The most confusing part for me is the introduction to the main characters, particularly when they're talking about how old they are. The first one is twenty years old, and they describe her as "二十齐头." What does 齐头 mean? Something like 'altogether'?
The third one apparently just turned nineteen when the story started, so they describe her as 刚满十九. Does 刚满 mean something like 'just turned'?
vijayjohn wrote:I've started trying to watch a Taiwanese (Mandarin) movie from 1991 called 五个女子和一根绳子 (translated into English as "Five Girls and a Rope"), apparently about sexism in rural (feudal?) China. I was trying to learn some new phrases, but I'm confused by some of them.
One term they use is 沤臭. The English subtitles seem to suggest that means 'to decay'. Does that sound about right? Is it pronounced ōuchòu or òuchòu?
Does 吃一口井长大 mean 'to grow up together (in the same hometown)'?
The second one is sixteen, and to describe her age, they use the phrase 吃十六的饭. What does that mean?
Ser wrote:vijayjohn wrote:I've started trying to watch a Taiwanese (Mandarin) movie from 1991 called 五个女子和一根绳子 (translated into English as "Five Girls and a Rope"), apparently about sexism in rural (feudal?) China. I was trying to learn some new phrases, but I'm confused by some of them.
One term they use is 沤臭. The English subtitles seem to suggest that means 'to decay'. Does that sound about right? Is it pronounced ōuchòu or òuchòu?
Does 吃一口井长大 mean 'to grow up together (in the same hometown)'?The second one is sixteen, and to describe her age, they use the phrase 吃十六的饭. What does that mean?
I asked these questions to a woman who very recently immigrated from Taiwan two years ago (from Taipei, and if it matters she also speaks Mandarin better than Taiwanese Min Nan), and she couldn't answer these questions. She said 沤臭 is a very, very rarely used term, and as she's never heard it she didn't know whether it *should* be ou1 or ou4. She thinks she has heard 吃一口井长大 meaning "to grow up in the same way/manner", but she wasn't sure. She's never heard anything like 吃十六的饭.
Saim wrote:Newb question: why are Google Translate and Assimil giving me different tone markers for some syllables? Is this the famous tone sandhi? Which tone mark would make more sense to put in my flashcards (keep in mind all my cards have audio as well)?
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