Q-TAXI
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From a correspondent in Taiwan:
"Taxi" may be rendered in Sinitic languages by the following translations and transcriptions:
chūzūchē 出租车 / 出租車 (transregional expression, literally means "car for rent")
jìchéngchē 计程车 / 計程車 (the word I remember from Taiwan half a century ago, lit., "car with a meter"))
díshì 的士 (originally Hong Kong Cantonese transcription [dik1si6] of English "taxi", but later spread to all parts of the Sinosphere)
tshadeu 差頭 (Shanghainese)
And now it seems that it's all right to use the English word directly: TAXI.
See:
"Fried scholar's" (8/6/11) — especially this comment and other comments that prompted it and responded to it.
So much for the word "taxi" on the bumper sticker, but what about "Q"?
I asked several colleagues from Taiwan if they knew what it meant in this context, and none of them were sure. One of them stated that "there’s an element of fad and/or a sign of general marketing laziness." For one thing we can be sure, "Q" is a very fashionable term in Taiwan, so much so that Amy Qin, whose surname just happens to begin with that letter, wrote a long article about it a few days ago:
"In Italy, ‘Al Dente’ Is Prized. In Taiwan, It’s All About Food That’s ‘Q.’", NYT (10/4/18)
She writes:
But how exactly do you describe that perfectly calibrated “mouth feel” so sought after by local cooks and eaters alike?
Slippery? Chewy? Globby? Not exactly the most flattering adjectives in the culinary world.
Luckily, the Taiwanese have a word for this texture. Well, actually, it’s not a word, it’s a letter — one that even non-Chinese speakers can pronounce.
It’s “Q.”
And if it's really "Q", then you can call it "QQ".
Ms. Qin quotes an old Language Log post of mine on this marvelous letter-word:
“Whether Q may be considered a Chinese character or not, it certainly has become a part of the Chinese writing system,” Victor Mair, a professor of Chinese language at the University of Pennsylvania, once wrote in a blog post.*
*["Is Q a Chinese Character?" (4/15/10)]
Whatever the owners of the Q-TAXI fleet wanted to convey by referring to their app as Q, just seeing / hearing that letter / word makes Taiwanese customers drool, so naturally they will be attracted to it, especially since, as the bumper sticker adds, there's "no monthly fee" and "no dispatching fee".
AntC said,
October 8, 2018 @ 6:05 am
On another linguistic note, in the 'Al Dente' article that quotes Victor
langoustine, burned onion juice and white tapioca pearls that are cooked to bubbly Q perfection.
burned? Does that mean "caramelised onion jus"? aka "sweated" onions.
Anyway, yes, yum! for all the food in Taiwan. How can you write about QQ and not mention "stinky" tofu?
Victor Mair said,
October 8, 2018 @ 10:10 am
The packaging on this product being sold in Taiwan speaks for itself:
Amazing! Simply amazing!
Ralph Hickok said,
October 8, 2018 @ 10:17 am
@AntC
Oh, no, sweated onions and caramlized onions are two very different things. Sweated onions are translucent, not browned.
This brings to mind a William Safire language column of perhaps 40 years ago, when he suggested that menu writers were at fault for referring to "steak with smothered mushrooms" when, according to Safire, it should have been "steak smothered with mushrooms."
He received letters from a large number of people, including me, pointing out that smothering is a method of cooking onions. BTW, smothering and sweating are very similar; the chief difference is that the onions are covered with a cartouche when they are being sweated. The process is much like sauteing, but it's done more slowly and at a lower temperature.
Sarah S said,
October 8, 2018 @ 10:56 am
Victor, that's interesting! I know that Hi-Chew is a Japanese candy, and its selling point is that it's soft, springy, and gummy, or the prized "mochi mochi" texture. The Qmmy name is a "Q" + Japanese + English hybrid.
Here's an ad I found for QMMY on Facebook Taiwan: https://www.facebook.com/morinaga.tw/photos/a.133070160089596/860943700635568/?type=1&theater
> Q (Q彈嚼勁) + gummyグミ (QQ軟糖) + yummy (好吃) = Qmmy !
amy said,
October 8, 2018 @ 1:37 pm
Given the context of a taxi, I thought Q stood for "quick".
That said, I wonder what the Taiwanese think of Q-tips.
rosie said,
October 8, 2018 @ 1:57 pm
Whatever that is, Amy, they're certainly on the Q-ball.
Victor Mair said,
October 8, 2018 @ 4:39 pm
Not to be outdone by Morinaga, McDonald's had their own "Q-toast" campaign. That's "Q-tǔsī Q吐司" in Mandarin. You can SEE how springy the Q texture is and hear how it's pronounced in Mandarin here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJkd6fNuzwY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-MPoF-Pv0o
Jonathan M Smith said,
October 8, 2018 @ 5:48 pm
I thought perhaps "Q" in Q彈 Q嫩 was from "chew(y)"… but the interwebs say it is a Minnan morpheme: "「脙」KHIU 7 丩7去 是閩南語，軟而耐咀嚼或軟而有彈性。"
Victor Mair said,
October 8, 2018 @ 8:07 pm
Here's the home page of Q TAXI:
http://www.qtaxi.com.tw/
It cycles through three variants. The first one says, in English, "Q Your Taxi".
Chas Belov said,
October 9, 2018 @ 3:01 am
Quoting the article:
“Most of my American friends like bubble milk tea,” said Tina Fong, a co-founder of Taipei Eats, which offers food tours around the city. “But when there’s Q texture in a savory dish, it can still be a bit strange to them. It really depends on the person.”
I like my noodles to be Q.
Chas Belov said,
October 9, 2018 @ 3:03 am
That said, I once ordered QQ mian at a northern Chinese noodle joint in SF and they served me soup with translucent bean thread noodles, not at all what I expected. My error or theirs?
Alex R said,
October 9, 2018 @ 4:23 am
It’s unrelated, but this popped up on Twitter for me today, and I thought Prof. Mair might find it interesting – a novel way of indicating a long vowel in Japanese text for a syllable written in kanji: https://twitter.com/n0n5ense/status/845246257408831489
I feel that there’re probably precendents in handwritten text, but it’s fun to see someone take the time to do it in an era of computer-generated lettering.
HSIAO-FENG CHENG said,
October 9, 2018 @ 6:10 am
In her article of NYTimes (04 Oct 2018) Ms Qin said: The origins of the term Q are unclear. Some say it comes from the Taiwanese Hokkien word k’iu.
The origin of the Taiwan Mandarin term Q [kiu1 in pinyin but the rime is pronunced like you in English] is, contrary to her words, very clear from any Taiwanese (aka Taiwanese Hokkien in her article)-speaking person: the origin is khiū (in POJ/Tailo). Taiwan Mandarin borrowed the word, changed its tone to Tone 1 (high level).
Ralph Hickok said,
October 9, 2018 @ 9:40 pm
I just saw that I said "mushrooms" in my post above. Of course I meant onions.
Chas Belov said,
October 11, 2018 @ 12:04 pm
To clarify my previous post:
That said, I once ordered QQ mian at a northern Chinese noodle joint in SF and they served me soup with translucent bean thread noodles, while I had expected al dente lamian. My error or theirs?
On later visits I requested lamian and got lamian.
Eidolon said,
October 12, 2018 @ 6:18 pm
If Q or khiū was originally used to refer to the texture of sticky rice or flour, then a relationship with 䊆 MC giu and 糗 qiu < MC kiu should be considered. Both belong to a class of vocabulary having to do with cooked wheat or rice flour. There is also 䵕 "millet", "sticky" which in Mandarin is jù but in Cantonese is geoi or gêu. The phonetic and semantic similarity in this class of words doesn't seem to be a coincidence. However, to establish an etymology would require an in-depth research into when Q or khiū first came into use to describe the associated texture.