Hanzified French
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From Mark Swofford in Taiwan:
L'après midi café
立裴米緹
Lìpéi mǐtí
The French means "Afternoon café".
The Chinese means nothing intelligible because the characters are being used to transcribe the sounds of the French, not the meaning of anything else.
Location of the café.
Selected readings
- "Mandarin morphosyllabic annotation of a Taiwanese sign" (5/13/19)
- "A French Japanese Chinese restaurant" (11/8/14)
M said,
October 9, 2022 @ 10:14 am
Not only hanzified but also gallicized.
Read Le café de l'après-midi.
M said,
October 9, 2022 @ 10:16 am
Sorry. I meant "Not only hanzified but also anglicized."
Grop said,
October 11, 2022 @ 8:21 am
It makes sense for a French café to be named L'après midi. I don't think the sign should be read as "L'après midi café" but as two separate phrases.
Anonymous said,
October 14, 2022 @ 4:33 pm
When I had a Taiwanese girlfriend, I taught her some French words and often write them in Chinese characters which made it easier for her to remember and pronounce correctly. The one we used the most was "bisous" 比族 (sometimes B族 or even B45, 845).
Also a nice advantage when dealing with Taiwanese people is their knowledge of zhuyin that comes in handy to explain words pronunciation. For example "foie gras" written ㄈㄨㄚ ㄍㄌㄚ (or using ㄏ as a close approximation of /r/).