Store sign in Taiwanese
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Sign for a store that just opened in Mark Swofford's neighborhood in Banqiao, New Taipei City:
Four characters. The sign looks simple and cute, but it's a hard nut to crack. Here's Kirinputra's solution:
The sign is technically in Mandarin, and transliterates to —
Līndāo Zàokā
… where līn was transcribed as 林 for lack of a practical on-tone sinograph, apparently.
The target — however incorrect in the context, like the interesting English signs we see in Chinese cities — is Taioanese 恁兜灶脚 (Lín Tau Chàu-kha, = "Your Kitchen", or "A Kitchen Named 'Your Place'"). But the straightforward transcription is Mandarin Līndāo Zàokā, much as Cantonese 鳩嗚 is gau¹ wu¹ — not Mandarin *gòuwù — in transliteration.
So the sign is in Mandarin, just as 鳩嗚 (gau¹ wu¹) is a Cantonese — not Mandarin — word. Of course, 林叨趙咖 (Līndāo Zàokā) is good-natured — in this context, at least — whereas 鳩嗚, however justified, may not be.
If the sign said 恁兜灶脚 (Lín Tau Chàu-kha) instead, then it would be in Taioanese. But that wouldn’t be a plausible name for a business in Taioanese-speaking society.
In Taioanese (& Hokkien, AFAIK), there is a default to the inclusive 1pl. pronoun lán 咱 in a wide range of situations where the speaker intends to involve the hearer, broadly speaking. For example, the canonical way to ask a caller who they are is Lán hia tó-ūi? 咱靴叨位 (or 咱叱叨位; "Where are we calling from today?"). A storyteller (esp. in writing?) may refer to him- or herself as lán; sometimes 1sg. góa 我 comes across as too high or too heavy in contexts where the cognate 1sg. pronoun would be fine in Cantonese or Mandarin. Likewise, there is the poetic pronoun lí-lán 汝咱, meaning "you & me".
Sure enough, there is at least one 咱兜灶腳 (Lán Tau Chàu-kha, = “Our Kitchen") elsewhere in Formosa, where the non-Taioanese-speaking layer is modest. What I mean is not that Mandarin is not spoken there — the area is highly bilingual — but rather that non-speakers of Taioanese are relatively few there, or otherwise unsubstantial in a business sense. Whereas, the presence of a 林叨趙咖 (Līndāo Zàokā) suggests not that Taioanese is not substantially spoken there (it is), but rather that there is a critical mass — enough to support a business — of people that have some knowledge of Taioanese but are not proficient in it.
(The photo immediately struck me not just as being in Greater Taipei, but as being somewhere in the Tionghô 中和 district rather than, say, Saⁿ Têng Po͘ 三重埔. I looked it up as soon as I had “guessed”; it’s on the Tionghô side of Pangkiô 枋橋, which is Tionghô-like. There are interesting dots to connect here, for anyone who has been around these areas.)
The pronoun makes all the difference, which may surprise people that have been led to believe that Taioanese and (say) Mandarin share a mono-grammar. A restaurant or shop revolves around involving its clientele & would-be clientele. You don’t call your customers or prospects lín 恁 in greeting or in courtship, although you might do so in detailed communications such as confirming when & where to deliver the goods.)
Ironically, Taioanese is associated with social impropriety & hilarity in Mandarin-speaking (incl. bilingual, etc.) society, esp. in the cities from Greater Taipei to Tâitiong 台中, not incl. the rural districts & small towns. This is all part of the cocktail that a sign saying 林叨趙咖 (Līndāo Zàokā) conveys in the first five seconds, although there may be some other quirky anecdote behind it in reality. Anyway, I hope this helps debunk the popular assumption that Taioanese grammar is qualitatively Mandarin-like enough to be examined by proxy via Mandarin, with an occasional ad hoc highlighting of select differences. On an epistemological level, I hope this helps people see that there are sociological variables that confound the unwary scholar-in-town, esp. one that knows some Mandarin.
[endnote]
脚 vs 腳:
脚 is the native form; 腳 is the official (modern) Repub. of China form. 腳 tends to replace 脚 in Mandarin-dominant contexts; in particular, 腳 is the only form that most Mandarin-dominant individuals — who do not use shape-based input methods — have easy access to when typing.
Selected readings
- "No parking sign in Taiwanese" (7/17/23)
- "Mandarin morphosyllabic annotation of a Taiwanese sign" (5/13/19)
Ben Zimmer said,
October 24, 2024 @ 11:55 am
I love how the rebus-like bowl and ladle are incorporated in the characters. Does anyone know what's supposed to be pictured in the left element of 叨?
Jonathan Smith said,
October 24, 2024 @ 2:00 pm
Nice read as usual :D
Re: the conclusions, it depends what we mean by the everyday locution "[written message X] is in [language N]." Probably the normal implication is something to the effect that the writer had message X in language N in mind, and perhaps also that people who know N recover X more or less straightforwardly. So if I write broken English in my private journal using the Russian alphabet in some ad hoc manner, there is no sense in which the message is "in Russian" — and probably it may be regarded as "in English" even if no one else can/does read it.
Likewise, there's no everyday sense in which "林叨趙咖" is "in Mandarin." Since the writer had a (broken?) Taiwanese message in mind and it is readily recoverable, we've gotta say it's "in Taiwanese" despite the ad hoc (and bad?) orthographical representation. So IMO Kirinputra means "this is crap Taiwanese in crap ad hoc Mandarin-dependent orthography," which I am perfectly ready to accept :D
Re: gau¹ wu¹, that's different as it's a decade-old borrowing of a kind into Cantonese and thus a legit word of the language — whereas none of lín, tau or chàu-kha are in any sense Mandarin words (ur average Mandarin speaker doesn't know what they mean / they're not in dictionaries / etc.)
Bybo said,
October 24, 2024 @ 2:29 pm
I see how this is fascinating for linguists and linguistically inclined amateurs (such as me). However, does anyone here know, and is willing to explain, how signs such as that one 'work' in the local language community? It's not easy for me to bring my point across. What I mean is, the people who put up that sign presumably want to do business. Attract clients. Is the sign intended to get potential customers' attention by not being immediately comprehensible, an amusing little rebus? Or is the target audience able to just casually read it (and, nonetheless, possibly, entertained by the playful typography)?
If the former, well, nicely done, I guess. If the latter, I can hardly comprehend how weird (compared to what I'm used to!) sinographic writing is.
As a very, very crude analogy: Is it more 'Z️️️' or more 'Krazy Komputers'?
Bybo said,
October 24, 2024 @ 2:30 pm
I'm sorry, the system ate some emojis. The lone 'Z' was intended to read '[crayfish emoji]Z[computer emoji][computer emoji][computer emoji]'.
AntC said,
October 24, 2024 @ 3:34 pm
how signs such as that one 'work' in the local language community?
I think they don't have to work qua language at all: that funny shop with the big red sign with a bowl and ladle. And then you go there and find out what the proprietors call it. No need to read the characters nor figure out which language(s) they're in.
There's a chain of stores selling kids clothes, founded in Taiwan/now across S.E. Asia. Logo is a cute baby elephant, looking something like Babar. It's Latin-script brand name 'les enphants' doesn't work for me: I can't see it as either English nor French. But clearly that doesn't matter to anyone in Taiwan.
~flow said,
October 24, 2024 @ 6:16 pm
AntC: that shop's Mandarin name is 麗嬰房 IIRC which I've always found ingenious
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 24, 2024 @ 11:25 pm
@ Bybo
Yes — the meat of the target audience would be able to read the sign casually, even just riding past it in the flow of traffic, or scrolling past it in an app.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 24, 2024 @ 11:26 pm
@ Jonathan Smith
LĪNDĀO ZÀOKĀ is analogous to GAU¹ WU¹, minus the injection into pop culture. Was it “crap Mandarin in crap ad hoc Cantonese-dependent orthography” at the beginning? Of course not.
Also analogous — Mandarin 欧买嘎 ŌUMǍIGÀ. Hardly “mispronounced English in ad hoc Mandarin-dependent orthography”.
林叨趙咖 is clever, deliberate Mandarin-based wordplay. (Note the great number of kitchens that blandly call themselves 灶脚 or 灶咖. The latter is arguably an attempt at Taioanese; the former is certainly Taioanese.) I don’t see a rational arg. that 趙咖 is “badly written” Taioanese, at all.
(BTW, I recognise your arguments. You are not alone.)
Laura Morland said,
October 25, 2024 @ 12:30 am
I just checked out the website of 麗嬰房 (linked above) and the clothes are indeed for "les enfants"! And substituting "ph" for "f" makes it look (if you squint) like "elephant," which resonates with the Barbar-like mascot.
It works for me!
(On the other hand, Google Translate wouldn't tell me the meaning of 麗嬰房 ; would love to be able to appreciate its ingenuity.)
Victor Mair said,
October 25, 2024 @ 6:52 am
@Laura Morland
"Pretty Infant House".
Chris Button said,
October 25, 2024 @ 9:18 am
So just to check I'm understanding:
恁兜灶脚 would be Taiwanese but not a good name because it sounds like an actual sentence and so a little awkward as a brand?
林叨趙咖 is a good-natured Mandarin riff on a well-known Taiwanese phrase that works as a brand name because it isn't actually a real sentence.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 25, 2024 @ 11:09 am
@ Chris Button
恁兜灶脚 would be Taioanese, but ill-formed in that it has no possible correct meaning (descriptively speaking, believe it or not) in the social context, and thus illogical & self-defeating as a name for an eatery.
林叨趙咖 is a good-natured Mandarin riff on 恁兜灶脚 (just a phrase; not "well-known") that works as a brand name because, among other things, it is chiefly targeted at people who know some Taioanese but don't (and may not be able to) use it for the purpose of communicating.
Bybo said,
October 25, 2024 @ 2:32 pm
Thank you for your replies, AntC and KIRINPUTRA, as opposite as they are. :)
By the way, in German, advertisers are sometimes creative with umlaut letters to the point of ambiguity. Is it an o or an ö and some ornamental graphic design? Well, if it's 'K[circle with a little crown above]NIG', it's certainly 'KÖNIG', not 'KONIG'. But sometimes, with proper names or abbreviations, I really can't tell.
A certain Austrian extreme-right party uses some kind of weirdly shaped croissant thingy that no unsuspecting person would recognise as a capital Ö, if it weren't for the notoriousness of said party.
Yves Rehbein said,
October 25, 2024 @ 3:48 pm
The typography is cute. Part of the game is admiting ignorance. I second Ben Zimmer's question:
I have a haunch from looking at the alphabetic script entries of 兜, cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tau#Hokkien
Jonathan Smith said,
October 25, 2024 @ 5:32 pm
@KIRINPUTRA
It's semantics (+ adjoining fields) and (in this context at least) just for fun — but there are facts about language(s) relating to the truth values of your statements which are best separated from subtext. In particular, since words A B C of the message both as encoded and decoded are Taiwanese words and not Mandarin words, then calling the sign "Mandarin" is a rhetorical move — perhaps an interesting/valuable one — the motivations for which one might as well be as explicit as possible about in the interest of edumafication.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 26, 2024 @ 12:09 am
@ Jonathan Smith
(Are you saying I'm over-motivated to get at the truth?)
If I understand your framework, 欧买嘎 ŌUMǍIGÀ is both encoded & decoded as the English utterance "oh my God". Would a shop sign saying (a) 欧买嘎, (b) ŌUMǍIGÀ, or (c) both … be "in English"? Why or why not?
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 26, 2024 @ 12:17 am
@ Bybo
I think AntC is right too. The owner of this place must understand that there are certain non-understanders that would eat there anyway (backpackers; foreign students; Vietnamese or Filipino expats), and certain non-understanders that would never eat there anyway (well-off Nationalist Chinese; Muslims).