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).
Jonathan Smith said,
October 27, 2024 @ 11:06 am
@KIRINPUTRA
There are several reasons why gauwu, oumaiga, etc., are poor parallels here. A core one is that those in Taiwan with the partial knowledge (?) of Taiwanese such as to make/read a sign like the one in the post know much more Taiwanese than the three words 'yall', 'home' and 'kitchen'. So the question is characterizing this knowledge in an accurate/constructive (?) way. E.g., maybe certain behaviors are arguably dilettantism or tokenism or exhibit a lack of self-awareness re: language competence to such an extent is to be distracting or actively harmful, etc., etc. — but saying "the hundreds of Taiwanese word/phrases you think you know, that's actually Mandarin given your lack of fuller competence badumbum" isn't that meaningful IMO. Native/fluent revivalists the world over could say the same of their margins…
Chris Button said,
October 27, 2024 @ 6:43 pm
@ Kirinputra
Is this a Häagen-Dazs kinda thing then?
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 28, 2024 @ 11:00 am
@ Jonathan Smith
Lest we miss the main event, can you walk us through why you think ŌUMǍIGÀ is a poor parallel? That would help.
I’ll take a stab at a few cobwebs.
1 ― Any Formosan who names a shop 歐買嘎 is relatively (very, very) likely to know thousands of words in English. Decent bet that it’s their second-best spoken language.
2 — The frankly ingenious name 林叨趙咖 tells us nothing about the owner’s Taioanese skills, although it strongly suggests they have at least some. It could be their best language, for all we know. Likewise, the theoretical shop named 歐買嘎 could have been set up & named by an enterprising Anglophone monoglot. There is no need to assume. What good could come of that?
3 — The contextual incongruity of LÍN TAU CHÀU-KHA 恁兜灶脚 is not central to whether 林叨趙咖 (LĪNDĀO ZÀOKĀ) is in Mandarin. It is a peripheral & incidental point that redundantly supports my conclusion. You have to deal with the heart of the matter anyway; better not get bogged down in the situational (in)competence of 恁兜灶脚 (which 林叨趙咖 is not) just yet.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 28, 2024 @ 11:03 am
@ Chris Button
Interesting. No, as far as I can see.
Jonathan Smith said,
October 28, 2024 @ 11:53 am
@KIRINPUTRA
The (a?) heart of the matter is that a monolingual Mandarin speaker wouldn't understand the phrase "lin2 tau1 chau3-kha1" in 1000 kalpacycles even if simultaneously presented in any/all of the orthographical forms noted above. So you/we need to describe the language knowledge of the community(ties) under discussion and/or individuals within it in a more nuanced way.
(Incidentally, such a monolingual speaker/reader, including many in Taiwan, would of course cluelessly read Mand. lin2 — your change to lin1 in effect says "speakers/readers in the community of interest know some Taiwanese, and yep this sign is 'in' it.")
Re: "omaiga" or similar, someone recently had "スター・ウォーズ" on their shirt and asked me "what language is this?" We need reference to context / community knowledge / speaker knowledge to make meaningful judgements. The Japanese case is maybe instructive in that the vast number of words from English exist along a long continuum from "clearly a code switch" to "clearly a loan". But in general it is not going to be meaningful to refer to the fragments of say English or Taiwanese spoken or understood by a say mostly-Mandarin speaker as simply "Mandarin". You end up overheating the message and failing to communicate.
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 28, 2024 @ 10:53 pm
@ Jonathan Smith
Nor would they understand OH MY GOD, by the same (loaded) token.
(You & I mean LĪNDĀO ZÀOKĀ & ŌUMǍIGÀ, though. Context!)
Consider the loads of Japanese phrases — even excl. those loaned into Formosan languages “in other action” — that are accessible to a wide range of non-Japanese-speaking Formosans.
(“My change to” LĪN? A little bit of imprecision goes a long way, in the wrong direction.)
Right. Like I said, the core of the intended clientele appears to be “[fluent Mandarin readers] that have some knowledge of Taioanese but are not proficient in it” — with certain groups of non-Mandarin readers, minimal Taioanese knowers, & proficient Taioanese speakers as out-of-focus (secondary) intended clientele.
Absolutely.
There was an “iceberg” of sociolinguistic conditions, linguistic custom, commercial custom, etc. — “context / community knowledge / speaker knowledge”, as understood by me — underlying my seemingly uncontroversial statement that “[t]he sign is technically in Mandarin”. I felt my initial reply (to Victor) was long enough as it was….
KIRINPUTRA said,
October 28, 2024 @ 10:53 pm
@ Jonathan Smith
Not sure why you think this is on me, frankly.
I think I know where you might be (generally) coming from, though. I suspect there might be no better thing than to coolly continue.
(The distant root of this problem may lie in the pervasiveness — increasingly confirmed by newer studies? — of an aural component in reading; and in the implied Neo-Chinese denial of this [in the “Chinese” context], as it “attacks” one of the pillars of Neo-Chinese national identity — if an aspect of reality can be said to “attack” anything.
So now we take Taioanese-Mandarin bilingual society — ignoring for the moment the Taioanese-only, Mandarin-only, & other components of Formosan society — where both languages are, supposedly, written using a single, apparently shared script that in turn is only taught via Mandarin…. The effects of this can be pretty … wild, in that more-than-customary discipline [or cooling, if you will] is needed to make sense of, let alone discuss, what is going on. I’m working on a mini-piece that gets at this, BTW.)
For one thing — getting back to “coolly continuing” — I think there’s more to your intuition that 林叨趙咖 is Taioanese while 歐买嘎 is not English.
Jonathan Smith said,
October 30, 2024 @ 8:56 am
IDK if useful but —
Loco Cantina in say New Mexico: could be/is (?) "English," kinda paralleling your account of the sign in the post
Los Pollos Hermanos next door: equally plausibly (largely) by-gringo for-gringo… but calling this "English" would just be for rhetroical fun I think; these words are not well-known to the American English speaking community at large
BUT the products / perceptions of interest in this post are largely not those of a gringo-parallel group but those of an ethnic-Latino/Spanish-at-least-conversant-ish-type group — so in some part a yosabo group. So I would argue that dismissing their Spanglish products/perceptions as "English" would be… dismissive. There is room for debate though (cough :D)
Jonathan Smith said,
October 30, 2024 @ 11:17 am
Hmm yes I've largely been ignoring orthographic form, whereas perhaps this is crucial for you. I would avoid saying in a vacuum that e.g. "歐买嘎" "is" or "is not" English. That is, script per se is indeterminate wrt the question of "what language"; we need to try to talk about the (shared?) linguistic message in the mind of writer/reader.
KIRINPUTRA said,
November 1, 2024 @ 5:50 am
Fair enough. What do you mean, though? Before I go on — your other points def. merit discussion — could you sketch a hypothetical situation where you *would* say "歐買嘎 is English"?
Jonathan Smith said,
November 2, 2024 @ 8:58 pm
I mean if I think of an English message and attempt to communicate it by writing
"歐買嘎，呼爾侑！"
then, despite the fact that I have employed sign-sound associations conventionally associated with written Mandarin, the message is "in English" surely? — all the more so if you understand it?
"nā ū êng chò lí siá tiān-chú-phoe hō͘ –góa: miâ . sèⁿ . si en iu . i ti iu"
this on the other hand is mostly in (poor?) Taiwanese :D
Jonathan Smith said,
November 2, 2024 @ 9:01 pm
"." > "@" :/ :/
KIRINPUTRA said,
November 3, 2024 @ 12:23 pm
I see — you mean something like “writing English in Mandarin”, or “writing language X using the script of language Y”. I’m down with that.
I want to respond in a way that validates all or most of the points you’re actively making, throwing conciseness to the winds if I must.
Speaking of Spanglish…. A lot of Andhra (“Telugu”) Americans can type & read in makeshift romanized Telugu when messaging each other, etc. I believe Andhrans raised in Tamil Nadu do the same or similar using the Tamil script. Here we have fluent or near-fluent Telugu speakers with limited command of the Telugu script. I agree that the formats they’ve come up with are some kind of Telugu rather than some kind of Tamil or English.
By the same token, Sumatran Hokkien speakers will message & tweet in makeshift romanized Hokkien. Agreed that such writing is some kind of Hokkien rather than some kind of Malay. (Even though it tends to be interwoven with some kinds of Malay.)
Your intuition is that 林叨趙咖* is the same kind of thing? Having already considered that possible interpretation, it seems clear that it’s not.
* I’d romanize this too for the benefit of the virgins, but I might have to romanize it as Mandarin, and I want to avoid that right now.
The first exit off the freeway is the creative virtuosity of the name 林叨趙咖. Note the parallelism — surnames batting leadoff & 3rd, and soundy 口 graphs batting 2nd & cleanup. The passer-by or app-scroller turns it over in their mind for a few seconds and — boom! The sound output of the back-of-mind involuntary Mandarin-reading muscle reacts with the (possibly quite developed; also possibly rather undeveloped) built-in ear for Taioanese and the Eureka moment smashes in from the blind side. This is high-concept stuff — not no make-do representation (of anything).
NOTE. There is the so-called Hóechheⁿ 火星 — “Martian” — script, where Taioanese is spelled out using make-do sinographs borrowed for their Mandarin sound values. Even the Martian has its conventions & tendencies, though. There is a tendency to “borrow” 恁 from Taioanese itself for LÍN, due to three factors. First, recognition of (the written form) 恁 persists throughout Taioanese-speaking society (incl. among non-native speakers) — due in part to its use in the Martian. Second, there are no satisfying straight Martian matches for LÍN. Third, (the written form) 恁 is uncommon in Mandarin but common in Taioanese and in the Martian, so the involuntary Mandarin-reading muscle knows to lay off on it, which makes using it for LÍN that much smoother. Also, 灶 works perfectly for CHÀU even in pure Martian terms, and 趙 adds no laze value. Meanwhile, Taioanese 灶脚 is perfectly accessible to working-knowledge-and-above Taioanese speakers — see 溫叨灶腳 — but 灶咖 may be preferable in Mandarin-oriented contexts (i.e. for highly Mandarin-oriented audiences) for three reasons. First, the involuntary Mandarin-reading muscle gives JIǍO as a knee-jerk reading for 脚, which creates dissonance even for (most middle-aged or younger) people with well-developed Taioanese-reading muscles, worsening as we go along the spectrum to the kind of (Taioanese-knowing) folks who might have to stare at 灶脚 for a few seconds before it hits them. Second, 灶脚 is plain or even boring; 灶咖 has this edgy-playful Martian slant, for better or worse. Third, 灶咖 may come across as more welcoming (than 灶脚) to the growing demographic of Taioanese-challenged Mandophones. (And 趙咖 builds on all this. It is even farther out there — very custom & very creative.)
NOTE. Again, the brilliance of 林叨趙咖 only exists in written form. It’s not impossible that the situational incongruity of (spoken Taioanese) LÍN TAU CHÀU-KHA 恁兜灶脚 is lost on the owners — although that would be speculative. No doubt it’s lost on a good part of the clientele. But LÍN TAU CHÀU-KHA 恁兜灶脚 is generic anyway (but for the incongruity). The written form of 林叨趙咖 is what makes it go.
Another exit off the freeway is that there is no indication that 林叨趙咖 (the name, not the business itself — but that too) is meant for in-group consumption. In the context, it’s pretty certain that the name is meant for broader consumption. (Assuming you know something of the island, the city & maybe even the neighborhood where it’s located….) For one thing, most entrepreneurs — esp. in East Asia — want as broad a client base as poss., w/i the bounds of social reality. Further, unlike Andhra Americans or Andhra Tamilians or Sino-Sumatrans or U.S. Latinos, the TAYWAN people (as the Amis call them) have no sense of being a unique other [in pretty much any part of lowland Formosa]; from many angles, at least, they barely have any sense of being an ethnicity at all. The “rah-rah” TAYWAN “chauvinist” of the Mandophone imagination is based on phenomena arising from the TAYWAN being othered & oppressed by the Nationalist Chinese. The oppression is broadly believed to be in the past even by the oppressed parties; the general spirit of the epoch is that “we’re all Formosans now”, which sounds (but not in English) like “we’re all TAYWAN now” or…. It’s a logic-pretzel if you think about it, but you can keep it simple by not thinking about it, and most entrepreneurs are on the cutting edge of that (not thinking about it), not w/o reason. For good measure, spirited play in the Martian — distinguished, as always, not by depth of Taioanese but by skill with Mandarin & its symbols — is a pretty good signal that one is “post”. So … there may be a good comparison to be drawn to “creative Spanglishized Spanish” as used in commerce, esp. in regions where the Anglos kind of know their Spanish. But there is evidently no comparison to U.S. Latinos using Spanish for in-group marketing while (with intention or not) mixing it with English.
NOTE. This may be repetitive — or not — but knowing enough Taioanese to understand LÍN TAU CHÀU-KHA … does not bundle with ethnicity in general, although people of a certain age who don’t know (even) that much Taioanese will tend to cite ethnicity. And people under a certain age might just shake their heads…. There are sociolinguistic gotchas; the incoming non-Japanese (?) scholar seems likely to wind up with a signif. greater ratio of out-and-out non-Taioanese-knowing islanders in their circles than exist in the locality at large, skewing (all in one direction) the perceptions of a group of people who are trusted by others to study, to know, & to enlighten.
Yet another exit off the freeway is to approach the question via written Taioanese. But it’s getting late (at night), and “written Taioanese” has become contested in some circles, in a way that “written Telugu” or even “written Cantonese” are not. There are Brahmins — ethnic TAYWAN scholars, based in Taipei — out to blur the matter, cranking out papers explaining how the Mandarin & Mandarin-matrix (with Classical Chinese & Taioanese elements; 三及第) prose put out by Formosan writers between 1920 & 1945 were actually just very, very bookish written Taioanese (or Hakka). E.g. whenever they wrote 我們, they had GOÁN or LÁN in mind, so that was what they intended to write (unless of course they had Hakka NGÀI-TÊU in mind; or was the reader the one that mattered?), and therefore that was what they were actually supposedly writing. We should not “judge them for correctness”; they were only just “inventing” written Taioanese (& Hakka), never mind the 350+ years of Hoklo & Hakka texts & fragments that preceded the Neo-Sinopócalypse. … I think I see why they’re doing what they’re doing, but in this context it might be enough for us to just evaluate their claims against what we know to be true.
There is so much more to all this than meets the eye. There is published data & insight of all kinds, and the streets & gatherings can be read like books. There is at least that much to it.
(Hó! Góa khòaⁿ ū.)