Module talk:zh/data/dial-syn/摩托車

o͘-tó͘-bái

Many Min Nan terms borrowed from Japanese do not possess standardized Han characters, especially when those Japanese words were further borrowed from western languages and thus written in Katakana. For example, Taiwanese Hokkein word bak-kuh ("to moving backwards") orginates from Japanese バック, ultimately from English back. One may refer to this appendix in the Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan for a detailed list of these loanwords.

Actually, as the the writing system blending romanization and Han characters (i.e. w:zh:漢羅台文) is gaining both popularity and influence, the tendency to "Hanzify" the non-Sino-Xenic lexemes seems unnecessary. Even if the attempts of "Hanzification are made, the representation might be disunified, variable, informal, or non-standardized. Moreover, sometimes they are simply coined by the Mandarin homophonic translation of Min Nan terms. For example, if we adhere to the original pronuciation of each Han character in Taiwanese Hokkien, then 歐兜邁 should be pronouced au-tau-māi, which is very different from o͘-tó͘-bái. In fact, only if 歐兜邁 is pronouced in Mandarin does it resemble o͘-tó͘-bái. As a result, 歐兜邁 should be considered one of the various Taiwanese Hokkien loanwords in Taiwanese Mandarin, rather than a "real" Min Nan word.

Likewise, when refering to written Min Nan, writing lo͘-lài-bà ("screwdriver") is better than writing 螺賴把 or 羅賴把; writing oa-sá-bih ("wasabi") is better than writing 哇沙比 or 哇沙米; writing ne-kut-tái ("necktie") is far better than 內褲帶 (lit. "belt of underpants") or 捏枯待 (lit. "to pinch a withered [plant] and wait").

To sum up, I recommend we discard the favouritism towards Han characters or Mandarin, specifically when handling the Min Nan terms. Why don't we accept o͘-tó͘-bái as the formal Min Nan term, just like we did similarly to ne-kut-tái in Module:zh/data/dial-syn/領帶? Wikijb (talk) 04:36, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

While I generally am sympathetic to making POJ the main form for Japanese loanwords in both dialectal tables and in entries, I see several issues that should probably be discussed more widely.

1. The general Taiwanese-speaking population is more literate in Han characters than in POJ AFAIK. This leads to a much bigger sample of attempts of "Hanzification" in general AFAICT. This is one of the reasons for me thinking that a well-attested Han character form should be considered the main form, as that is the form that is probably most understood by the general Taiwanese-speaking population.
2. While there is some degree of disunity/variability with Han characters, there is also some degree of variability in POJ. Sometimes it's a reflection of pronunciation; other times it might be an orthographic issue. See, for example, the various pronunciations of the word for "radio" - is the POJ supposed to be faithful to the pronunciation in those cases? They are "the same word", and so the various pronunciations leading to variation in orthography multiplies the forms that get displayed - crucially an issue for the dialectal map. Another example is the various spellings for the word for "beer" bì-lù, bì-luh, bih-luh - are these actually pronunciation differences or emerging norms in POJ writing?
3. There is some contention with what is considered "real" Taiwanese writing. A strict adherence to whether the characters accurately represents the sounds (or have Tâi-gí jī ê lí-lō͘) leads us to sweep away "normal/valid" ways of representing Taiwanese (at a purely scientific level, abstracting away any ideologies). Japanese, for example, frequently makes exceptions to individual character readings, so I don't know how valid this kind of strict adherence to individual character readings is. POJ is definitely a victim of this contention as well, and admittedly, Wiktionary currently is not doing it justice. But I don't think we should disparage well-attested but Mandarin-influenced forms either.

With all this said, I don't have a strong preference for o͘-tó͘-bái specifically. However, it might be good to discuss this further for the general treatment of Japanese loanwords. Similar discussions have taken place at Talk:阿莎力, but I think we should take this discussion to WT:BP, where it might be more visible. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:41, 5 November 2023 (UTC)