mirxia t1_iubv1rq wrote on October 30, 2022 at 3:24 AM

Reply to comment by sjiveru in Eli5: How is it possible for someone to speak English, but not be able to read or write it ? by Aboutfun

Just saw link. Having read through it, they are all cases of trying to "transliterate" the dialect (not sure if it's the correct word to use here) into Mandarin.

For example, yes “猪又” wouldn't make sense as written to Mandarin speakers. But here, it's an attempt to to make it sound as it's spoken while completely disregarding what the character means. I would argue that the correct script should be "猪肉", it's just that "肉” is pronounce differently in that dialect compared to Mandarin.

There's such example in Fuzhounese too. The name of the city itself is often written as "虎纠” in more casual context. But people all understand that it's for the sound and the official name of the city is "福州“ in written form.

sjiveru t1_iubv921 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 3:26 AM

Take a look at the links at the bottom; they may talk more directly about the issue.

mirxia t1_iuc295r wrote on October 30, 2022 at 4:36 AM

I'm reading through one of the links and this caught my attention:

>For example, to sack / fire / dismiss is pok tao lo 卜头路 — (spoken by the mother), so natural, more emotional than when you say kāichú 开除 (as in Mandarin).

This sort of illustrates my point, "卜头路" is a transliteration of hokkien using Mandarin pronunciations, so as written, it wouldn't be understood by anyone who doesn't speak hokkien. An apropos analogy is "bone apple tea", if the listener doesn't know "bon appétit", then it makes no sense whatsoever.

Yet still Hokkien speaker understands what "开除" means and use it in more formal contexts, albeit with a different pronunciation from Mandarin. In this way, written Chinese can be understood by people who speaks different dialects.