In a language such as Taiwanese, tones are critical (even more so than Mandarin Chinese). Today I across three phrases in which one change in tone with the same exact romanized spelling for the entire sentence results in laughable differences:
Example 1:
Intended sentence: He saw a bad person.
Change in one tone: He is a bad person!
Example 2:
Abraham has many descendents.
Abraham has lots of rain shoes.
Example 3:
Jesus instructs people (as in on the Sermon on the Mount).
Jesus bites people to death.
I am two days shy of finishing my one month of intensive full time Taiwanese language study. I hope in the future as I pick up more vocabulary I can be careful with tones!
4 comments:
Mark,
I hope you find the fun part of learning Taiwanese as I did when I read your article. ;-)
Tina
I would have my foot in my mouth all the time. I just don't hear the tonal nuances. I had a terrible time learning Italian when I was there.
I would always have my foot in my mouth! I just don't hear the small nuances!
Jeannette
Mother scolds the horse.
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