During a day of convalescing in front of the TV, I discovered that a lot of commercials and shows in Taiwan speak in what I’ve coined ‘Chi-Wanese’ – a mix of Taiwanese and Mandarin Chinese. They switch back and forth between dialects, which was initially discombobulating but now, I’ve accepted that I might not understand the whole sentence anyway (not that my Mandarin alone is good enough to understand a full sentence).

In case you’re unfamiliar with Chinese as a language, this is how it works. All spoken forms & dialects (Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, etc.) use the exact same character set. It’s all written the same, just pronounced very differently. That’s why if you watch TV in Chinese, there are still subtitles, in case you can’t understand the language they’re using.

How different are pronunciations between dialects? Pretty different, here’s an example:

English: I am full. (Translation: don’t push anymore food on me, please.)
Written Chinese: 吃飽
Mandarin: chi bao
Taiwanese: ja baa
Cantonese: sic bo

That’s your language lesson of the day!

Other tip of the day which we learned while out at lunch. If you order beef noodle soup, check your broth for a shard of a ceramic bowl. That’s what Grace found today at the bottom of her noodles. She didn’t have to pay for her meal and got a free dumpling out of it too. So it wasn’t a total loss.

Back to my Chiwanese shows…