Comments on: Speak Chinese & New Taiwanese

By: Alan

Alan — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 03:40:40 +0000

from the ABC Comprehensive Dictionary:

支那 (trad./Budd.) China (now derogatory)

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 11:32:54 +0000

Thanks! With that kind of encouragement, I definitely will. If you do happen to get a chance, I’d still love some more info on your browser, so I can try to make the pop-up annotations work on it.

By: john mackay

john mackay — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:22:48 +0000

You’re right mate. I haven’t given anything constructive in my comments, and I’m sorry about that. You put a lot of hard work into this blog, and I like reading it. Please keep up the good work mate!

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 12:09:18 +0000

Unfortunately, on this blog, he wouldn’t have been the first fake.

Since I wasn’t sure, I felt it would be most prudent to withhold comment. After you called me “ignorant” and went on to attack me for not addressing Sam’s comment, I offered an explanation for my silence- which you also attacked.

Sadly, attacking is about all you’ve done on this blog; even in cases in which you’ve clearly misunderstood what was going on and could have offered something constructive, you’ve chosen not to.

By: john mackay

john mackay — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 11:19:52 +0000

But by saying odd, you were implying that he wasn’t Taiwanese, in the same way you pointed out he had a Western family name.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 11:16:38 +0000

John, you asked why I hadn’t responded to Sam’s comment and I gave you an honest answer. I thought that sentence was odd. I was mulling it over.

By: john mackay

john mackay — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:04:57 +0000

I speak French probably as well as you speak Chinese (that’s a compliment, mate!), and I’ve heard a lot of different French spoken by people in France and Quebec (stuff very different from what I learned in school), but I would never presume to call their French “odd”. And the fact that Sam has as Western family name doesn’t mean anything. You don’t know his family background - that’s borderline racism to make assumptions from something like that.
It looks like Melody has appointed herself as spokeswoman for the 20 million people here. Most of the native Taiwanese I know have generally positive views of Japan, unlike the people I met when I was working in South Korea.

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:16:18 +0000

Melody,

Sam has emailed me and said that the characters he wrote were Taiwanese. From everything I’ve learned, though, 支那 is a derogatory word for China or the Chinese that was used by the Japanese during WWII Japan.

Sam, I don’t really like censoring a comment thread, but I this kind of petty prejudice doesn’t really do much for the discussion. Barring a good explanation, please don’t use that kind of phrase here.

By: Melody

Melody — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 13:36:37 +0000

I’m Taiwanese and *I* can’t understand the Chinese Sam wrote. I think he’s a foreigner pretending to be Taiwanese. We wouldn’t say “中國話(支那語)是外國話。”

The 講國語 shirt is ok, but I should warn about the 新台灣人 shirt. It’s cute for a foreigner to wear, but ABC’s should not wear it. I hate Lee Tunghui and so do many Taiwanese. He can’t shutup. What a bastard says “I wish I were Japanese”!!?

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 17:45:12 +0000

John, I don’t have any desire to offend locals. Believe it or not, more than one local has suggested a 講國語 shirt to me. I also ran the idea by several Taiwanese people before making it. Aside from that, I’ve also been keeping an eye on what Chinese language blogs have said about it.

From everything I’ve seen the people upset about the shirt are nearly all foreigners. I’ve received several emails from locals who like the shirt, and even a positive response from someone from 嘉義 on my Chinese blog.

As for Sam above, I thought the Chinese in his comment looked a bit odd, so I followed the link to his blog and tried contacting him to ask him what his opinions were. He suggested that I leave 台北 because it’s a “Chinatown where nearly everyone speaks Chinese”. If he has a problem with the entire capital city, a few language students (learning a language he considers to be “foreign”) in those shirts isn’t going to make much of a difference. I certainly don’t see any way I can please him, considering I blog about learning that same language. Also of note, he has a western family name.