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sweet osmanthus flower").
The second way of writing the name of this dish that is commonly seen in Chinese restaurants in the United States is 木须肉 (pinyin: mù xū ròu). The second character 须 (xū) means "whiskers," and is often given an additional determinative component in writing (to distinguish the meaning of "whiskers" from the other meanings of 須) so that it comes to be written as 鬚. It is possible that 木須肉 (literally "wood whiskers pork") might have been used on the menus of the first American Chinese restaurants to serve the dish in place of the correct compound 木樨肉 ("sweet osmanthus pork") due to haste or simply because of the limitations of Chinese typewriters. It may also merely have been the result of writing the wrong character with a similar pronunciation.
Two additional explanations of the name have unclear origins and may be examples of folk etymology: there is a neighborhood with a similar name in Beijing called Muxidi (木樨地), which is home to the Muxidi station (木樨地站). The dish is also occasionally… called 苜蓿肉 (mùsù ròu) meaning "alfalfa meat".
Clear as mud, as my mother used to say. Still, I give the folks at Wikipedia a lot of credit for grappling with the colossal confusion swirling around the not so simple and innocent Chinese dish called muxu. Make of it what you will.
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ything. Knowledge about the yellow flowers must have predated the actual dish. 史記·大宛列傳* already mentions the existence and cultivation of 苜蓿**, supposedly brought back by Han*** envoys from Dayuan**** in Central Asia.
[VHM:
*Sima Qian (ca. 145 BC- ca. 86 BC [after 91 BC]), Records of the Grand Scribe), "Exemplary traditions of Dayuan"
**mùxu ("Medicago; alfalfa" [excellent for forage] — but there are many different types)
***dynasty name (202 BC–9 AD; 25–220 AD [9–23 AD: Xin])
****"It appears that the name 'Yuan' was simply a transliteration of Sanskrit Yavana or Pali Yona, used in Asia to designate Greeks ('Ionians'), so Dayuan meant 'Great Ionians'." (source)]
木樨* is another name for 桂花**, native to China. The 20c writer Liang Shiqiu 梁實秋, in one of his prose pieces Yashe tan chi 雅舍談吃, once wrote that northerners tend to avoid saying 蛋*** but refer to it indirectly through words like 木樨/芙蓉/鸡子 (this accords with the Qing record referenced in the Wikipedia page you cited). Could it be that 木樨 is too difficult to write down (on the menu?), so was somehow recorded as 木须? Obviously some phonetic assimilation was involved as well.
[VHM:
*mùxī ("Osmanthus", a genus of about thirty species)
**guìhuā ("Osmanthus fragrans") — "Adaptation of 桂 (guì) to distinguish the osmanthus from the 肉桂 (ròuguì, 'cassia; Chinese cinnamon')." (source)
***dàn ("egg") — synonym for "testicle" in many topolects]
Zihan provided a more precise quote from Liang Shiqiu's essay:
黄菜指鸡蛋。北平人常避免说蛋字，因为它不雅，我也不知为什么不雅。“木樨”“芙蓉”“鸡子儿”都是代用词。更进一步“鸡”字也忌讳，往往称为“牲口”。
The "yellow veggie" refers to eggs. People from Beijing often avoid speaking of the word "egg," because it is not decent. I don't know why that is the case.* "Osmanthus," "hibiscus," “chicken eggs [very colloquial]" are all euphemisms. Even the word "chicken" can be tabooed and is often called "draught animal."
[VHM: *see my last note just above, also this post; either Liang Shiqiu was being extremely disingenuous or he was utterly naive and clueless.]]
Before I begin the wrap-up phase of this already long post, let me give a list of ingredients for muxu pork:
marinade
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp Chinese cooking sherry/wine
1 tsp corn starch
1 egg white
1 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp white pepper powder
sauce
3 cloves garlic
1 scallion
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp rice vinegar
1/2 tsp white sugar
1/2 tsp white pepper powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp MSG
1 tsp sesame oil
2 tbs water
other ingredients
250 g pork tenderloin
2 eggs
1 medium size cucumber
5 g dried black "wood ear" fungus
15 pieces dried daylily
3 tbs vegetable oil
Made properly with the right ingredients, muxu can be divinely delicious. Made improperly with whatever is at hand, so-called muxu can be a big let down. Here's what happened when I set about systematically trying out some nearby places that claimed to have muxu meat dishes.
The first place I went is named Great Wall. I called my order in: "Do you have muxu pork?" "Yes." "How long will it take?" "10 minutes." The cook was a middle-aged mom, the person at the counter was a teenage girl whose little sister was sitting on a chair nearby — reading a book, mind you, not playing with a digital device. The girl at the counter handed me a paper bag with the muxu pork inside. As you would expect from a small strip mall Chinese restaurant like this one, the food was very hot (temperature wise). There were two pliable, nondescript, unappetizing pancakes and a container with the muxu pork. I opened it up and my face fell. It had strips of hard pork (should be soft), but not one of the other essential ingredients: no black “wood ear” fungus, no eggs, no daylily, and no cucumber! What the devil?! Just generic strips of cabbage, carrots, and other unidentifiable veggies (celery and tiny bits of bell peppers, perhaps).
When I asked the girl at the counter why they didn't include black wood ear fungus, she re[...]
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Word of the Day: sluggish
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to change position when you're lying down so that you're on your back if you were face down, or face down if you were on your back
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Word of the Day
oracular
Definition: (adjective) Resembling an oracle in obscurity of thought.
Synonyms: enigmatic.
Usage: As the teacher read aloud, enchanted by the oracular sayings of Victorian poets, the class became progressively more confused.
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admin
administrator, administration, person or department that runs an organisation
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
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a pickup truck
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Idiom of the Day
know full well
To know or be aware of something without any possible doubt. Watch the video
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hold of the name “Taiwan” and not afford other groups the ability to use the name either?
Circling back to the start, language is power. This is a reality. Groups that are large have more influence and languages naturally coalesce toward power and prestige. The name “Chinese” refers to the spoken word and written script of the official language used in China, but China is also composed of several ethnic groups and peoples.
Using “Chinese” to refer to all languages and scripts spoken and written by ethnic Han people is Han chauvinism, and this is no less unjust toward non-Han peoples.
Taigi falls under the Min language umbrella, just as Mandarin is a part of the Sinitic language umbrella. Linguists emphasize that all languages are equal — that no language is inferior to another or lacking in refinement or sophistication — but power dynamics has always differed greatly from this linguistic principle. Renaming “Taiwanese Minnanese” as “Taigi” is closely related to Taiwan’s self-identity. It is a political question.
Languages are productions based on customs, conventions and the ideas of a population. Languages progress and names evolve. From “Minnanese” to “Taiwan Minnanese” to “Tai-uan-ue” and “Taigi,” the adoption and dropping of names involve the majority of the populace that speaks the language.
Sound changes as studied in Comparative Historical Linguistics may be characterized as governed by phonological laws, but what sets these transformations in motion (migrations, disasters, wars, pathbreaking inventions, etc.) is very much aleatory in nature. We know what Minnanese is now, but we have not yet fully discovered and described its origins and evolution. All the less can we predict what it will be half a century, a century, or two centuries from now. Selected readings
* "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese" (7/22/24)
* "The classification of [nan] Chinese (Min Nan)" (7/27/24)
[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer]
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ribing Taiwanese tend to compare with Mandarin, or lack distinction. between Taiwan and mainland China where [nan] is spoken. Selected readings
* "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese" (7/22/24)
* Taiwanese, Mandarin, and Taiwan's language situation
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queer
homosexual, gay
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not know (someone) from a bar of soap
To be completely unaware of or know nothing about someone; to have never met the person indicated. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
apposite
Definition: (adjective) Strikingly appropriate and relevant.
Synonyms: apt, pertinent.
Usage: The governor approached the warriors humbly and proclaimed their heroism loudly, flattering them with his well-timed and apposite compliments.
Discuss
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plied, "We don't serve wood ear fungus in any of our dishes." I questioned, "Why not?" She said, "Americans don't like it." I retorted, "But if you don't include wood ear and egg, then it is not muxu." Without missing a beat, she proclaimed, "This is our take on muxu." That made me smile, because it was such an idiomatic English expression. She was a teenager whose Mandarin was minimal but very au courant with her English, which completely disarmed me.
The second place I went was Bamboo Bistro. I had gone there about 10-15 years ago when they first opened and ordered another of my favorite dishes, Singapore Noodles. It was so horrible (rubbery, dirty broccoli and no sense of how to use curry, among other sins) that I never returned. Now, however, in my urgent need for muxu, plus the fact that I walk right by Bamboo Bistro every day, I thought I'd give them a reprieve. Who knows, maybe they got a new chef.
I went in to inquire. Things didn't look too promising at first. The waitress couldn't speak Mandarin and her English was below minimal (when she said "eggs" I couldn't understand her because I thought she was saying "X"). The female boss had to come out and interpret (the male boss stayed hidden and silent in the back). Her Mandarin was good (she told my that the waitress was Malaysian [maybe she spoke Hokkien, Fuzhou, Teochew, Hainanese, etc., but I didn't have a chance to find out what it was] — later the waitress told me that she doesn't speak any kind of Chinese at all, only Bahasa Malaysia and English), so I could talk to her (the female boss) and was able to place my order.
What Bamboo Bistro served me was much better than Great Wall. It had wood ear fungus for sure, a miniscule amount of scrambled eggs, the pancakes were appetizing, but no daylillies and no cucumbers. Not too bad (they must have changed owners), but I'll still have to go searching for my tampopo-muxu.
I conclude with what Zihan told me when I asked her for suggestions about where to go to get muxu:
It seems like most Chinese restaurants around Swarthmore have it. Bamboo Bistro (you can walk there), Great Wall, Da Chen, etc. 柳记饭馆 in Philly's China Town also has it. I don't know if any is good, but the gist of moo shu, as I understand it, is the art of bricolage.
Indeed! Selected readings
* "The language of spices" (1/6/24)
* Gábor Parti, "Mapping the Language of Spices: A Corpus-Based, Philological Study on the Words of the Spice Domain", Sino-Platonic Papers, 338 (January, 2024), 1-243.
* "Asafoetida: Satanically stinky spice" (12/10/23)
* "Garbler of spices" (8/21/22)
* "Sino-Semitica: of cinnamon, cassia, and katsura and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2" (6/25/22)
* "Sino-Semitica: of gourds, cassia, and hemp and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (2/1/20) Addendum The "Etymology" section of the Wikipedia article on "Moo shu pork"
There are two competing histories regarding how the name of this dish is written and explained.
One story gives the name as 木犀肉 (pinyin: mù xī ròu). The last character 肉 (ròu) means "meat" and refers to the pork in the dish. The first part 木犀 (mù xī) is the name for the sweet osmanthus, a small ornamental tree that produces bunches of small and fragrant blossoms that may be yellow or white.
Scrambled eggs have an appearance that remind people of the mixed yellow and white flowers, so 木犀 (mù xī) is a poetic way of referring to the scrambled eggs used in preparing this dish. Additionally, at Chinese Confucian death anniversary celebrations, the Chinese word for "egg" (蛋; pinyin: dàn) is avoided when referring to dishes containing eggs, as many Chinese curses contain this word. Thus, the word dàn was typically substituted using the euphemism "sweet osmanthus." By this reasoning, in this version of the dish's name, the first character, 木 (mù) is short for 木耳 (mù'ěr, meaning "wood ear fungus") and 樨 (xī, meaning "sweet osmanthus tree") is short for 桂花 (guíhuā, meaning "[...]
Language Log
Muxu meat dishes: the art of bricolage
I've eaten a lot of muxu beef / pork / chicken / shrimp in my day, and I love the combination of meat strips, black "wood ear" fungus, scrambled eggs, daylily, and cucumber served wrapped in a thin, soft pancake. Usually I'm compulsive about knowing the meaning of the names of dishes that I eat, but muxu has always defeated me. I'm not even sure how to pronounce the name (it's also transcribed as moo shu, mushu, and mooshi) nor how to write it in characters (variants include completely unrelated 木须, 木樨, etc.).
When I first encountered the dish decades ago, I spent a fair amount of time trying to unravel the jumbled meanings, pronunciations, and written forms of the name. However, since I was getting nowhere fast, I soon gave up on those investigations (in the days before the internet and search engines, things were much harder to figure out). Then I spent so many years wandering around overseas, and I simply didn't encounter muxu for a long time.
Recently, however, my zest for all kinds of Chinese recipes has been reignited, partly because some of my many Chinese students are good cooks and partly because my favorite Chinese restaurant, Sang Kee, right across the street from Penn's Van Pelt Library, has such a vast repertoire of delicious dishes that I go there often and have tried many of them. Sometimes, as I scan the capacious, copious menu looking over the scores of items available there, I subliminally notice the absence of muxu. When I ask the waiters and the laoban, they always say "We don't have it", even though they sometimes make special dishes at my request, such as new ones that contain dòuchǐ 豆豉 ("fermented black beans"). Maybe the powers that be at Sang Kee do not think it's a sufficiently authentic Chinese dish! So I started scouting among the hundreds of Chinese restaurants in the Philadelphia area for muxu, and have found quite a few that supposedly serve it, including two right in the little town of Swarthmore where I live.
Before I located a place where I can eat muxu regularly again, I started to think about the many enigmas swirling around its names. So I wrote to one of my students, Zihan Guo, who is a scholar of Chinese cuisine:
Lately I've been having a longing for some good muxu rou [the last word just means "meat"]. Sang Kee doesn't have it, and I don't know where to go to get it.
Be that as it may, since I'm an incorrigible language maven, while dreaming of muxu rou I couldn't help but think of the linguistics of that odd-sounding name with several very different orthographies and a vexing semantic / etymological problem: did the flower get its name from the appearance of scrambled eggs, or vice versa?
Here are some etymological notes on the name from Wiktionary:
From the flower of the plant 木樨 (mùxī, “sweet osmanthus”), due to a similar appearance. Qing-dynasty official and writer Liang Gongchen recorded the following in his Scribbled Notes on the Gardens of the North and East, 3: 北方店中以雞子炒肉，名木樨肉，蓋取其有碎黃色也。
In shops of northern China, people stir-fry meat with eggs and call the dish “muxi pork”, because of its mottled yellow appearance.
The pronunciation is due to assimilation of vowel roundness.
Zihan replied:
If I recall correctly, the first time I ever had muxu rou was with my parents at a Chinese restaurant near Yellowstone, a few years ago. For some time I had thought that it was an invention of Chinese Americans. Since it is a northern specialty, it is understandable that I — a southerner — would not have known of its existence before then.
There are actually three names associated with this dish. It seems that 苜蓿 and 木樨 are two different plants, but 木须 does not designate an[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
jack (1)
to steal
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Idiom of the Day
know (one's) own mind
To be firmly resolute and confident in one's ideas, intentions, plans, or opinions. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: ditty
This word has appeared in 40 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
run off with
If you run off with somebody, you leave home secretly in order to be with them.
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Word of the Day
acquiescent
Definition: (adjective) Willing to carry out the orders or wishes of another without protest.
Synonyms: biddable.
Usage: She was too acquiescent to challenge authority and did everything she was told.
Discuss
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Language Log
Present prison president
In last Friday's post ("Annals of intervocalic coronal reduction"), I presented a case from 2015 where Donald Trump pronounced "president" as if it were "prison". This provoked a lot of interesting commentary about the nature and prevalence of various reduced pronunciations of that word, and so I thought I'd add a bit more evidence to the discussion. As I noted a few months ago ("'There's no T in Scranton'", 3/10/2024)
Shuang Li's INTERVIEW: NPR Media Dialog Transcripts dataset […] contains 3,199,859 transcribed turns from 105,817 NPR podcasts, comprising more than 10,648 hours. That dataset is just the transcripts, but some years ago, Jiahong Yuan and I downloaded the audio and aligned it with the texts. And I wrote a simple search script […]
Running that script to search for the word string "president of the united states" turns up 2,443 phrasal clips, from which I selected 12 (literally) at random.
[I chose a consistent context because the often-extreme across-word co-articulation in spontaneous speech means that the last syllable or two of "president" may overlap with what follows, wherefore I've included "…of the united" in the audio clips…]
Listen and see what you think — you can also download the audio and examine it with your favorite acoustic analysis programs.
(1) Your browser does not support the audio element. (2) Your browser does not support the audio element. (3) Your browser does not support the audio element. (4) Your browser does not support the audio element. (5) Your browser does not support the audio element. (6) Your browser does not support the audio element. (7) Your browser does not support the audio element. (8) Your browser does not support the audio element. (9) Your browser does not support the audio element. (10) Your browser does not support the audio element. (11) Your browser does not support the audio element. (12) Your browser does not support the audio element.
This is yet another example of a problem documented in multiple earlier posts (see below), and discussed more formally in my 2018 book chapter "Towards Progress in Theories of Language Sound Structure". Speech production maps discrete symbolic phonology onto continuous articulatory and acoustic signals, in a way that depends on language and dialect as well as linguistic and communicative context — and a lot of that process can't be coherently described by traditional symbolic allophony.
"On beyond the (International Phonetic) Alphabet", 4/19/2018
"Farther on beyond the IPA", 1/18/2020
"What IPA means now", 9/28/2022
"Pronunciation evolution", 4/15/2022
"More post-IPA astronauts", 4/16/2022
"'There's no T in Scranton'", 3/10/2024
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
pay out
to pay a sum of money to somebody, especially a large sum
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Word of the Day
inerrant
Definition: (adjective) Incapable of erring.
Synonyms: infallible.
Usage: Many traditional theologians insist that biblical texts are the literal Word of God and as such are inerrant and infallible.
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Language Log
Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese, part 2
"Taigi a political question of identity", By Hugo Tseng, Taipei Times (7/27/24)
The issue of whether to call the language spoken in Taiwan “Minnanese” (閩南語) or “Taigi” (台語, taiyu, also called Hoklo or Taiwanese) has long been a subject of debate. On the surface, it seems to be a simple question about language, but in essence it is a political question of identity.
Perhaps we could gain some inspiration from the duality of English as a language. English was, at its earliest, the language of the Angles — the Germanic people from the German-Danish border who invaded and settled in what is now known as England, whose name meant the “Land of the Angles.”
Through colonization and the spread of the language across the world, English — even as it melded with and adopted local characteristics and traits from other languages — remained essentially the same. In the US, Australia and other Anglophone countries, English is the name of the language, but the name is appended with a qualifier — the name of the country where it is used — such as American English or Australian English.
There is another aspect to the name English. England being the “Land of the Angles” has led to a linguistic “representation” that eclipses the languages of the original Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles and the Germanic Saxons who later invaded and settled in England from continental Europe. This is also a display of linguistic force, and it is a reality that cannot be anything but accepted.
What, no British English? But the greatest impact of all on the development of the English language was brought about by the Norman Conquest. And who were the Normans? Vikings / Norsemen who had originally spoken Old Norse, but who soon switched to Old French after they had settled in northern France. It was they who brought massive amounts of French linguistic influence to the British Isles after their conquest of 1066. I mention this only because the linguistic transformations that have occurred in East Asia, including Taiwan (originally peopled by Austronesian speakers, some of whom still survive there), are equally profound and pervasive, lest we ever entertain the mistaken notion that Chinese / Sinitic / Han, or any of its daughter languages, has "indisputably" (wú kě zhēngyì dì 無可爭議地) been the language of East Asia or any of its parts "since time immemorial" (zìgǔ yǐlái 自古以來).
From a linguistic standpoint, the origins of Taigi come from the convergence of the two parent branches of Tsuan-tsiu-ue (泉州話) and Tsang-tsiu-ue (漳州話). The first speakers of this language in Taiwan sailed across the “Black Ditch” — or the Taiwan Strait — to set down roots in Taiwan. All said, Taigi is a localized amalgamation that historically adopted influences from Dutch, Taiwanese indigenous languages, Japanese and Beijing-based Mandarin Chinese, gradually forming the Taigi spoken today.
If we are to split languages based on their linguistic branching, “Minnanese” is an umbrella term, but as a semantic hypernym, Minnanese has broader connotations and scope. Taigi is more specific, as a hyponym, with narrower connotations and scope, putting it on the same hierarchical level as the Amoy (廈門話) spoken in Xiamen, China, Tsang-tsiu-ue spoken in Zhangzhou, China, and Tsuan-tsiu-ue spoken in Quanzhou, China — all distinct languages in their own right.
People should remember, though, that there is a language in southwestern China and among several groups within Southeast Asia called “Tai” (also written as 台語 in Chinese), of which Thai from Thailand is a major language.
Some claim that using Taiwanese (台語) to refer to “Taiwanese Minnanese” is a form of Hoklo chauvinism and that using the name “Taiwanese” is unfair to other linguistic groups and ethnic groups who have also settled for a long time in Taiwan. How does one ethnic group take[...]
Language Log
The classification of [nan] Chinese (Min Nan)
[Serendipitously, right while we are in the midst of energetic discussions over the classification of and terminology for the languages of Taiwan, I received a communication from the international body that is charged with such matters for all the languages of the world, namely, an arm of the ISO. The following (after the page break) is a guest post by Janell Nordmoe, Registrar of ISO 639-3 Language Coding Agency. For those who are not familiar with it, "ISO 639 is a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) concerned with representation of languages and language groups." (source)
There have been significant changes with the publication of 639:2023, including that the decision on CRs rests with the Maintenance Agency, not SIL as Language Coding Agency for 639-3. This link describes the four sets within ISO 639, the Maintenance Agency.
At the link to the info about the 639 standard, the public reports link is the bottom of the page under Public Reports from the Maintenance Agency.]
——————————————————- New language code proposals for Taiwanese
While researching Taiwanese, I encountered your work in several places including Language Log, which led me to write to you. The short question I'm requesting your comment on is, how is Taiwanese distinct from Min Nan Chinese/Hokkien [nan] in terms of literature and ethnolinguistic identity?
The long version: In 2021 the Registration Authority for ISO 639-3, SIL International, received two requests to create codes for Taiwanese in the comprehensive set codes for world languages. They can be found at Taigi 2021-044 and Taiwanese 2021-045 (part of an 11-way split of [nan] Chinese, Min Nan) proposal. The consideration of these two requests was delayed due to the expected revision of ISO 639 (which was finally completed at the end of 2023) and is now underway.
Both change requests lack sufficient evidence from scholarship with regard to the creation of a new language code for Taiwanese as distinct from [nan] Min Nan Chinese, which both Ethnologue and Glottolog currently list as dialects of [nan] (in the case of Glottolog, Taipei Hokkien is a sub-dialect of Quan-zhang dialect).
According to the ISO 639:2023 standard, the distinction between a language and a dialect is based on the criteria below. In the case of Taiwanese, we have not found scholars making the case that Taiwanese is not intelligible with Hokkien/Min Nan/[nan] as in (a). The best case seems to rest on the distinct identity and distinct literature basis of criterion c.:
1.
Two related language varieties are normally considered to belong to the same individual language if speakers of each language variety have inherent understanding of the other language variety at a functional level (they can understand each other based on knowledge of their own language variety without needing to learn the other variety)
2.
Where spoken intelligibility is marginal, the existence of a common literature or common ethnolinguistic identity with a central language variety that both speaker communities understand is a strong indicator that they should nevertheless be considered varieties of the same individual language
3.
Where there is enough intelligibility between language varieties to enable communication, they can nevertheless be treated as different individual languages when they have long-standing, distinctly named ethnolinguistic identities coupled with established linguistic normalization and literatures that are distinct
Would you care to comment, for the benefit of the 639 Set 3 Language Coding Agency and for the 639 Maintenance Agency (MA) voting members, on the distinctiveness of Taiwanese from [nan] Min Nan in terms of
1.
Literature
2.
Ethnolinguistic identity
Articles and blogs desc[...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hold up (2)
to support something and stop it from falling down
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Word of the Day
ungainly
Definition: (adjective) Lacking grace or ease of movement or form.
Synonyms: clumsy, clunky, gawky, unwieldy.
Usage: He was a gawky lad with long ungainly legs, but she thought he was the most handsome boy she had ever seen.
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