"She sells seashells at the seashore"

Have you tried this tongue-twist: "She sells seashells at the seashore"? I was taught by my American friends when I participated their group project: Phonetics and phonemics of Taiwanese. (Please don't ask me what are the definitions of phonetics and phonemics.) All is because that, in the beginning of this term, my English tutor (Mr. WC) invited me to teach him and his group members (Mr. TK and Miss JC) how to pronounce Taiwanese, a dialect of Chinese. (For more information, refer to Wikipedia: Taiwanese/Minnan ) I am not kidding....I thought they are so brave!!! Now, take a break and try a tongue-twist in Taiwanese (a story of monkeys, click this website in Wikisource).

Before the first day of the meeting, I got a list, distributed by their course instructor, as a guideline. I was shocked because there are more than 200 English words on that list. "This is going to be interesting", I thought. On the other hand, I am so scared. Although my parents speak Taiwanese fluently, I am not convinced to be a great Taiwanese speaker. Through the years, I spoke more fluently Taiwanese at two periods of time in my life: my childhood (before age 10 because my nanny speaks Taiwanese) and in college (because half of my classmates speak Taiwanese and my patients usually talked in Taiwanese). Otherwise, I only speak Taiwanese occasionally (such as communicate with my grandparents) or for fun (e.g., my junior high school classmates enjoyed called nickname in Taiwanese with each other because they sound funny). I have to say, though, my Taiwanese sounds more naturally when I sing songs (maybe the lyrics were usually pronounced in literacy style).

I have to confess that it was a pain when I prepared that list seriously during the first time. I got to translate English to Mandarin in my mind and then translate to Taiwanese. Can't think any shortcut for doing that. Also, I am not a pro to mark those pronunciations so I used "May's system" to mark all words. Sometimes, it is just hard to find any English letter or Chinese character for a sound in Taiwanese. I asked for helps from my parents and friends (Thanks to Mr S, Mr W and Miss M and Miss B). It was a crazy weekend to mark down all the words on that list.......I can tell how Mr S's frustration after he tried to demonstrate one word for thousand times. I was laughed by my father for some of my funny pronunciations and he thought they were like "Pittsburgh Taiwanese."

Anyway, as time goes, I search for the tone, vowel, and consonant systems of Taiwanese. Thank to the internet that I could find almost all information for the purposes of this project. Although the information sometimes is slightly inconsistent from one website to the other, I think they just come from different perspectives. Do you know there are 8 tones in Taiwanese? This amount of tones is even twice times as the tones in Mandarin. If we pronounce a sound with the 8 tones sequentially, it sounds like riding a roller coster (1 high smooth -> 2 high falling -> 3 low falling -> 4 low jumping ->5 rising -> (6 falling, similar to tone 2) -> 7 low smooth -> 8 high jumping). This was also the reason that I was almost screwed up using "May's system" to teach them at the first meeting.

Talking about the vowels and consonants, they are not as easy as the tone system which can be identified quickly. For example, some of the vowels carry nasal sounds from the beginning of a pronunciation to the end (e.g., child = "ngenn1-a8" ) (be careful, this is not the official way to mark the sound). Some of the consonants pronounce as holding bloom in the mouth and then exploring the air (e.g., breath, especially exhale, = "b(h)oon2"). It was so easy for me to say those words, but hard to explain to them during the meetings. However, I enjoyed the process of teaching Taiwanese because it helped me to relearn and appreciate the beauty of a language. For example, at the last meeting before they turned in their paper, I introduced a popular Taiwanese song "wife" to them. I found it touching and sweet to say the wife in the meaning of "a person whom I hold hands with." Besides, I was amazed that Taiwanese actually absorts pronunciations from other language. The most famous one would be Japanese, and these terms are used frequently (e.g., mood = "ki-mo-ji").

Finally, I was thrilled by the final report written by WC, TK, and JC. While they were asking great questions during the meeting, the report analyzed all possibilities of combinations regarding pronunciations. Even I am a native Taiwanese speaker, I don't think I can write such an excellent analysis. The good news was that they got good grades on this project, and, from the bottom of my heart, I think they deserved it. Their final report kindly talked about many good things of me. I would like to write this article to appreciate their invitation of participating this project. If any of you have the chance to read their final report, they are showing their expertise on studying a language.

p.s. I didn't get chances to share more culture costumes (e.g., Taiwanese opera, puppet play....) or some Taiwanese history with them because this is not the purpose of the project. Let me share a song from one of my favorite Taiwanese band (May Day): 憨人 (Translate as "a silly or naive person"). This band not only composes songs in Mandarin, but also in Taiwanese. I particularly like the plot of this MV.