#hokkien

I haven’t talked about Zen koans in a while, but lately, I’ve been re-reading one of my Japanese introduction books to Rinzai Zen titled うちのお寺は臨済宗 (“My Temple is Rinzai Zen”), and the subject of koans came up. I poked around the Internet a bit, and a lot people seemed to imply that the first koan given to a new student is often the famous “Mu” koan, also known as “Joshu’s dog”, or other such…

My study of Taiwanese Hokkien or Tâi-gì (台語, “Taiwanese”) continues, and it has been a lot of fun, but also some surprising challenges. It took a few weeks, but I’ve mostly got the hang of the modern Romanization system called Tâi-lô (台羅, lit. “Taiwanese Romanization”). It’s different than other Romanization systems I have seen before, but the Short Takes book by Bite Size Taiwanese has some…

Chalk this post up as a “cool things I wanted to share with readers” post. A little while back I talked about the Hokkien-dialect of Chinese, which is widespread in Southeast Asia, and also Taiwan. In Taiwan it is often called Tâi-gì (台語 or 臺語) which sounds like “dye-ghee”. However, I started to run into issues finding resources on how to learn Hokkien, until last week, when I had a chance…

Speak Hokkien! Penang hokkien dictionary It’s such an incredible honour to be part of this wonderful project. When Rosalind, my publisher, asked if i was interested to illustrate the dictionary cover I immediately said yes! As usual Patsy did her magic with my sketches and turned them into a beautiful book cover. I feel so grateful for this opportunity. Thank you 🙏 As a Penangite I am proud of…

I think we would get along.

Lately, my exploration of the Hokkien language of Chinese, in particular as it is spoken in Taiwan, continues. The amount of educational resources for Taiwanese Hokkien is far less than Mandarin since it is more of a “street language” than an official language, but I have been able to find some excellent material thanks to my Taiwanese-speaking friend. One of the first challenges of learning…

Ùi hit ê kho͘ ’á cháu lī, kòe lâi chit pêng têng khai sí, mā sī lâi chhì giām kàu taⁿ su khó chiâⁿ kú ·ê, Tâi Gí bûn jī hong àn, Ta̍k ke eng kai ū chù ì tio̍h sī siáⁿ mi̍h khoán ·ê ah?