Just to confirm that I am reading what you wrote correctly:
汝捌想過編寫一本“電子業辭典”，無？
Right. Sorry to be using ugly toneless romaji instead of kanji and Hoklo-style romaji. Sometimes it's all I have to work with in the webcafes in this country. Well, at least they're cheap, fast (hello Indo), and let U log on without a national ID (unlike China).
If what U have is really just a page, would U like to have it posted on the web as a webpage? My websites are in a shambles, but it would be cool to post your mini-glossary once I have everything set up right. Just one of many options.
China and Taiwan (yes, that was me being politically-incorrect again):
And then there are the transliterations that are clearly biased towards the Northern pronunciations. My pet hate for this one is 巧克力 for 'chocolate'.
I hear U on this one! Whenever I think about it, though, I have to say that Southern (Tng/Thong) pronunciations wouldn't do people any favors in Mandarin. Try using the old Tsinoy (Sino-Pinoy) place names in Mandarin. Each language needs to have its own transliterations.
It's interesting that a lot of Vietnamese translations of non-Sino proper names are also just Sino-Viet readings of kanji transliterations based on Chinese languages.
I've had many PRC Chinese over the years try to tell me that Taiwanese and Hong Kongers are so westernised compared to themselves, but when I start asking them about visiting temples and having altars at home, they don't know how to answer and I have to remind them that most Taiwanese would be able to answer such questions.
...
but I would say Taiwanese and Hong Kongers actually think in a more conservatively old Chinese way than PRC Chinese ̣not to mention 南洋 Chinese), particularly those in urban areas.
I think there's grains of truth on all sides. True, the Communist culture that washed over China and re-did China was arguably a very European thing, and it killed off much of "old China". My take is that orang HK and urban TWese are both more "conservatively Chinese" and more "Westernized" than most China Chinese, with lots of exceptions: I'd say it's mighty hard to "out-Chinese" the people of Teochew. My impression is that some Sino-M'sians are yet more conservatively Chinese AND more Westernized at the same time than HK/TW people.
It's funny that China Chinese will kind of deride HK/TWese as being more Westernized, while TWese themselves cite being more Westernized--"bijiao zao" is the common keyword--as one of the straws they grasp at when they try to list their competitive advantages over China Chinese.
China Chinese also think South Koreans are whitewashed. But put the S Korean flag side by side with the Chinese flag, and tell me who got a better whitewashing.
In the end, from interacting with China Chinese people, esp. people from the boondocks, I have to question the assumption that b/c China lost many of the trappings of its old culture during the Cultural Rev, therefore it lost much of its old culture as well. The urge to kill girl babies comes from nowhere if not the old culture.
Actually, perhaps he meant the opposite? It isn't always the case that Taiwanese Mandarin is more Anglicised. I've often thought of it the other way around, where Taiwanese have a better grasp of the Classical Chinese influenced idiom, and PRC Chinese have fallen into a kind of translationese, "purer" on the surface in lexicon (not so many English words used by the young "cool" people), but actually closer to English and other western languages through ignorance of the Classical tradition. From my own experience PRC Chinese is much easier to translate into English than Chinese written by educated Taiwanese.
Yet again, very interesting. My experience with Taiwanese people ... is that they like to use English words directly instead of words that exist in Mandarin or written Chinese. They feel these English words are improper in formal writing, such as textbooks or instruction booklets, but U will hear them everywhere, and see them in Powerpoint presentations and emails, etc. Displaying their abilities to throw English words around seems to directly correlate with "face". There are "Chinese purists" in Taiwan... The interesting thing is that they're usually 49ers, a.k.a. Taro, a.k.a. 1949 "Mainlanders" who've spent time in Anglo countries and gone home with reinforced "Chinese" identities. The Hoklo majority could care less, and, indeed, I guess, why should they?
