# Taiwan Mandarin: Greetings



## ManyaR

Hello everybody-
I have seriously no knowledge about any middle eastern countries, but have a visitor from Taiwan coming to my house soon, and am wondering if
A: People in Taiwan speak mainly Mandarin Chinese
and 
B: If so, how would you formally introduce yourself/greet them???

Thanks for your help! I know this is a stupid question, but I figured I should ask here, since all of the places I looked at directed my to the Chinese language.....Thanks!!


----------



## Ghabi

Hi! This is not a stupid question of course, but perhaps we need to make sure where your guest is from in the first place. Are you sure he's from "middle eastern" "Taiwan"? The two don't seem to add up. If he's from the Middle East, perhaps you can get a more satisfactory answer from the Arabic Forum or the Indo-Iranian Forum.

On the other hand, if your guest is Taiwanese, then you can greet him in Mandarin or perhaps in Hokkien, both of which are tonal, which means you have to spend quite some efforts before being able to utter something intelligible to others.

Hope that gives you an idea!


----------



## SuperXW

Yes, Taiwanese speak mainly Mandarin Chinese.
To be specific, there are too many ways of greetings and too many dialects. It can be hard to master them in a short time.
So let's stick to the basics, shall we?
To a Taiwanese/PRC Chinese: knee hull! (Mandarin)
To a Hong Kongese/Cantonese: lay hole! (Cantonese)
These are the most common greeting ways. You can forget about introduce yourself in Chinese.

Seriously, what do you mean "middle eastern coutries"...


----------



## xiaolijie

> I have seriously no knowledge about any middle eastern countries


If we replace "middle" with "far", it'll be about right:
_I have seriously no knowledge about any Far Eastern countries._


----------



## Youngfun

SuperXW said:


> To a Taiwanese/PRC Chinese: knee hull! (Mandarin)


Or maybe knee how! 

By the way, I know many young Taiwanese that can't speak Taiwanese Hokkien, especially if their ancestors were immigrants from other provinces of China than Fujian.


----------



## SuperXW

Youngfun said:


> Or maybe knee how!


I think knee hull or knee hall would be more natural than knee how...


----------



## phill84

lee heh in case of greeting one person
dah gay heh in case of greeting a bunch of people





Youngfun said:


> Or maybe knee how!
> 
> By the way, I know many young Taiwanese that can't speak Taiwanese Hokkien, especially if their ancestors were immigrants from other provinces of China than Fujian.



born and raised in Fujian, yet I speak no hokkien


----------



## SuperXW

phill84 said:


> lee heh in case of greeting one person
> dah gay heh in case of greeting a bunch of people


E...what dialect are these?


----------



## phill84

SuperXW said:


> E...what dialect are these?


taiwanese


----------



## viajero_canjeado

phill84 said:


> lee heh (你好), dah gay heh （大家好）



I'd agree, all except 好 sounds more like hou4 (the Mandarin pronunciation of 后) than "heh".


----------



## Youngfun

Viajero, did you learn a lot of Taiwanese when in Taiwan?


----------



## viajero_canjeado

Youngfun said:


> Viajero, did you learn a lot of Taiwanese when in Taiwan?



Yi diam ma, ki xi wa xi o bei gong! = 一點點（這我不曉得該怎麼寫，或許是「一點子」或者是「一點仔」），其實我是黑白講！ （用台語，「黑白」這個結構是等於國語的「亂」，故「黑白講」等於「亂講」。）


----------



## phill84

viajero_canjeado said:


> I'd agree, all except 好 sounds more like hou4 (the Mandarin pronunciation of 后) than "heh".



I disagree 
to my ears it sounds between heh and hoh and actually closer to heh, also if you write it down in bopomofo it'd be ㄉㄚˋ ㄍㄟ ㄏㄜˋ, not ㄏㄡˋ or ㄏㄛˋ

but again, I don't speak hokkien, so I could be 黑白講 ing


----------



## Youngfun

Taiwanhua is a little bit different than the dialect*s* of Fujianhua (which are many and different among them too).


----------



## viajero_canjeado

phill84 said:


> I disagree
> to my ears it sounds between heh and hoh and actually closer to heh, also if you write it down in bopomofo it'd be ㄉㄚˋ ㄍㄟ ㄏㄜˋ, not ㄏㄡˋ or ㄏㄛˋ
> 
> but again, I don't speak hokkien, so I could be 黑白講 ing



Well, this may be a bit tangential for the present thread, but since you brought it up: no, you're right, if it's spelled ㄏㄜˋ, that is the proper pronunciation in the southern Taiwanese dialect of Hokkien. The hou4 pronunciation is the standard pronunciation in northern Taiwan's Minnanhua. You threw me off with the spelling "heh", which sounds like a chuckle to me. 

I guess you would spell ㄏㄜˋ as "he", not "heh".


----------



## Youngfun

According Wikipedia:

_然而，蚵（白话字：o；假名：ヲ）在台湾话中有两种读法：分别是以台湾北部为主的[o]及以台湾南部为首的[ə]（厦门亦读此音）。但后者应该如何标记，在学者之间亦有争论。有人认为是[ə]（中央元音），有人认为是[ɤ]（[o]的展唇音，和国语的ㄜ相同）。[29] 中华民国教育部的台罗拼音采用[ə]的说法。_

Wikipedia agrees with viajero for the bopomofo transcription: o ㄜ 蚵


----------



## taiwan886

Greeting with Taiwanhua


----------

