Symantic Range of Taiwanese Intensifiers

Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 03:58:51 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Taiwanese intensifiers
NOTE: You must switch the text encoding to "Traditional Chinese" to see the Chinese characters below.

I've begun studying Taiwanese and Judy and I noticed a trend in intensifiers at least the way the I-Lan County residents speak. Here are the characters also that go with them curtesy of Rev. Edward Tanng.

	chia (即)	chin (真)	chiok' (足)	siu*
	quite	very	so	too
say it with a	smile	smile	furrowed brow	frown

I do not even see "chia" in the two Taiwanese-English dictionaries though I hear it a lot in I-Lan.
I know the character for "chin".
For chiok' , Judy and I think it is the same character that means "fully".
For siu*, I find the word in the dictionary but no equivalent character (Mandarin "Tai" ( 太) seems to mean the same thing but must be a different character)

In\ Chu/ Liat' Bok' Su
印主烈牧師
Rev. Joel Linton
Missionary to Taiwan
台灣教會植堂團隊
Taiwan Church Planting Partners
www.taiwanchurch.org/language