Taiwanese Loanwords in Taiwan Mandarin: Mechanism of a Dialect Borrowing in Taiwan

Abstract

Mandarin has been affected other languages in Taiwan so immensely that many Taiwanese people are not able to speak their mother tongues. However, in the last decade, Taiwanese has re-emerged and challenged the prestigious status of Mandarin. Many borrowings from Taiwanese has been observed in Taiwan Mandarin. This study uses newspaper corpus as the data source, examines the sociolinguistic functions of the Taiwanese loan words in Taiwan Mandarin based on Hock's (1991) approach of dialect borrowing. Hock stresses the prestige relation between donor and recipient language. Our statistical survey in newspaper corpora indicates that the frequency of loan words such as 走透透 zou-tou-tou 'visit everywhere' is dramatically risen after 1990. Furthermore, we argue with Weinreich's (1974) reasons for lexical borrowing. It is found that some of the Taiwanese loan words are borrowed for filling in lexical gaps in Mandarin, most of loan words are adopted in Mandarin conversation because the speakers consider them being more expressive in showing their attitude and feeling, such as humorous effect, the denotation of solidarity, easing the tone or reinforcing the tone. The Taiwanese society is developing and changing with giant strides. The once substratum influence is now a fashion. The use of Taiwanese loan words is under the joint constraints of social, political and psychological factors.