Traditional Chinese gods

[niuc]

In Taiwan, the inclusive first person plural pronoun lan2 is used as a polite second person pronoun, both singular and plural.

It's really interesting.

[SimL]

I know that my father used "ta-pO-lang" instead of "ang", but I don't know what he used instead of "bO".

I asked my parents a while back, but forgot to post to the Forum. To my surprise, they said that the word was (logically enough): "ca-bO-lang"!!!

To be honest, I don't recall anyone ever using this term when I was young.
SimL

[niuc]

I asked my parents a while back, but forgot to post to the Forum. To my surprise, they said that the word was (logically enough): "ca-bO-lang"!!!

Yeah, it is logical and seems to match 'ta-pO-lang'. However, I seldom heard anyone using 'ca-bO-lang' that way, compared to 'ta-pO-lang'. And interestingly I feel that the former is not as polite as the latter. It is also used to mean "women" more often than the latter to mean "men".

Other terms such as 丈夫 'tiong7-hu1' (h), 'ang1-sai3' (h), 夫人 'hu1-jin5' (w), 太太 'thai3-thai3' (w) are considered (very) polite and formal. Informally, in Bagan variant many people say 老ㄟ 'lau7_e0' (e neutralized, meaning "oldie") for "husband".