Countries:
Taiwan (ROC)
Topics:
Ethnicity, Racism, Language
Languages:
Chinese, English

Adogah (阿兜仔) is a Hoklo Taiwanese word used to refer to foreigners in Taiwan. Dan Bloom had an article in the Taipei Times discussing the use of the word. He had the article translated into Chinese on his blog. Following the Chinese text there are details in English of a recent survey of Taiwanese people about their attitude to the use of adogah.

11 comments

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  • Dan Bloom

    RE: THE MISSIONARY EXCUSE: above, and here:

    WHICH GOES AND WHICH SOME TAIWANESE PEOPLE BELIEVE TO BE TRUE: ”According to what I have heard and had verified by several Taiwanese,
    A-dok-a originally meant something like Christian or missionary (阿督仔,
    督 as in 基督教, Christianity) because most white faces around used to be
    missionaries. It is a homophone to “pointed nose” or however you
    prefer to translate it and has now taken on that meaning as there are
    fewer and fewer missionaries around.”

    I asked a friend to ask his wife, who is Taiwanese, what she thought of this rather strange explanation, and it is the second time i heard it, the first time from a top editor at a top newspaper in Taipei, and my friend, from the USA but living in Taiwan for over 30 years, said:

    “My wife says that explanation is nonsense.
    It sounds like someone trying to give a pleasant interpretation to adoah; and say it does not refer to our noses but to missionaries .”

    # 2009-07-15 at 12:46 pm
    Reply to this
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