taigu "levin"

taigu "levin" 
Dear Jason,

You are right. It's a convention. But, for me, it's a strange convention.

When I was a student, I heard from a Latin professor, who is Spanish, that
there are many ways of reading Latin, eg., Spanish way, French way, German
way, Italian way. Is it so?
Maybe we can also say that there are many ways to read "wen-yan-wen". And
the "thak-chheh-im" I mentioned is the way Ho-lo-lang read it.

But, in a way, this way of reading "wen-yan-wen" is a process of
Sinicizing/Mandarinizing Ho-lo.
And the ability to read "wen-yan-wen" this way has been regarded as a talent
showing somebody's degree of "education" or "civiliaztion". If you cannot
read Han characters this way, you are treated as "illiterate", and your
language is ragarded as "vulgar'. I heard that somebody even treats
"cha-pou" and "cha-bou" as "vulgar", and they use instead "lam--e" and
"lu--e".
Honestly, I detest the value reflected by this phenomenon.

Of course, my value can be ignored.
But my opinion is that we'd better not to encourage this process of
confusing the Ho-lo language system.
Today, in Taiwan, there are still many institutes and teachers who are so
eager to teach young pupils to study this way of reading "wen-yan-wen". I
don't think it will do any good to the revival, revitalization, and
development of Ho-lo or Taiwanese.
My opnion is that we should leave it to the "priests". And the Taiwanese or
Ho-lo-oe is already Sinicized/Mandarinized enough.

Best,
Lip-bun



----- Original Message -----
From: Jason Cox 
To: 
Cc: 
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2001 9:28 PM
Subject: Re: 敹蝬/ Heart Sutra


> taigu "Jason Cox" 
>
> taigu "Jason Cox" 
> Lip-bun hiann,
>
> You are obviously right about one thing-- the Taigu reading of the heart
> sutra is not colloquial speech, is not Taigu grammer, Taigu syntax, even
> normal Taigu vocabulary.
>
> But basically, some of this early Buddhist literature is semi-classical
> (wen-yan-wen) and doesn't belong to one dialect in particular. Naturally,
> like many religions appealing to the common masses, the Buddhist
translators
> also threw in some region's colloquial vocabulary.
>
> And when the sutra is chanted at a temple, especially a temple in Taiwan,
an
> untranslated version is frequently read outloud in Taiwanese (or so I have
> been told). This may not be the most effective way of reading it, this
may
> not be the best-sounding way, but it is convention.
>
> --Jason
>
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