Hokkien transcribed in sinographs

Sign on the back of a pickup truck in Fujian Province:

Someone who is only literate in Mandarin will not be able to understand what the sign says, although they will be able to figure out a few of the items that are mentioned and will laugh at the vulgarity, which is not relevant for understanding the actual meaning.

Kirinputra renders it thus:

They fix (SIU-LÍ, 修理) air conditioners (KHONG-TIÂU, 空調), electric rice cookers (TIĀN PN̄G-OE, 電飯碢), water heaters (JIA̍T-CHÚI-KHÌ, 熱水器), washing machines (SÉ-SAᴺ-KI, 洗衫机), and something called *KO-Á-OE (糕仔碢? 鍋仔碢?), which might be a kind of pressure cooker. (-OE is also written 鍋 in the native script, and there’s probably an etymological connection to heartland Chinese words written 鍋, and to -KO 鍋.) The pronunciations indicate some locale in the region west & southwest of Amoy. The use of Mandarin writing shows that the older generation that learned kanji via Hokkien readings (or alongside Mandarin readings) has substantially aged out of household maintenance duties, which of course they have. The use of Mandarin writing to write Hokkien suggests that young adults are still proficient in Hokkien in that locale.

Kirinputra, who knows Hokkien well, treats the sinographs as phonetic symbols for transcribing that language, and refrains from commenting on the meanings of the characters for the first device they fix, whereas every Mandarin speaker who is illiterate in Hokkien and is familiar with the slang character 屌 will guffaw at the superficial meaning "empty dick / prick".

Selected readings

• "Alice Mak Addresses the Hong Kong Chief Executive with Vulgar Language" (6/24/19)
• "Spelling with Chinese character(istic)s" (11/21/13)

[Thanks to Diana Shuheng Zhang]