{"id":644,"date":"2007-02-02T12:30:53","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T04:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/rice-pizza-mizza\/"},"modified":"2018-08-22T16:25:50","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T08:25:50","slug":"rice-pizza-mizza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2007\/rice-pizza-mizza\/","title":{"rendered":"rice pizza = ‘mizza’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"advertisingSomething written with three different scripts (Chinese characters, zhuyin, and the roman alphabet) is very much the sort of thing that attracts my attention, as is a product that mixes scripts in its name. So this ad for a new product from Taiwan’s Pizza Hut definitely caught my eye, though it did not inspire me to actually taste the item being touted, which is a rice pizza. (Generally, I do not care for pizzas with Taiwanese characteristics, such as those with peas, corn, or squid. For that matter, I don’t even like pineapple<\/em> on pizza.)<\/p>\n

The name for this rice pizza, “米zza” (mǐzza<\/span>), is a portmanteau — using two different languages and two different scripts, no less. 米 is the Chinese character for mǐ<\/span>, which is used mainly in rice- and other grain-associated words. The second part of the word comes, of course, from “pizza.” <\/p>\n

Let’s move on to the slogan: <\/p>\n

米zza 超ㄏㄤ美味 新鮮fun<\/p>\n

In romanization, this is <\/p>\n

mǐzza: chāo hāng<\/em> měiwèi — xīnxiān fun<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Here we have Chinese characters (米<\/strong>zza 超<\/strong>ㄏㄤ美味新鮮<\/strong>fun), zhuyin (米zza 超ㄏㄤ<\/strong>美味新鮮fun), and the Roman alphabet (米zza<\/strong> 超ㄏㄤ美味新鮮fun<\/strong>). Three scripts in just one line! (Yes, yes, I know that a line in written Japanese will often have just as many scripts, if not more; but this is Mandarin.)<\/p>\n

The zhuyin, ㄏㄤ, represent hāng<\/span>, a new slang word that, according to several people I have asked, has appeared within the last five years at most. It means “hot” in the sense of “extremely popular right now.”<\/p>\n

Also, there’s a possibility that the English word “fun” is meant to echo the Mandarin fàn (飯 \/ 饭\/ “rice”). Such puns across languages are not uncommon here, especially in local Internet slang.<\/p>\n

So, the whole slogan might be translated as “Rice pizza: the super-’hot’ delicious food — fresh, new fun.” Sorry, that’s not a very good translation; it works better in Mandarin.<\/p>\n

I predict such portmanteaux and mixing will be increasingly common here in Taiwan, where code switching is a way of life for many people. “Mǐzza<\/span>” could be the wave of the future — just not the culinary future, I hope.<\/p>\n

source: Taiwan Pizza Hut menu page<\/a>, accessed January 30, 2007<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something written with three different scripts (Chinese characters, zhuyin, and the roman alphabet) is very much the sort of thing that attracts my attention, as is a product that mixes scripts in its name. So this ad for a new … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,12,15,41,32,3,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bopomofo","category-chinese","category-chinese-characters","category-english","category-mandarin","category-taiwan","category-zhuyin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7817,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/7817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}