{"id":8425,"date":"2023-05-26T20:31:24","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T12:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/?p=8425"},"modified":"2023-05-26T20:31:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-26T12:31:24","slug":"reagan-candy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/2023\/reagan-candy\/","title":{"rendered":"Reagan candy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"photo<\/a><\/p>\n

From watching a brief documentary piece on TV about how jelly beans are made, I learned a new Taiwan-specific Mandarin term: Léigēn táng (雷根糖). <\/p>\n

Leigen<\/em> is a Mandarinization of the name of Ronald Reagan, who famously loved jelly beans. And táng<\/em> is the word for sugar\/candy<\/em>. So Léigēn táng \/ “Reagan candy” is a term (but not the only one) in Taiwan for jelly beans<\/em>. Cool name. I’m going to remember that. <\/p>\n

Oddly, Google Translate didn’t know the term yet — or apparently even that Léigēn is how one says “Reagan” in Taiwan, given how Google Translate produced “Regan [sic] Candy”. But at least Google Translate didn’t produce “thunder root sugar,” which would be a literal translation of each morpheme, taken individually. <\/p>\n

\"screenshot<\/a><\/p>\n

I sent feedback, so let’s see if it gets corrected. <\/p>\n

In China, “Reagan” is usually written instead as 里根 (Lǐgēn). But it doesn’t look like either 里根糖 (Lǐgēn táng) or 雷根糖 (Léigēn táng) is a thing in the PRC. Instead, in China jelly beans are called “果冻豆” (guǒdòng dòu; lit. “jelly beans”) or “软心豆” (ruǎn xīn dòu; lit. “soft-heart beans”).<\/p>\n

One wonders what jelly beans were called in Taiwan prior to Reagan administration. Maybe they just weren’t popular here yet. <\/p>\n

It’s quite common for proper nouns to differ in Taiwan and China, especially for people. For example, see my old post on Obama, Bush, vitamin drinks, and puns<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From watching a brief documentary piece on TV about how jelly beans are made, I learned a new Taiwan-specific Mandarin term: Léigēn táng (雷根糖). Leigen is a Mandarinization of the name of Ronald Reagan, who famously loved jelly beans. And … 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":[4,12,15,32,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-chinese","category-chinese-characters","category-mandarin","category-taiwan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425","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=8425"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8570,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8425\/revisions\/8570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinyin.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}