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According to 臺灣閩南語常用詞辭典, both 鬥陣 (tàu-tīn) and 做伙 (tsò-hué / tsè-hé) mean 一起 (though the former is also explained as 一块儿 and the latter as 結伴、偕同). I was therefore wondering what differences there are between them, if any. Also, how is it that in 流浪到淡水 they are together in the phrase 斗阵来做伙? What does that mean? PS some context:

趁着下昏暗欢欢喜喜
斗阵来做伙
你来跳舞    我来念歌诗

Thàn-tio̍h ing-àm huann-huann-hí-hí
Tàu-tīn lâi tsuè-hué
Lí lâi thiàu-bú    guá lâi liām kua-si

Profiting of tonight, let us be very happy,
????
If you dance, I will read a poem.

NOTE: If anyone is wondering, 下昏暗 | ing-àm is a contraction of Min 下昏暗 | e-hng-àm, meaning "tonight". My reference dictionary doesn't give a spelling for the contraction, so I had to use the uncontracted spelling, but then I had to match the transliteration to the song, which has the contraction. I just came up with a way to spell it: 暎暗. No idea if anyone else has thought about how to spell this contraction in Hànzì yet.

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    In the last sentence of your context. I don't detect an "if" in there – Huangism Dec 8 '14 at 18:25
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    I know no Min, but something seems to be wrong in your transliteration: 下昏暗 doesn't fit very well with ing-àm. Just guessing by the characters and general syntax, I would guess that 斗阵 is an adverb meaning ‘together’ while 做伙 is more verbal, something like ‘come together’ or ‘be companions’ or something along those lines. But I'm purely speculating here. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 8 '14 at 18:46
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    @JanusBahsJacquet ing-àm is a contraction of e-hng-àm, as you can find on the linked dictionary with the given spelling. The dictionary has no specific spelling for the contraction, so I chose the spelling of the uncontracted original form. But then of course in the translit I had to respect the pronunciation in the song, hence the use of the contracted form. The spelling used in the subs is probably the same as jīnwàn, so a semantic borrowing, but I don't like borrowings in general since they are my great problem in using the dictionary to crack Min songs. – MickG Dec 8 '14 at 19:03
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    Ah, I see. Like I said, I don't know the first thing about Min. :-) // Just for kicks, an alternative syntactic parsing: 趁着下昏暗欢欢喜喜〔斗阵来做伙〕〔你来跳舞〕〔我来念歌诗〕 = Let’s make the most of the happiness of tonight: our togetherness will make us companions, you will dance, and I will sing (loosely translated), i.e., with 斗阵 as a nominalised verb-object phrase functioning as the subject. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Dec 8 '14 at 19:24
  • Interestingly, in Singapore, i hear tso-tin (to be together) most often. – iamanigeeit Mar 16 '20 at 16:03
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Though "鬥陣" and "做伙" roughly mean the same thing, there are subtle differences in between these two phrases.

As a native speaker, I would say "做伙" is more at "be a friend", whereas "鬥陣" is more at "together". This explains why they appear in the song interesting you.

Nevertheless, in everyday speaking nearly nobody would deliberately differentiate one from another.

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  • So the phrase in the song would mean like "Let's be friends all together"? – MickG Dec 13 '14 at 16:24
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    Kind of. Be noted that Chinese is not that logical. One cannot just replace term by term words to understand. If I am to translate the lyric, then I would say it simply means "Let us hang around", which is the translation I can think such that it is closest to the intended meaning. – Megadeth Dec 13 '14 at 16:42
  • It's not Chinese that is not logical, it's the song that is (actually many songs are) not that logical... – user58955 Dec 13 '14 at 16:49
  • @user58955: As a native speaker, I said that certainly with no derogatory implication. What I intended to say is that, to be clearer, Chinese language is on the whole less logical than English. – Megadeth Dec 13 '14 at 17:31
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As I understand it, in this sentence, 斗阵 more likely to mean "let's (do something) together" and 做伙 means "get together". So it can be directly translated to "let's get together together". But the second together is redundant so "let's get together" makes sense.

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  • In addition, if I want to express the idea, I will not say it as 斗阵来做伙， but 大家来做伙, which means everyone gets together. 斗阵来做伙 works too although it is less logical. – Ryan Sun Dec 31 '14 at 5:30

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