地位 sounds like tek-ui or te-kui: singer's mistake or lyrics should be different?

Question

In the Hokkien song 男人的汗 (Min title 查埔人的汗, lyrics here, there is the following line:

人生行到遮 地位亲像山

It should sound:

Lin-sing kiann kau tsia    te-ui tshin-tshiunn suann

Instead, in the video, both at 00:31-00:38 and at 2:04-2:10, it sounds:

Lin-sing kiann kau tsia    tek-ui/te-kui tshin-tshiunn suann

First thing that comes to mind is to fix it as 地塊, but that would be te-khuai, and no a is heard, nor any aspiration. So I tried browsing my reference for characters read kui, and found the following:

1. 關 | kuinn
2. 刮 | kuih
3. 規 | kui
4. 歸 | kui
5. 胿 | kui
6. 龜 | kui
7. 機 | kui
8. 圭 | kui
9. 鬼 | kúi
10. 癸 | kúi
11. 幾 | kúi
12. 軌 | kúi
13. 詭 | kúi
14. 貴 | kuì
15. 癸 | kuí
16. 季 | kuì
17. 挂 | kuì
18. 劌 | ku`
19. 瑰 | kuì
20. 桂 | kuì
21. 季 | kuì
22. 膭 | kuī
23. 櫃 | kuī
24. 跪 | kuī
25. 饋 | kuī
26. 葵 | kuî

Could any of these be the right character here? If so, which? Otherwise, how can I explain this tek-ui/te-kui which should be te-ui?

Answer 1

The [q]/[k] sound came from the glottal stop [ʔ] which must be placed between「地」and「位」when speaking the word. Contrary to its conventional phonetic notation,「位」actually has a glottal plosive consonant before the vowel. So 'te-ui' is actually read as [te11ʔui22] rather than [te11ui22] without separation between the two letters. The difference is similar to that between "come in" [k^hamʔin] and "comin'" [k^hamin]. Because this guy is singing, it is easy for the glottal stop to corrupt into an uvular [q] or a velar [k] plosive. (Having a full glottal stop in the middle of a phrase will spoil the legato. )