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光盘上在这首歌的结束又多一句话:“na li bo sua tsong lai thi pue tua”(若你无线总来?袂大?); maybe “tsong ai”, maybe “na bo sua”…就是“若你无线总爱紩袂煞” | Nā lí bô suànn tsóng ài thīnn buē suah | 如果你没线总要缝不完… but it sounds like it ends with thinn pue tuann…

This is what I annotated in my list of Chinese songs from a particular year about the song 针线情. Said song is found, along with many others, on one of a couple of CD's of Min Nan songs that were given to me by a friend a few years ago. The lyrics in the CD match the video exactly, except that at the end there is this extra sentence which, to my ears, and modulo nasal vowels which I cannot distinguish from the CD, sounds like:

Na li bo sua tsong lai thi pue tua.

A sensible reconstruction that would fit (more or less) the rest of the song would be:

若你无线总爱紩袂煞 | Nā lí bô suànn tsóng ài thīnn buē suah | 如果你没有线总都要紩不完 | If you have no thread you will never end sewing

There are three non-matches with the above rough transcription:

  1. The 爱 which reads ài and not "lai", but that was already regarded as a possible mishearing in the annotation, and it is anyway easily fixed by replacing 爱 with 来 | lâi;
  2. The 袂 which reads buē and not "pue";
  3. The 煞 which reads suah and not "tua"; my problem is not much with the final (which from hearing could be either -ua, -uann, -uah, -uat, -uap, -uak, -uannh), but with the initial, which I hear as "t" and not "s".

I just relistened, and here is my revised rough transcription:

Na bo sua tsong ai thi pue tua

So the first part is definitely 若无线总爱, but the second part definitely doesn't match the pronunciation of 紩袂煞. So which of the following is the case?

  1. The singer in the CD mispronounced or I misheard;
  2. It is actually not 紩袂煞 but something (then what?) that matches "thi pue tua" as a rough transcription.
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  • Probably only the people who lived/used to live in Taiwan can help you with that....
    – Kevman
    Oct 4, 2017 at 17:48
  • @Kevman yeah or just anyone living in a Min-speaking region.
    – MickG
    Oct 4, 2017 at 18:21
  • Speaking of Taiwanese people... @Yvonne? What do you think?
    – MickG
    Oct 4, 2017 at 18:21

1 Answer 1

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The meaning of the last sentence is:

如果沒有線,要如何補被單?
How do I mend the sheets if there is no thread?

If we put it in Min Nan, the sentence is 若無線,怎樣補被單.

In this case, we can use 添 instead of 補 in 閩南語.

enter image description here

So, it becomes 若無線,怎樣添被單.

nā bô suànn, tsuánn iūnn thinn phuē tuann?

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  • 紩 is a better match. 補 in the first sense doesn't mean "mend" but "add". Dec 6, 2017 at 20:37

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