October 1, 2026
Today I've added the word 戇 gong5, which is a word that I remember hearing a lot as a child (well, I remember hearing gong(7) gong5). It's been in my backlog of words to add, but I've held off on it because I wasn't completely sure on the meaning. I always thought it meant "stupid", but maybe stupid and crazy? (Because nga3 is probably a better word for stupid.) What Teochew Say says that it means "confused" or "dazed". My cousin told me he thinks of it as "senile". Maybe there's not a single English word that perfectly encapsulates it. Anyway, I've added it under the English word "confused", but I've also included "stupid" and "crazy" on the same page.
September 27, 2026
Back in my September 2 update, I mentioned that I added a word for clam, but there are actually two types of clam words in Teochew (that I know of). I didn't know the second one then, but I do today! hain2 is the word for a "basket clam". I had never heard of that term before, and I'm thinking that maybe being able to show an image would be a nice idea, but that's something for the future.
The other word for clam, ham1 is a blood clam. Or a blood cockle, or an ark clam. I'm not a clam specialist, and I don't really know which of those terms is the most commonly understood, but I did include all three terms. I think that most people just know the word "clam" and not the types of clams, so I figured it would be best for there to be a single clam entry page and to display both.
But! I had an issue, in that it was displaying "blood cockle" and "ark clam" at the top of the page, and not specific to the ham1 translation. And that started a whole rabbit hole dig on how I handle and display synonyms. The long story short is that some things got simpler and other things got more complicated 🫠 But hopefully, I'm still presenting content in a reasonable and understandable way. If you see any weirdness, please let me know!
September 26, 2026
My dad was visiting me this past week, and it's hard to be in the right headspace to work on my projects while I have family around. So I've got soooo much in my backlog in my head in terms of updates for the site, and I'm going to try to slowly get through those over the upcoming week.
When my dad visits, my aunt likes to pack so much food for us to eat, which is nice because I don't have to worry about cooking. But there are always some things that she packs that for some reason we have a hard time finishing! She packed one sliced up orange in a ziploc bag, and I think she assumed that we would eat it on the first day of my dad's trip! Or that he would eat it on the road! Well, I was slowly nibbling on these orange slices throughout the week, and I still have two more pieces left! My aunt kept asking about it, and I had to tell her, chung(7) no(7) niam3 (two pieces left over). Anyway, I learned the word niam3, which is a classifier for pieces of fruit.
Speaking of classifiers, I had previously been putting all the classifiers on a single english definition page, which was getting a bit cluttered. I've now created a Classifiers category, and I moved them all to separate entries.
September 23, 2026
My third ou1 nam2 video has been posted!
When I initially talked to my aunt about cutting up the pit, she made it seem like it was going to be some impossible feat. But it was actually really easy. Speaking of easy, I didn't know how to say that word, so I asked my dad, and he told me that it is goi7. That's the new word for today!
September 21, 2026
Yes, I am working on a third ou1 nam2 video! I've already recorded it, but I need to edit it and add subtitles.
In the meantime, I've also added the words "bus" and "wire" to the site. And I'm also adding this update because I'm doing more cleanup behind the scenes related to the blog framework that I'm using, and I need to test that my update script still works!
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