So the other day as I was sitting through 8th grade English class taught in Chinese, I noticed that my co-teacher was reading off the answers to a worksheet in a rather strange way. As she rattled off the answers, "D" was missing! In it's place was a strange sound more like "joo," but sometimes life is strange in a foreign country, so I dismissed it.
On Monday in Chinese class, an exercise sparked the memory, so I asked my Chinese teacher. She started laughing and explained that it is very difficult for the Taiwanese to distinguish between "be" and "di." Since "di" is Taiwanese for pig, they translated it into Mandarin -- "zhu" (pronounced "joo"), hence the strange sounds. So in Taiwan, I guess to learn your alphabet you have to learn your A, B, C, pigs.
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