30-Second Overview: In Taiwan, saying "Excuse me" (不好意思) doesn't necessarily mean you've made a major mistake; it might just be a way to ask for passage, to start speaking, or to draw the conversation closer. A 2022 study involving 90 National Taiwan University students found that it appears more frequently in general or low-severity situations than "I'm sorry" (對不起).1 The sound "Huh?" (蛤) is not unique to Taiwan; it is a short phrase humans use to initiate repair when they cannot hear clearly. Taiwan also calls the @ symbol "Little Mouse" and pronounces the letter D as "Zhu/Chu" (豬/朱) when swapping exam papers.2 3 4 These four expressions point to a common reality: language does more than convey content; it also manages interpersonal distance, identifies peers, and shortens the time needed for explanation.
In 2022, NTU Mandarin teaching researcher Chiu Chi-er (邱吉兒) compiled 90 questionnaires, asking respondents which phrase they would choose—"I'm sorry" (對不起), "Sorry" (抱歉), or "Excuse me" (不好意思)—in different situations. She obtained a result that felt very familiar yet counter-intuitive: "Excuse me" is usually not the heaviest apology; rather, it appears more often in general or low-severity offense situations.1
You say "Excuse me" in front of a MRT train door, reply with a "Huh?" on the phone, say "Little Mouse" when filling out an email, and pronounce D as "Zhu" when swapping exam papers. These phrases seem to have no common history. One looks like an apology, another like a misunderstanding, one is a symbol nickname, and the other sounds like a pronunciation error. Looking at them together, however, reveals that Taiwanese spoken language often does the same thing: using the shortest sounds to handle distance, misunderstanding, and identity between people.
"Excuse Me" Handles Distance First, Then Apology
"I'm sorry" (對不起) usually places responsibility on the speaker. "Sorry" (抱歉) acknowledges that something has caused inconvenience. "Excuse me" (不好意思), however, acts like leaving a small buffer zone for both parties. It can appear when you have truly bumped into someone, or before saying "May I ask," "Excuse me," or "Could I trouble you?"
Chiu Chi-er's study focused on NTU students aged 18 to 25, collecting 90 questionnaires to observe how gender, intimacy level, social status, severity of offense, and category of offense influenced the choice of apology phrases. The results showed that the use of these three words was not merely a synonym substitution. Intimacy level and severity of offense changed people's judgment of the situation: "I'm sorry" appeared more often in the highest severity, "Sorry" leaned toward general or high severity, and "Excuse me" leaned toward general or low severity.1
This difference explains why "Excuse me" evolved from an apology sentence into an opening phrase. The speaker may not have done anything wrong yet, but they first acknowledge that their presence might interrupt the other person's time. This phrase wraps the request in politeness and slightly disperses the pressure of refusal. If the other person agrees, things move forward. If they are inconvenient, they do not need to process a heavy apology first.
📝 Curator's Note: Taiwanese people do not just apologize more often; they have transformed apology words into a rotatable doorknob. It can bring people into conversation or allow them to exit from an awkward situation.
This is why translating "Excuse me" as a single word like "sorry" loses part of its meaning. The study indicates that Taiwanese respondents placed it in lower or general severity situations not because the phrase lacks politeness. Quite the opposite: its power lies in the fact that it does not need to upgrade every minor disturbance into a major event.1
When a society places "Excuse me" on the boundary of passing by, asking for directions, requesting, refusing, and thanking, the word no longer just describes emotions. It begins to manage the distance of relationships. The speaker lowers themselves slightly, and the listener receives an entry point to continue the conversation.
"Huh?" Is Not a Taiwanese Patent, But Taiwan's Most Familiar Repair Key
The Revised National Language Dictionary (重編國語辭典修訂本) by the Ministry of Education records the pronunciation of "Huh" (蛤) as ㄍㄜˊ and ㄏㄚˊ, with definitions primarily pointing to clams, hard clams, and toads. Writing it as "Huh?" (蛤？), stretching the sound, or saying "Huh!" (蛤！) with an surprised tone is another living path in spoken interaction.2
In 2013, a cross-linguistic research group placed the English "huh?" into dialogue analysis. Researchers categorized such short sounds as repair initiators. When a listener does not hear clearly, does not understand, or needs the speaker to reorganize the previous sentence, they do not need to pose a complete question first. A short "huh?" sends the ball back, asking the speaker to repair the dialogue. The study observed similar forms and functions across multiple languages.3
This finding makes "Huh" even more interesting. It is not a mysterious password unique to Taiwanese people. As long as humans speak together, they need a low-cost sound to indicate "what was just said did not successfully arrive." Taiwan's daily life writes this sound into a fixed character, allowing it to appear in chat messages, memes, subtitles, and spoken language teaching.
"Huh?" (蛤？) can mean you truly didn't hear clearly. "Huh!" (蛤！) can express surprise. "Huh..." (蛤……) might turn incomprehension into a bit of helplessness. The characters do not change; tone, length, and punctuation refocus the relationship. It is not like a complete "Please say it again," nor is it a direct rebuttal. It first pauses understanding, letting the other person decide whether to repeat, explain, or admit they were unclear just now.
📝 Curator's Note: The most "Taiwanese" thing about "Huh" is not that it belongs only to Taiwan, but that Taiwanese people have polished a repair sound needed by all humanity into a character that everyone knows how to respond to upon hearing.
"Huh" also reminds us that spoken culture cannot be answered by dictionaries alone. Dictionaries record standard pronunciations and definitions, but interaction allows a word to grow new functions. When "Huh" appears at the beginning of a sentence, what it does may be closer to a button than a dictionary definition: press it, and the other person needs to reassemble what they just said.
@ Becomes "Little Mouse" Only When Technical Symbols Enter the Classroom
Image source: Wikimedia Commons: At sign.svg, Public domain. Image embedded via external hotlink only.
In the email format of RFC 5322, the function of @ is precise. It separates the local-part from the Internet domain; the front is part of the account, and the back is part of the domain. The standard document calls it the at-sign and defines it as ASCII value 64.4
Engineers need a separator. Children in school need something memorable. BBC Chinese reported on how different languages refer to @, listing Taiwan's "Little Mouse," mainland China's "Circle A," and Italy's snail, Greece's little duck, and other terms. The technical function of the symbol is the same, but cultural memory gives each a different shape.5
Ray Tomlinson placed @ into the format of network email addresses in 1971, turning a symbol that rarely appeared in general text into a bridge between accounts and domains.5 6 Taiwanese people later called it "Little Mouse" not to modify the RFC, nor to add a formal standard to the symbol. This is a teaching method that translates abstract tools into nearby animals.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons: Taiwan keyboard.png, by Zhongzheng North Road 711, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Image embedded via external hotlink only; attribution and license links must be retained when used.
The interesting thing about "Little Mouse" is that it retains the tactile sense of early computer education. Children do not need to understand domains, accounts, and network protocols first; remembering the circle that looks like a mouse allows them to find it on the keyboard. The first step of technology entering life is often not understanding the entire system, but finding a recognizable name for a strange symbol.
This name also leaves generational differences. People familiar with early email teaching can say "please send to Little Mouse" to make classmates immediately find the @. Those who encountered the internet later may more often say "at" or read out the entire address string. Both methods can complete the task, but the former carries a memory of Taiwan's campus and home computer classes.
Why D Becomes "Zhu" or "Chu"
The Dictionary of Commonly Used Taiwanese Hokkien Words (臺灣台語常用詞辭典) by the Ministry of Education lists "Zhu" (豬) as ti/tu. In this Taiwanese Hokkien pronunciation, the ti sound provides an approximate Chinese landing spot for the English letter D in the spoken language of some Taiwanese campuses.7
A 2020 Sanlih ETTV News report, summarizing PTT discussions, mentioned that after high school exams, when swapping answer sheets, some people pronounce D as "Zhu" to make it easier to distinguish from B. The same report also listed formal English pronunciations, Delta, and other ways people distinguish B and D. This indicates it is a recognition technique circulated among some campuses and online discussions, not a standard reading for English education, nor can it be inferred as something all Taiwanese people do.8
"Chu" (朱) is more like a convenient way for listeners to record this sound using Mandarin Chinese characters. To be more precise, one should say that in Taiwanese spoken language, some people pronounce D with a sound close to the Taiwanese Hokkien "Zhu," and then record it using the character "Zhu" or "Chu." This difference is small, but it precisely shows that spoken language and text are not always synchronized. The sound circulates in the classroom first, and Chinese characters later find a readable shell for it.
Here, we must distinguish it from "ABC Dog Bites Pig" (ABC 狗咬豬). The Global Chinese Network of the Republic of China's Overseas Community Development Council收录s this Taiwanese nursery rhyme, with the full text singing from "ABC Dog Bites Pig" to "Grandpa sits on an airplane" and "Call the doctor."9 Taiwan.md also has an article organizing cross-generational oral transmission of campus nursery rhymes.10 The pronunciation of D as "Zhu" can share phonetic and campus memories with this nursery rhyme, but this article discusses the recognition function when swapping exam papers, not re-introducing that nursery rhyme.
📝 Curator's Note: "Pronouncing D as Zhu" is not a joke about a pronunciation error, but a small workflow. When a group needs to quickly exchange answers and avoid mixing B and D, the accent temporarily becomes a tool.
Therefore, there is no need to package this expression as a myth of a single origin. Existing data supports that it is circulated among some Taiwanese campuses and online discussions, borrowing the phonetic similarity of the Taiwanese Hokkien word "Zhu." As for which school started it first or which generation of teachers taught it earliest, without school histories, interviews, or more complete corpora, the article should stop at the verifiable scope.
The Commonality of the Four Words: Turning Uncertainty into a Shared Reflex
"Excuse me" brings interpersonal distance a bit closer. "Huh" sends failed understanding back into the dialogue. "Little Mouse" turns network technology into an animal a child can see. "Pronouncing D as Zhu" turns phonetic differences into a recognition code that classmates can immediately use.
They are all small. No single word changes the system alone, and no single sound represents all Taiwanese people. They are worth writing about because culture often does not stay in ceremonies or declarations, but in the next second whether to disturb others, whether to ask the other person to repeat, how to pronounce a symbol, and how to hand answers to classmates—becoming choices made by the body first.
The sense of identity in Taiwanese spoken language does not come only from unique vocabulary. It comes from a group of people knowing when to say "Excuse me," knowing how long the tail sound of "Huh" can be, knowing that @ is not a mouse but can be called Little Mouse, and knowing that the "Zhu" of D should not be used as a standard answer in English class. These shared boundaries make language the lightest and most solid secret code in life.
Further Reading
Ministry of Education Dictionary of Commonly Used Taiwanese Hokkien Words records the Tai-lo pronunciation and definition of "Zhu."
Wikimedia Commons: At sign.svg provides the public domain @ symbol image used in this article.
Wikimedia Commons: Taiwan keyboard.png provides the Taiwan keyboard image and CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing information.
References
- A Study on the Usage and Perception of Severity of Common Apologies in Taiwan — A 2022 National Taiwan University Master's thesis, using 90 NTU student questionnaires to analyze the choice of "I'm sorry," "Sorry," and "Excuse me" in different social situations.↩234
- Ministry of Education Revised National Language Dictionary: Huh — Official Ministry of Education dictionary page, recording the phonetic notation ㄍㄜˊ, ㄏㄚˊ and standard definitions for clams, hard clams, toads, etc., for this article to distinguish between character form and spoken usage.↩2
- Is “Huh?” a Universal Word? — A cross-linguistic study in PLOS ONE, analyzing the form and function of "huh?" as a dialogue repair initiator, reminding readers not to mistakenly write "Huh" as a phenomenon unique to Taiwan.↩2
- RFC 5322: Internet Message Format — IETF email format standard, Section 3.4.1 defines the technical role of @ in separating the
local-partand Internet domain inaddr-spec.↩2 - BBC Chinese: How Different Languages Call the "@" Symbol? — BBC Future Chinese report, summarizing Taiwan's "Little Mouse" and global cultural differences in calling @ by animals or shapes, also introducing the history of the symbol entering email.↩2
- Raymond Tomlinson — Internet Hall of Fame — Official biographical data from the Internet Hall of Fame, recording Raymond Tomlinson's contributions to network email and early mail standards.↩
- Ministry of Education Dictionary of Commonly Used Taiwanese Hokkien Words: Zhu — Official Ministry of Education Taiwanese Hokkien dictionary, listing "Zhu" as ti/tu, providing the linguistic basis for the phonetic similarity between D and Taiwanese Hokkien.↩
- Sanlih ETTV News: How Do Foreigners Pronounce D for Answers? Definitely Not "Zhu" — 2020 news report summarizing PTT and online discussions on swapping exam papers in campuses; this article uses it only to support partial usage and circulation, not expanding it into a standard consistent across all of Taiwan.↩
- Global Chinese Network: ABC Dog Bites Pig — Classic nursery rhyme teaching material from the Republic of China's Overseas Community Development Council, recording the full Taiwanese nursery rhyme text and marking Taiwanese Hokkien, providing the context of original campus oral transmission materials.↩
- Taiwan.md: Taiwan Schoolyard Rhymes — An existing Taiwan.md article on campus nursery rhymes, having organized "ABC Dog Bites Pig" and cross-generational oral transmission; this article avoids repetition by focusing on the answer recognition function of D.↩