閩南語和德語「鹽」的文化概念

Salt culture and conceptual system in Southern Min and German

我們日常所食用的鹽主要是烹調時提味用，但在語言中，鹽也占了一席之地。本文探討台灣閩南語和德語的「鹽」語式，比如「過橋較濟你行路，食鹽較濟你食米」和das Salz in die Suppe（該有的都有了）等。語料取材自台灣和德國幾個學術機構所架構的閩南語或德語的語料庫、辭典，我們運用「認知共同經驗與概念系統」（黃居仁2009），以及「文化模式」（Bonvillain 2003）為研究的理論基礎。透過閩南語和德語鹽語式的（1）共現成份、（2）共現類型、（3）比喻意涵的對比，試圖探究「鹽」在這兩個語言所表現的文化面向和概念系統。研究發現鹽語式呈現出鹽製造業在台閩地區的進行方式及所帶來的經濟、政治的影響、當地重要的交通工具、飲食習慣，以及閩南語的特色等。台閩和德國地區不同的主食、食品烹煮的原物料，宗教信仰的觀念，以及一重鹽製造業，一重鹽消費的不同社會面向都一一呈現。在認知概念系統方面，一樣在烹飪時不可或缺，然而對台閩地區的人來說，鹽是生財的工具，對德國人來說鹽是健康醫療上的用品。身邊的事物，細小如鹽，卻在閩南語和德語詞彙知識系統中扮演了一個重要的角色。

Salt greatly sharpens the tastes of meals. Likewise, salt is essential in language. This paper compares salt expressions in Southern Min and German with data taken from corpora and dictionaries, Conceptual system in sharing experience(Huang 2009) and cultural model(Bonvillain 2003) are our theoretical background. We investigate the cultural values and conceptualization of the two languages by comparing the collocation, collocation types and metaphors of salt expressions. The findings are (1)The salt expressions in Southern Min reveal that salt industry plays a hugely influential role on politics and economics in Taiwan region; salt expressions also point out the important transportation vehicle, eating habit and linguistic characteristics in this area, whereas (2)German salt expressions show that salt is important in cooking and in medical chemistry. Meanwhile, (3)salt in the two languages signifies the different religious beliefs and mindsets. (4)The different conceptual systems are: Salt makes money—a concept stems from salt production in Southern Min speaking area while salt brings health—a concept stems from salt consuming, is rendered in Germany. Trivial but essential, salt is indispensable in both cultures and languages.