Taiwanese Dairy Terminology

[gougou]

At work, we are representing a German supplier of dairy products. Today, I came across one of their butter packets, which was labelled in different languages. The Chinese was 乳酪, which AFAIK means cheese.

My Chinese colleague is guessing that this might be the Taiwanese way of saying it, yet nobody knows for sure. Does anybody here know?

[klortho]

I checked a few dictionaries. One gives its definition as "curds, cheese", the other as simply "cheese". But, I always thought cheese was 奶酪. I don't know if there's any subtle differences between these two terms.

[Ah-Bin]

In my experience Taiwanese say and write 起士 for cheese.

[(JR)]

in taiwan they say "qi si" or "qi shi" for cheese， like ah bin said.

[gougou]

That's interesting, thanks for the replies so far. So is 乳酪 butter then? Or is there another word different from 黄油？

[xiaocai]

Butter should be 黄油 and cheese is 奶酪.

[Mugi]

Try searching Taiwan Yahoo with various combinations of 乳酪, 奶酪, 起士, 芝士, butter, cheese, etc.

It seems to be that 起士 is the colloquial term for cheese in Taiwan, while 乳酪 is a commonly used written word for cheese. But technically speaking, the dairy industry seems to use 乾乳酪 for cheese and 乳酪 for butter.

This is what I gleened after a 5 minute search, so may not be all that accurate.

[semantic nuance]

Butter is 奶油, but of course it really depends on the content of your butter packet. If is it cheese, then we say 起士 here in taiwan, some will say 乳酪 too. Hope it helps.

[gougou]

Thanks for your answers. It seems there is no generally accepted way of referring to butter, so if you want to know what company we are representing, just keep your eyes open for the butter packages that every Taiwanese pokes fun at!

[bathrobe]

It may be of interest to know that in translating the book title 'Charm Your Own Cheese' in Harry Potter, the Taiwanese translator uses 乳酪 and the Mainland translator uses 奶酪.

See this page (from my own site):

http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/bktitle/cheese.html

[LiYuanXi]

乳酪,奶酪, 芝士 all means cheese. 奶油,牛油 means butter.