"Chha" can mean "be different", "be better", "be worse".
Án-ne bô chha. That doesn't make any difference.
Chia̍h io̍h-á chia̍h-liáu ū khah chha--chi̍t-sut-á. He's a little better after taking the medicine.
Góa ê tōa-hàn--ê chin gâu tha̍k-chheh, sè-hàn--ê ū khah chha--chi̍t-sut-á. My older son is a good student; the younger one is not such a good student.
Is there a way to determine whether it means "better" or "worse" in a randomly given sentence? Like how would I know that "chha" in the last sentence means "worse (student)"? Maybe it says that the younger one is even better? And in the second sentence, maybe after taking the medicine I feel even worse. So just guessing doesn't work here.
And sometimes it's even hard for me to determine whether it means "different" or "worse"/"better".
Kin-á-ji̍t ê thiⁿ-khì chha cha-hng chha chin-chē；cha-hng khah joa̍h.
Does it mean that todays' weather differs a lot from yesterday's, or does it mean that the weather today is better than yesterday's weather (because yesterday was hotter and the speaker prefers cooler weather), or does it mean that the weather today is worse than yesterday's (because it's hotter, and the speaker actually prefers the hotter weather)?
That's an interesting interpretation. So in sentence 4, chha just means "to differ"? And there's no pragmatic implication on whether it's better or worse?
I didn't mention it, but all the translations are from Maryknoll's book 2. If "chha" still means "difference" here, then probably the authors simplified things a bit and decided to translate it as "feel better" because, as you said, if there's a difference after taking a medicine, it's pragmatically implied that the difference is positive.
What's gí-kám? I didn't find it on (the English part of) ChhoeTaigi. And what is chāi in this case?
tsha (chha) means having a difference. The difference by itself has no positive or negative meaning attached to it. So you just have to infer from the rest to figure out if the effect of the difference is good or bad.
My understanding is that chha is not just a difference, but rather a difference that is qualitatively opposite from any known context.
If A chha B, and B has a connotation of "desirability", A would be "undesirable". Or vice versa. Or same for any other context.
This is why:
Chia̍h io̍h-á ū khah chha (= feels better, since context is being sick)
Chi̍t ê gâu tha̍k chheh, chi̍t ê khah chha (= not good at school, since context is being good at school)
Thiⁿ-khì chha chăng; chăng khah joa̍h (= it's cooler, and depending on what you know about their speaker or tone of voice when spoken, this may be good or bad)
I have the opposite reading on the first sentence and feel like my grandma as a native speaker would spontaneously contruct the sentence with /ho/ instead of /tsha/
