Penang Hokkien

[Eng Wai]

Gents and A Tan

I am not the one spending four years in Penang, Hong did 4 years uni study here in USM. I was born in Penang, I grew up in Penang and came to Uk/Newcastle last September. Never went back to Malaysia/Penang ever since. Don't know how is it like in Penang already?

I grew up speaking Mandarin as my first language, then Malay, then English, then Hokkien. Become fluent in Hokkien quite lately only, maybe around 5 years before?

"To Eng Wai: When I said that some Malay words had origins from Hokkiens, intention was to show that Hokkiens and Malays are closer that we thought. For your information, you should try to find out the origins of words like "ayah" and "ibu" ?"

If your intention is just to simply show the closeness of Hokkiens and Malay, perhaps you shouldn't dictate that Malay has lots of loan words from Hokkien. It might, and it is, but your tones indicates that the Malay vocabs in Penang Hokkien are the Hokkien vocabs brought over from Hokkien to Penang, which I don't agree (with no evidence but simply personal observation and thinkings). So if I badly inteprete your tone, I am sorry.

Andrew: People dispice Hokkien no because of the Hokkien itself, but rather the Hokkien influence in Mandarin. Eg for Hokkien speaker, they say "buka api" in Mandarin. It is a wrong Mandarin vocab and it gets the influence from Hokkien. Those People who dislike Hokkien are normally Mandarin puritans because Hokkien deters the prevalence of Mandarin, not least that Hokkien bears lots of similarity with Mandarin, which is pretty confusing and misleading for those who are not well informed about the situation. After all they are all under Chinese Language family.

Wishes

Eng Wai

[Tjandy]

I can tell you 1 Hokkien word that is exactly the same to Malay/Indonesian word and that is "sabun" as in soap. The mandarin word for this is Fei(2) Zhao(4). Why would the minan word for soap is "sabun"? They use "sabun" as well in Taiwan. I am interested to find the root of this "sabun".

I am from Medan in Indonesia and we speak Medan Hokkien which is 99% similar in tone and in vocabulary to Penang Hokkien across the strait. I think we should include Medan Hokkien into the forum as well. After all, it is still Hokkien.

[Sim]

Hi there Tjandy,

Welcome to the Forum! Of course _any_ Hokkien (or related Minnan language such as Teo Chiew) speaker is welcome on this Forum. I think it's very interesting that Medan and Penang Hokkien are so similar.

I have to tell you that the "sabun" thing has been a bit "done to death" on this Forum... I think the general opinion seems to be that it's derived from Portuguese.

You can do a search (click on the "search" link on this page, and enter your desired keyword) and see everything which any poster has ever written on "sabun" on this Forum.

For your convenience, here is a sample of some of the things which have been said:

viewtopic.php?p=10788#10788

viewtopic.php?p=8937#8937

viewtopic.php?p=7960#7960

viewtopic.php?p=7949#7949 .

PS. I was born in Penang and migrated to Australia as a child. When did you go to Australia?

[%sig%]

[Tjandy]

Gam4 Xia3 - Thank you for referring me to the thread and for welcoming me. Just moved to Australia with my family a year ago.

But they also use Sabun in Xiamen - at least this is what my uncle told me when he visited our "Hio Li" 2 years ago. It is just interesting to see how the Portugese language can influence Minnan Yu but fail to have any influence at all in any other Chinese dialect. If it is only used in Malaysia and Indonesia, I can understand.....but for the same word to be used in Xiamen and Taiwan, it is a bit beyond my grasp.

And yes, Penang Hokkien is 99% similar to Medan Hokkien because the 2 cities are only 25 minutes by flight. I have always been mistaken as being from Penang everytime I go to Malaysia.

[hong]

It seems people in china say door as bui in chiangchiu ,bng in xiamen and chuanchiu but not mng and mui.I find that some malaysian minnan mistakenly say mian for the correct sound= bian 免(no).It is a sound from mandarin if I am not wrong.
There is online article by chinfa lien about denasalization for m become b,g,l etc in minnan compare to mandarin but no good answer for it.

[hong]

Dear Yisheng,
You have asked for books about your anxi minnan.Please wait for a year for a complete minnanfangyandacidian from prof chiu and other scholars.The book will list each school/sect speacial vocabulary 特有词 and grammar.
It is crazy for penang to speak pure chiangchiu like the correct word for who is tsua sounded like snake.I think everyone will laugh about this.
Nan an llke me and longhai,jinjiang,shishi,huian,yongchun,zhangbu,yunxiao,dongshan,pinghe should say ia5 for sian6(boring) in your anxi and other sects.This kind of thing can only be done by scholars from china.I don't think we have to care very much about the hanzi is wrong or correct compare to taiwan's dict.Just learn the stye of eact school will do.

[Eng Wai]

Hei Hong, can you brief me the main difference of Heng Hua and Chiang Chiu hokkien? Are there any Heng Hua in Malaysia? From my observation, no. But I don't know the exact situation. Do you know where could I find the statistic for Hokien in Malaysia? Eg how many nan an, how many longhai, how many heng hua? Outdated stats is welcome also because itt still gives a rough idea.

Eng Wai

[%sig%]

[Eng Wai]

sorry the any in the second sentence should be "many".

[hong]

I already given a web page from china stated there are 1.65 chuanchiu ten years ago in malaysia.6.5 chuanchiu in South east asia.North malaysia are mostly nan an.klang valley are hui an and an xi.south malaysia are yongchun.It seems that there are a lot yongchun in sabah and jinjiang in sarawak.There are only 250000 chiangchiu people in malaysia with mostly longhai mainly in melaka ,kedah and penang. Maybe Lim keat siang,malaccan, is chiangchiu
Henghua(putian and xianyou) is a mixed between fuzhou and chuanchiu language but certainly noy chiangchiu.There are at least 250000 henghua people in malaysia.The biggest huikuan is the one in kuala lumpur brickfield if i am not wrong.There is a free online thesis on henghua language from taiwan.I already given you the free online web site and article from china .for you to learn henghua.

[hong]

http://datas.ncl.edu.tw type putian to download that phd thesis but the font has problem at this moment.we can't ask for more because it is free.
password 王民 s220115313 there are many minnan theses to download