Malaysian Hokkien

[Sim]

Casey,

That matches my experience. I knew "bored" as the primary meaning of "siEn" in Penang Hokkien. It's only my Amoy speaking grandparents whom I heard using it to mean "tired".

In fact, thinking about it, I think in my usage, the word extended in meaning to even cover "fed up". In the sense that people would say "khua* i pun siEn" = "when I consider / think about him, I get fed up with the whole situation" (idiomatically) = "look him also bored/fed-up" (literally).

Cheers,
Sim.

[%sig%]

[Eng Wai]

First of all, I am glad that more and more people are involved in this forum. I was restraining myself from indulging in internet for a while. But it is simply upbeating to see some names which only appeared in "once upon a time" posts shown on the AUTHOR row again!!

my usage of siEn (not in whatever sequence)

1. Boring
lu bo kam kak ta ta pai tua chu cin cia siEn mEh?
(You don't feel everytime in house very boring mEh)


2. sleepy
gua cin cia sien, ai kun
(I very sleepy, wanna sleep.
(note, the tiredom here is the sleepy tiredom, not exhausted tiredom due to hardwork)

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish the real meaning of the speaker because when you are bored, you are sleepy,, vice versa. So if I say "gua cin cia sien", it could mean perfectly "I am tired" or "I am sleepy".

I don't think anyone in Penang will differentiate semen from sperm when saying siao. Siao is that white stuff, and that white stuff contains both semen and sperm.

I have never heard of anybody combining lu and lang to become "luang". But one definte Hokkien influence on Hokkien and Malaysia world Mandarin is the tendency to swallow every words, or to combine syllables. Obvious example is "zhe4 yang4". Lots of us pronounce it as "jiang4" in everyday speech. This trend is not observed in China Mandarin speakers. I try to review the way I speak Hokkine, and I don't find any tendency of me swallowing 2 or 3 Hokkien syllabus. But when I speak Mandarin, not least to Malaysians, this tendency is pretty common. I could remeber vividly my friend taunted by a 6 years opld Taiwanese mandarin speaking child as "don't know how to speak Mandarin". I feel taht this is a very interesting linguistic topic worth some effort. I first thought about the influence of Malay (Malay like to swallow Malay words too), but Taiwanese Mandarin are having the same characteristic. However, one of the impressions I got from Taiwanese Hokkien is that their Hokkien are much more clearer than ours.

Could any linguist here willing to help?

Eng Wai

[%sig%]

[hong]

Taiwanese 's minnan are better than minnan people in south east asia.However they are just a mixed of three schools in vocabulary and the tones is in xiamen only except for some old man in Lukang area which is chuanchiu.They don't know how to speak haicheng (chianghchiu)even if their ancestors are from there and the same case for any other chuanchiu sects.8 millions chuanchiu people there suppose to use serh 说(speak)like mandarin but not kong讲 in chiangchiu and xiamen.
Well,we can say taiwanese don't know how to speak mandarin .They speak without light tone which is explained by their Chinese languages prof as totaly wrong.They use la 啦,了啦 a lot from xiamen and chiangchiu which is not the case in mandarin because we can only found as 了+啊=la(rarely used as final part of a sentence),malaysian follow these two mistakes a lot from them.In school we are taught light tones in 爸爸 but somehow taiwanese TV show misled us.We need to learn more about putonghua but not taiwan guoyu.
As for minnan or any other dialects in south east aisa.We need to see these languages as Hanyu as well like putonghua.Buy the dict materials than we will have a better understanding of it.If we mix too much of thai,malay,filipino in our dialects,people from China,hongkong and taiwan don't even think we are chinese.

[hong]

Some words in minnan are correct if we joint them together.nothing wrong if we follow people from china

[hong]

People say malaysian speak minnan with mandarin in it if we don;t know the words for it but we can see people in taiwanese minnan radio here is also the same case.Listen to them with a lot of mandarin words in it if the guys don't have an idea about the correct word.http://www.cbs.org.tw/big5/Default.aspx click fangyanwang in taiwanzhiyin

[casey]

Hong

Quote:"However they are just a mixed of three schools in vocabulary and the tones is in xiamen only except for some old man in Lukang area which is chuanchiu."

I disagree regarding the tones. The tones are also mixed, e.g., tone 5 in Xiamen is 24, but many Taiwan people use a lower 12 or 121.

[hong]

Casey,
Yes,I know but I am too lazy to type in full details.Not many people are interested to read long post in here.
The more important thing is 8 m quanzhou of them should have 6 th tone yangshang tone .It can't be like douglas 's book without 6 th tone.

[Eng Wai]

The onther linguistic trait i am interesetd in is the hybridisation of languages. Penang Hokkien and Taiwanese Hokkien are both the mixture of Quan Zhou Hokkien and Chiang Chiu Hokkien. However, the product of mixture is vastly differemt, due to various factors. I am just voicing my interest, nothing much to bother you actually.

Eng Wai

[qrasy]

There are many ways that one Family's language accepts other family's words.
For example: There are some Chinese words in Hungarian, it could come from the Huns who borrowed Chinese words and migrated to Europe.
Also, we have cut=割 in English.
What are the standard readings of 二, 耳?

>"mata"/"maka"
I know that there are Austronesians that don't call eye like this
Javanese: Paningal/mripat
Sundanese: Panon/Soca
Can we say that "mat" is/is not from Austronesian?

>"ibu"/"bu"/"bo"/"mu"
I don't know if there are any Javanese/Sundanese calling "ibu"

>"kahwin"
When did it come to MinNan?

>Is "Lang" 郎 or 人?

>How to write "Siau" crazy?

>what is this "Sien" bored/tired?

[hong]

siau 犭+肖 for crazy.As for a meaning for semen is 淆
I already said kahwin came from Iran (persian)
侬 is lang in guhanyu but not the modern usage in wu language