La la li la tam pong

[Guest]

Hi

I will try to speak Hokkien to anyone when i just know him/her. Now, I am even finding friends from northern in my university, situated in Selangor, to practice it. After 4 years of practice, I am now a fluent speaker. I am now on my way to learn more genuine words (those words usually not used by youngsters) from the elderly.

That's just great. Wonderful to see your enthusiasm for Hokkien.

Hokkien has become an identity of northern ppl, especially youngsters love to use Hokkien to show their identity as a Penangite. Cuz, you know, Penang is a pride for Penangite.

Wow, thanks for telling me that. As a true Penangite, this is really wonderful news.

Regards,
Sim.

[Guest]

I wonder if there is any meaning for "som" or "tri" !?

Re-reading this, I would speculate that "tri" is the Hokkien pronunciation of English "three", because we go "one", "two", and then "SOM" (which is on the count of "three").

I have no idea about the meaning of the word "som" though. I always thought of it as the verb associated with "bringing your hand forward and displaying your chosen symbol", but perhaps it has its own independent meaning.

"zhui1 lou4 zhui1 peng3 peng1
zhui3 zhui3 chiak3 pa4 cou1 lang3 peng1"

and

I'm sorry, I don't know this game, nor the chant.

I was re-reading this thread today and read what I wrote. Amazingly, this chant was buried DEEP in my sub-conscious. When I wrote the above in mid-January, I had no recollection of the chant, but, now, one month later, mid-February (perhaps triggered by reading it one month ago), the chant is perfectly familiar. I can even remember the "tune" we chanted it to. However, I still don't remember what we used the chant for. The procedure you describe (for separating people into two or more groups) seems quite plausible, but I don't have any explicit memory of using it in this way. Weird that the chant itself is quite familiar to me, but the circumstances in which it was used has now totally disappeared from my memory.

Regards,
Sim.

[Andrew Yong]

tsui loh tsui peng peng is used in exactly the same way as eeny meeny miny moe in English.

[Andrew]

Hokkien has become an identity of northern ppl, especially youngsters love to use Hokkien to show their identity as a Penangite. Cuz, you know, Penang is a pride for Penangite.

Wow, thanks for telling me that. As a true Penangite, this is really wonderful news.

There is a very strong sense of identity among Penangites, and the language is a large part of that identity. We feel this is our language, regardless of whether we are Chiangchiu or Chuanchiu or Teochiu or Hakka. Just look at the number of active contributors to this forum who are from Penang.

[Eng Wai]

The idendity of Penangite, not least Penang Chinese, plays a significant part of our idendity in this multipolar world. While the number of non Buddhist, non-Taoist, non-Mandarin-speaking, non BN supporter etc etc is not insignificant, Penang Chinese largely consist of Hokkiens who speak Penang Hokkien. Even those non-Hokkien like me can speak Peanng Hokkien as well. It will take immense effort to erase the Penang Hokkien trait from those Penangite. After all, language is the tool for expression. Penang Hokkien is the grass root language, in contrary to Mandarin as the classroom language, Malay as the compulsory national language and English as the Posh language.

Seems like, at least in this forum, no one FROM Penang despise Hokkien. However, there are still much difference on opinions on how to preserve the language

The active users in this Hokkien is not big enough. If not, I would like to conduct a few online polls to know what the others think.

Cheers

Eng Wai

[hong]

It is getting worse.English or chinese educated parents are only interested to speak manglish and malaysian kind of mandarin to their children.You can't change their decision .
Anyway,as I have said it many times every minnan people in malaysia have too much to learn for minnan language.Without having some dict,don't expect any kind of improvement other than words replace with malay,english and mandarin.Minnan expert can accept we speak some malay words in it but not to the level of mess up with the vowel and consonant. They also use agak,agak-agak in xiamen.
I don't think Prof.Lirulong (Nanan)can happily accept nanan people in malaysia can't speak Nanan language correctly.This is why he has to write Nanan fangyanzhi for Nanan people outside china.nanan people in china don't need this papers at all.

[hong]

I just have to add we can't underestimate penang minnan people by asking penang chuanchiu to learn chiangchiu language as Andrew suggested.My friend purposely made a trip to amoy,chiang and chuan just to listen how they speak.He learnt a lot.At least he knows chuanchiu use seh not kong although he doesn't know the hanzi beacuse he is malay educated.
I am sure all of us will meet some old or young minnan people in Penang asking what is the correct way to speak their minnan .

[Andrew Yong]

I think it is good that people are interested. Most people don't even know the difference between the various Hokkien dialects, so getting them to recognise that the differences are not just local inventions or corruptions but because of people coming from different parts of Hokkien is often the first step! Once they recognise that, they can study whatever dialect of Hokkien they wish.

But we do need books about Hokkien written in English or Malay, because many people do not read Chinese. It would be good if someone were to write a basic textbook or language course.

By the way, what is the ti7/3 as in "m-ai ti liau", don't want/need it anymore.

[Andrew Yong]

Eng Wai: it is true that the sense of identity is unfortunately dependent on race, however you do get the odd Indian or Malay who can speak fluent Hokkien. The trouble now is that many of the English-educated Chinese are worse at Hokkien than some Indians and Malays! I am no exception - my grandparents spoke Hokkien to each other, but Hokkien/English to my mother, and my parents speak Hokkien/English to each other, but English only to me.

[Casey]

Andrew

"m-ai ti liao" = m7 ai3 ti8 liao2
ti8 至（手旁） = beh4 (want something, wish to have something)