Hi Mark,
Wonderful to have you on the Forum! Welcome!
Henning Klöter, who has a doctorate in Sinology from the University of Leiden, has written a book called "Written Taiwanese". I read it quite a while ago, and have been meaning to write a proper in-depth review of it for this forum for about 2 months now. However, other projects (like learning Mandarin) have absorbed a lot of time, and I still haven't got around to it. [I rather fear that what I have written below *is* my "in-depth review"!]
Your own personal project involves (among other things) finding hanzi for Hokkien-specific words. This is one of the major aspects covered in Dr. Klöter's book. One of the interesting themes revealed in the book is just how difficult it is to find the "right" hanzi for some Hokkien words. There are various approaches: historical (using a character for the ancestor of the Hokkien word, which was used in earlier forms of Chinese, but which has died out in modern Mandarin), semantic (using a character with the same meaning and usage in modern Mandarin, but which is completely unrelated), new-coinages (using the phonetic-radical approach to invent new characters, i.e. taking an existing character, commonly (and "correctly") used in writing modern Hokkien as the phonetic part of a Hokkien word pronounced in roughly the same way, and adding a determiner (often a radical).
What the book *doesn't* do is attempt to define the "correct" hanzi for as extensive a list of Hokkien-only words as possible. Instead, it gives an overview of quite a large selection of important Hokkien-only words, and uses these words to show the issues involved in trying to determine which character to use. It also gives a glimpse of the history of the different hanzi used for these specific words, and the reasons why one or the other hanzi was accepted or rejected by various authors or groups.
Of course, the book covers a lot more, as its subject is *all* major aspects of (the history of) written Taiwanese,. For example, it traces the development of Peh-Oe-Ji (also known as "Missionary Romanization"); it gives a fascinating insight into the use of katakana to write Hokkien during the 50-years when the Japanese controlled the island.
Perhaps you already know about this book and have been able to make use of the insights and ideas in it. If not, I thought it would be good to tell you (and other readers of this Forum) about it now.
Here are some links with more information about the book:
Synopsis: http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/kloeter/writtw.htm
Another link: http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/kloeter/
The publisher's take: http://www.harrassowitz.de/verlag/China/5093.html
Scan of the cover: http://www.wiedenhof.nl/ul/writt-tw.htm
Amazon.de link (I suppose because the publisher is German): http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/3 ... 78-9743261
Cheers,
Sim.
Henning Klöter's book "Written Taiwanese"
Hi, Sim!
Firstly, thank you for your warm welcome and kind words of encouragement! As a sanity check, I must first point out to you that I am in no sense a linguist or Sinology academic - just your average overseas Chinese who happens (by circumstances) to have taken a keen interest in the Southern Chinese dialects, particularly the Min. That's to make sure you do not set your standards too high on me!
You are right - my personal project does involve finding the **correct** Hanzi for Hokkien words. Referring to your list of academic approaches, I would say (though, I am aware that no one method can stand on its own) that my preference is the historical approach. Specifically, I am interested to investigate how Hokkien (like any other dialect) functioned as a reading vehicle for the Chinese language in the pre-modern era (i.e. before the advent of Mandarin) - hence, my shying away from the semantic approach, due to its over-reliance on the later-developing Mandarin as a bridge.
At the end of the day, what I am basically trying to establish is how Hokkien functions (or, more correctly, would have functioned in the days of yore) in reading and writing. How would a Hokkien have composed a letter to a distant province/prefecture? And how would he have read one that came from another province? Of course, one could say, "the same rules apply for all the other dialects, so why the keener interest in Min?". My answer lies in the following peculiarities of Min:
1. The large vocabulary and grammatical divergence from the other dialects, even the neighbouring Southern ones (even though the Yue dialects are phonetically unintelligible to the Northern dialects, the grammatical patterns are still a lot closer than that of Min),most likely due to geographical reasons (mountaineous ridges effectively sealing the Min region from the rest of the Han regions).
2. The equally large repository of non-Han words in colloquial speech (many of Malayo-Polynesian origin), making for an interesting exercise to differentiate between literal Min and spoken Min, and where the line is drawn to define Min's identity as a Han language (or not?).
3. The dual pronunciation of words (literal/colloquial) that is much more prevalent in Min than any of the other dialet groups.
4. Many words from Old Chinese that have fallen out of use in the other dialects, but are still retained in their original forms and meanings in Min.
You will therefore notice from my previous forum entries on Hanzi words for Hokkien, that I tend to be quite strict on my criteria for linking a specific Hanzi to a Hokkien word, unless I am absolutely certain that a 1-to-1 relationship exists (be it the literal or colloquial pronunciation). And unless it is absolutely necessary, I also try to stay clear of the temptation to use the new-coinages approach, unless it is proven that the Hokkien word in question really has no official Hanzi equivalent.
Of course, what qualifies as "official" is debatable - given my limited time and resources, my standard for the moment is my Kangxi Dictionary, as it contains the canon of almost all the 40,000-odd characters in all the known Classical texts (though, I am aware that the true tally is of the odd 70,000 words). My basis for using the Kangxi as the standard for defining a Hanzi as "official" is that the Hanzi characters in question should be readable (or at least decipherable) by most, if not all members of the Classical Chinese literati, regardless of dialect group. In other words, the rule of "one script unifying all dialects" holds in this case.
Of course, this criterion naturally excludes a number of legitimate Hanzi that may not have been recorded by the imperial scribes of Kangxi by the time the 2nd edition of the dictionary was compied in the 18th century, as they were peculiar to the Southern dialects during the Late Old Chinese era, but fell out of use by the Middle Chinese era. But to be fair to the Southern dialects, this criteria would also exclude just as many Modern Mandarin (re)definitions of words, e.g. 別 for "do not" (fusion of 不要?), the negating particle mei2 沒 (existing in wenyan only as mo4 or "sink"), hai2 還 for "still, as yet" (existing in wenyan only as huan2 or "to return something").
Do pardon me if my approach to researching the Hanzi for Hokkien words seems rather narrow in scope and outlook, without much coverage on the other aspects that you mentioned, e.g. semantic and coinage. Actually, this private research interest of mine is part of a larger interest in the 3,000-year-old "one script, many languages" phenomenon of the Chinese language, as exemplified by wenyan - which I (in absolute defiance! ) feel shall always be the true "standard Chinese language", not baihuawen. As an aside, the same goes for my opinion of Latin vs. English.
I took a look at the links you sent out regarding Dr. Henning Klöter's book. The first link is interesting, as it provides an outline of the contents for his research. A pity the Amazon.de link is in Deustch, though! Any idea whether it is available in any specialist bookstores in Malaysia/Singapore? My current treasure trove of specialist Chinese books is still the little bookstore in Kuala Lumpur's Jalan Silang (which I mentioned in one of my first few forum entries).
Cheers,
Mark
Firstly, thank you for your warm welcome and kind words of encouragement! As a sanity check, I must first point out to you that I am in no sense a linguist or Sinology academic - just your average overseas Chinese who happens (by circumstances) to have taken a keen interest in the Southern Chinese dialects, particularly the Min. That's to make sure you do not set your standards too high on me!
You are right - my personal project does involve finding the **correct** Hanzi for Hokkien words. Referring to your list of academic approaches, I would say (though, I am aware that no one method can stand on its own) that my preference is the historical approach. Specifically, I am interested to investigate how Hokkien (like any other dialect) functioned as a reading vehicle for the Chinese language in the pre-modern era (i.e. before the advent of Mandarin) - hence, my shying away from the semantic approach, due to its over-reliance on the later-developing Mandarin as a bridge.
At the end of the day, what I am basically trying to establish is how Hokkien functions (or, more correctly, would have functioned in the days of yore) in reading and writing. How would a Hokkien have composed a letter to a distant province/prefecture? And how would he have read one that came from another province? Of course, one could say, "the same rules apply for all the other dialects, so why the keener interest in Min?". My answer lies in the following peculiarities of Min:
1. The large vocabulary and grammatical divergence from the other dialects, even the neighbouring Southern ones (even though the Yue dialects are phonetically unintelligible to the Northern dialects, the grammatical patterns are still a lot closer than that of Min),most likely due to geographical reasons (mountaineous ridges effectively sealing the Min region from the rest of the Han regions).
2. The equally large repository of non-Han words in colloquial speech (many of Malayo-Polynesian origin), making for an interesting exercise to differentiate between literal Min and spoken Min, and where the line is drawn to define Min's identity as a Han language (or not?).
3. The dual pronunciation of words (literal/colloquial) that is much more prevalent in Min than any of the other dialet groups.
4. Many words from Old Chinese that have fallen out of use in the other dialects, but are still retained in their original forms and meanings in Min.
You will therefore notice from my previous forum entries on Hanzi words for Hokkien, that I tend to be quite strict on my criteria for linking a specific Hanzi to a Hokkien word, unless I am absolutely certain that a 1-to-1 relationship exists (be it the literal or colloquial pronunciation). And unless it is absolutely necessary, I also try to stay clear of the temptation to use the new-coinages approach, unless it is proven that the Hokkien word in question really has no official Hanzi equivalent.
Of course, what qualifies as "official" is debatable - given my limited time and resources, my standard for the moment is my Kangxi Dictionary, as it contains the canon of almost all the 40,000-odd characters in all the known Classical texts (though, I am aware that the true tally is of the odd 70,000 words). My basis for using the Kangxi as the standard for defining a Hanzi as "official" is that the Hanzi characters in question should be readable (or at least decipherable) by most, if not all members of the Classical Chinese literati, regardless of dialect group. In other words, the rule of "one script unifying all dialects" holds in this case.
Of course, this criterion naturally excludes a number of legitimate Hanzi that may not have been recorded by the imperial scribes of Kangxi by the time the 2nd edition of the dictionary was compied in the 18th century, as they were peculiar to the Southern dialects during the Late Old Chinese era, but fell out of use by the Middle Chinese era. But to be fair to the Southern dialects, this criteria would also exclude just as many Modern Mandarin (re)definitions of words, e.g. 別 for "do not" (fusion of 不要?), the negating particle mei2 沒 (existing in wenyan only as mo4 or "sink"), hai2 還 for "still, as yet" (existing in wenyan only as huan2 or "to return something").
Do pardon me if my approach to researching the Hanzi for Hokkien words seems rather narrow in scope and outlook, without much coverage on the other aspects that you mentioned, e.g. semantic and coinage. Actually, this private research interest of mine is part of a larger interest in the 3,000-year-old "one script, many languages" phenomenon of the Chinese language, as exemplified by wenyan - which I (in absolute defiance!
) feel shall always be the true "standard Chinese language", not baihuawen. As an aside, the same goes for my opinion of Latin vs. English.I took a look at the links you sent out regarding Dr. Henning Klöter's book. The first link is interesting, as it provides an outline of the contents for his research. A pity the Amazon.de link is in Deustch, though! Any idea whether it is available in any specialist bookstores in Malaysia/Singapore? My current treasure trove of specialist Chinese books is still the little bookstore in Kuala Lumpur's Jalan Silang (which I mentioned in one of my first few forum entries).
Cheers,
Mark
-
Sim
Hi Mark,
I am absolutely delighted that you have joined the Minnan Forum. I too am by no means a professional linguist. I just happened to have done 1st year linguistics at university as a sub-major, in the same year as I studied German (also only for a year, as "Elementary German"). After that (which was *many* years ago, in the late 1970's) I went on to study German and read a lot about it at home, and I travelled extensively in Germany over a period of 20 years.
Since then I have acquired a smattering of Danish, pretty good Dutch, have studied Italian and Latin at home, and am now working (exhaustingly!) on Mandarin (which I was exposed to very slightly as a child, but never ever mastered). Also, I have read extensively in the areas of phonetics, phonology, historical linguistics, morphology & grammar, language typology and (a little) socio-linguistics. (Indeed, I got a compliment from a visiting Masters student in linguistics that he had never seen a non-professional linguist with so many books on linguistics in a private home!).
So, like you, I am neither a professional linguist nor a sinologist, but a very keen amateur student of language. And like you, I am a big fan of Hokkien, and hope and wish to contribute to its study, preservation, and use. (In my case, I do happen to speak Penang Hokkien natively).
The aspects where we differ (and indeed, radically) however are in our approach to language.
To start with, I am from your "first group" of Penang Hokkien speakers: English-educated Baba Hokkiens with only a very basic mastery of Hokkien. As you pointed out, we code-switch extensively, and almost all "more sophisticated" words come from English. Indeed, I had to be reminded that "hip8 siong3" was the "proper" Hokkien term, where I would normally say "teh4 fo1-to2".
Secondly, I am not at all a "purist" linguist. On the contrary, I believe very firmly in the inevitability of language change, and I believe that the only "correct" form of the language is the one which most people use at any particular moment. In that sense I am a great supporter of the bai-hua movement (if one can indeed "retrospectively" support a movement which has already succeeded in its aims!). And I'm generally quite against socio-linguistic situations where something like "wen-yan" exists or is an admired standard. I think this tendency is present in all languages (the preservation of some older, even archaic form of the language, while the spoken language moves forward), but I am a supporter of constantly fiddling with the written language to bring it back into line with the spoken form. There are many languages with long written traditions where the spoken and written form have so radically diverged from one another that they are for all intents and purposes two different languages. (Tamil is I believe an example, where if one wants to say "the man sees the dog", then "man", "to see" and "dog" are lexically (radically) different items in the spoken and written forms (and perhaps even the verb inflection on "to see" is different between the spoken and written form).
In that sense, I'm also against always trying to look at the "original" form of a word in order to try and decide what is correct to use in the spoken language (how far back do we go?). The most extreme form of that would be that both Hokkien and Mandarin speakers would have to stop speaking Hokkien and Mandarin and start saying "gwkxng sxiahx ljdwg ...", as I seem to so often see for those awful reconstructions of Ancient Chinese!
. For me, what is correct is what happens to be most commonly in use in the community. For example, I am quite happy with all the Malay loans in Penang Baba Hokkien. I feel they give "local colour" and make Penang Hokkien special, rather than a "poorer" form of Standard Hokkien, in the same way that the Minnan variants all have "local colour" which make them special, rather than that they are "poorer" forms of Standard Chinese (i.e. Mandarin).
All that having been said, I feel I do understand very well where you are coming from Mark, and I respect your viewpoint even if I don't quite agree with it. The way you express yourself shows that you are quite well aware of all the issues I have outlined above. I think you've seen the ins-and-outs of the things I have mentioned, and happen to have come to the opposite conclusion from my own. You also appear to express you views with care and respect for other points of view, rather then just dismissing or condemning them out of hand. Furthermore, I certainly greatly admire what you are trying to do - compiling this dictionary of yours. I hope you will continue to share your discoveries and insights with us, and I look very much forward to being able to discuss and exchange views with you in the coming period. [Though I suspect that our exchanges will always have my text with the word PROPER in quotes, as in: "proper" usage, while yours will have them between asterisks, as in: ***proper*** usage
.]
And all my "descriptivist linguist" attitudes notwithstanding, I agree that you have a very valid point when you say what a truly amazing "cultural achievement" wen-yan is (was). It *is* largely thanks to this very wen-yan that Chinese culture had this remarkable unity and continuity, and it's mind boggling that an educated person up to the mid 1900s had direct access to the literature and documents written for the preceding continuous period of 1500-2000 years. The loss of that with the coming of bai-hua is in many senses something to be mourned and regretted.
Hope to read many more of your postings in the future,
Sim.
I am absolutely delighted that you have joined the Minnan Forum. I too am by no means a professional linguist. I just happened to have done 1st year linguistics at university as a sub-major, in the same year as I studied German (also only for a year, as "Elementary German"). After that (which was *many* years ago, in the late 1970's) I went on to study German and read a lot about it at home, and I travelled extensively in Germany over a period of 20 years.
Since then I have acquired a smattering of Danish, pretty good Dutch, have studied Italian and Latin at home, and am now working (exhaustingly!) on Mandarin (which I was exposed to very slightly as a child, but never ever mastered). Also, I have read extensively in the areas of phonetics, phonology, historical linguistics, morphology & grammar, language typology and (a little) socio-linguistics. (Indeed, I got a compliment from a visiting Masters student in linguistics that he had never seen a non-professional linguist with so many books on linguistics in a private home!).
So, like you, I am neither a professional linguist nor a sinologist, but a very keen amateur student of language. And like you, I am a big fan of Hokkien, and hope and wish to contribute to its study, preservation, and use. (In my case, I do happen to speak Penang Hokkien natively).
The aspects where we differ (and indeed, radically) however are in our approach to language.
To start with, I am from your "first group" of Penang Hokkien speakers: English-educated Baba Hokkiens with only a very basic mastery of Hokkien. As you pointed out, we code-switch extensively, and almost all "more sophisticated" words come from English. Indeed, I had to be reminded that "hip8 siong3" was the "proper" Hokkien term, where I would normally say "teh4 fo1-to2".
Secondly, I am not at all a "purist" linguist. On the contrary, I believe very firmly in the inevitability of language change, and I believe that the only "correct" form of the language is the one which most people use at any particular moment. In that sense I am a great supporter of the bai-hua movement (if one can indeed "retrospectively" support a movement which has already succeeded in its aims!). And I'm generally quite against socio-linguistic situations where something like "wen-yan" exists or is an admired standard. I think this tendency is present in all languages (the preservation of some older, even archaic form of the language, while the spoken language moves forward), but I am a supporter of constantly fiddling with the written language to bring it back into line with the spoken form. There are many languages with long written traditions where the spoken and written form have so radically diverged from one another that they are for all intents and purposes two different languages. (Tamil is I believe an example, where if one wants to say "the man sees the dog", then "man", "to see" and "dog" are lexically (radically) different items in the spoken and written forms (and perhaps even the verb inflection on "to see" is different between the spoken and written form).
In that sense, I'm also against always trying to look at the "original" form of a word in order to try and decide what is correct to use in the spoken language (how far back do we go?). The most extreme form of that would be that both Hokkien and Mandarin speakers would have to stop speaking Hokkien and Mandarin and start saying "gwkxng sxiahx ljdwg ...", as I seem to so often see for those awful reconstructions of Ancient Chinese!
. For me, what is correct is what happens to be most commonly in use in the community. For example, I am quite happy with all the Malay loans in Penang Baba Hokkien. I feel they give "local colour" and make Penang Hokkien special, rather than a "poorer" form of Standard Hokkien, in the same way that the Minnan variants all have "local colour" which make them special, rather than that they are "poorer" forms of Standard Chinese (i.e. Mandarin).All that having been said, I feel I do understand very well where you are coming from Mark, and I respect your viewpoint even if I don't quite agree with it. The way you express yourself shows that you are quite well aware of all the issues I have outlined above. I think you've seen the ins-and-outs of the things I have mentioned, and happen to have come to the opposite conclusion from my own. You also appear to express you views with care and respect for other points of view, rather then just dismissing or condemning them out of hand. Furthermore, I certainly greatly admire what you are trying to do - compiling this dictionary of yours. I hope you will continue to share your discoveries and insights with us, and I look very much forward to being able to discuss and exchange views with you in the coming period. [Though I suspect that our exchanges will always have my text with the word PROPER in quotes, as in: "proper" usage, while yours will have them between asterisks, as in: ***proper*** usage
.]And all my "descriptivist linguist" attitudes notwithstanding, I agree that you have a very valid point when you say what a truly amazing "cultural achievement" wen-yan is (was). It *is* largely thanks to this very wen-yan that Chinese culture had this remarkable unity and continuity, and it's mind boggling that an educated person up to the mid 1900s had direct access to the literature and documents written for the preceding continuous period of 1500-2000 years. The loss of that with the coming of bai-hua is in many senses something to be mourned and regretted.
Hope to read many more of your postings in the future,
Sim.
-
Sim
I don't know if any Malaysian or Singaporean specialist bookshops might stock it. Even if they don't, they might be happy to order it for you. Also, please feel free to ask me to do a translation of bits of the Amazon page if you would like to order it yourself. Alternatively, I'll be ordering another copy for a friend, so if you like, I could order a copy for you, and we can work out postage and payment details etc later.Mark Yong wrote:I took a look at the links you sent out regarding Dr. Henning Klöter's book. The first link is interesting, as it provides an outline of the contents for his research. A pity the Amazon.de link is in Deustch, though! Any idea whether it is available in any specialist bookstores in Malaysia/Singapore? ...
Cheers,
Sim.
-
hong
I don't think books should be published in German because the price will be like hell.
I am sure with just 30% including postage of above price we can buy minnanfangyandacidian from China later this year.
Only with this kind of book we can learn a lot about minnan vocabulary although not about all hanzi of it
I am sure with just 30% including postage of above price we can buy minnanfangyandacidian from China later this year.
Only with this kind of book we can learn a lot about minnan vocabulary although not about all hanzi of it
-
Sim
-
hong
Yes,I know the book is in English.Remember you are not earning your income in poor malaysian dollars like me.
I have to hold back all my taiwanese order because it must be in US dollars and I am waiting for the riggint to become higher compare to the dollars.
Japanese books are also like hell,I can't order one of the best books on minnan -Taiwanese Japanese dict in 200 us dollars.
I have to hold back all my taiwanese order because it must be in US dollars and I am waiting for the riggint to become higher compare to the dollars.
Japanese books are also like hell,I can't order one of the best books on minnan -Taiwanese Japanese dict in 200 us dollars.
Douglas' Amoy dictionary
On a similar topic - and I know I am going to sound like a hypocrite for even bothering, considering my response to Hong regarding why I am controlling my Minnan books expenditure 
:
I did a search for Douglas' Amoy Dictionary on the Web, and was shocked to find that it is price-tagged at an average of USD$750-1,200 per copy at most of the online rare books retailers (actual price depending on the retailer)!
:I did a search for Douglas' Amoy Dictionary on the Web, and was shocked to find that it is price-tagged at an average of USD$750-1,200 per copy at most of the online rare books retailers (actual price depending on the retailer)!