I find it a bit hard to believe frog can also be called si-kha,si-kha-hi.I think a lot of people know how to say it correctly chui-ke in markett where some guys are selling it.I don't know how many people in china/taiwan use the single word 蛙 kuai1.
It seems that toad and frog are the same in minnan?Becauue frog/toad as kap 蛤 mentioned by dict in this web site.
田蛤仔 chhan-kap-a.
I find that minann people call pu(tian)田 and gu(tian)古田 in fuzhou as chhan=tian like above.(just something out topic )
More Chinese characters for Hokkien words
-
Sim
I went through my animal encyclopedia and the only creepy-crawlies from my youth which I missed in my list above were:
14. phang1 (wasp).
15. bi3/7 phang1 (bee) - this distinction is quite interesting. Wasps and hornets have very slim waists and a pointed tip at the abdomen, and they can fly very fast (and sometimes jerkily); bees are "rounder" and less agile.
As a child, I always thought that the "bi" in "bi phang" was borrowed from English "bee". It's only now, learning Mandarin, that I see that it's probably 蜜 bit8 "honey", with the "-t" elided. If it is this character, then of course it should be written bit4 phang1.
16. O7 bui1 (sandfly) - these are tiny, black, biting (blood sucking) insects, the size of a pin-head. I get very large bumps from their bites, and the bumps itch for weeks, as I appear to be very allergic to sandfly bites. They're found in sandy soil near marshes.
17. ku3/7 sin5 (aphids) - these are chalky/whitish "alien-looking" animals, which cling to the stems of plants and suck their sap (and weaken the plant, so they were considered pests).
18. hue1 kim7 chE*1 (firefly) - would this be 火金青?
Of course there were a huge number of other insects in the book, but not really others which were animals I came across in my daily life as a child in Malaysia.
---
Hong: thanks for the words for "cricket".
Mark: interesting that "sat4" appears to be the general word for "flea". In my usage, we never called ticks anything but gu7/kau1 pi1. I don't remember ever seing a *real* "flea" (the small, hopping things) in my childhood in Malaysia. The first fleas I saw were after I'd moved to Australia, in the early 70's, and even then, never in tropical Australia, only in the cooler southern regions. Do fleas actually exist in Malaysia? Perhaps they do, and this was a gap in my perceptions during my childhood. Strange.
In my own "map of the world", I never considered fleas, bedbugs, and ticks as belonging to a single group. Even though they all bit / sucked blood, for me, fleas were small, very agile things which disappeared before you had a chance to kill them; bedbugs were very flat things; and ticks were very round, rather helpless things. We used to pick them (ticks) out of the fur of our pet dogs and put them in methylated spirits (or step on them on the concrete driveway outside the house). Whenever we found them, they would already have sucked as much blood as they could from the dog, so they were swollen up to full capacity, like little grapes (I guess that's why we could find them). They had this glossy *grey* colour, and all they could do when captured was wave their tiny little legs in the air helplessly (because their bodies were so full of blood that their legs couldn't even touch anything anymore). This is what made them so different from bedbugs, whose distinctive characteristic was in fact their flatness (and their not being shiny grey).
Which all goes to show that human grouping of animals as being "the same" or "different" can sometimes be quite arbitrary. The classic example of this is of course that Westerners find it very strange that in Chinese "mouse" and "rat" are considered the same animal. And (British) English (as opposed to German and Dutch) distinguishes "tortoises" from "turtles".
The only "insects" I knew from everyday life in my childhood for which I still don't know the Hokkien words are: "praying mantis", "silverfish", and "millipede". The praying mantis is a large - 8-10 cm - grasshopper-like insect with large "claws", which it uses to catch other insects. Silverfish are tiny wriggly things which eat the glue in books. Millipedes are different from centipedes in that they have many more legs, and they don't bite. The ones from my childhood were quite large - 5-8 cm long, dark red in colour, and curled up into a spiral when you threatened them. I say "insects" in quotes because silverfish and millipedes are not in fact - biologically speaking - insects.
Sim.
PS. In connection with the word "firefly", we had a nonsense poem we used to recite. It began:
hue1-kim7-chE*1 (firefly)
cap4-gO3-mE*5 (15th night (of the lunar month))
chia*1-lang5 lai7 ciah4-tE5 (invite people to come to drink tea)
tE5 sio7-sio1 (tea hot-hot)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 kin7-cio1 (walk to buy bananas)
kin7-cio1 be3-ki1 pEh4 (forgot to peel banana)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 chEh4 (walk to buy books)
chEh4 be3-ki1 thak8 (forgot to read book)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 bak8 (walk to buy ink(stone))
bak8 be3-ki1 bua5 (forgot to rub ink(stone))
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 cua5 (walk to buy a snake)
cua5 be3-ki1 so5 (snake forgot to crawl)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 go5 (walk to buy a goose)
... etc
It went on and on, I don't really know how it ended, or indeed *if* it ended... People would start reciting it until they couldn't remember any more verses.
I wonder if other people knew this poem?
-S.
14. phang1 (wasp).
15. bi3/7 phang1 (bee) - this distinction is quite interesting. Wasps and hornets have very slim waists and a pointed tip at the abdomen, and they can fly very fast (and sometimes jerkily); bees are "rounder" and less agile.
As a child, I always thought that the "bi" in "bi phang" was borrowed from English "bee". It's only now, learning Mandarin, that I see that it's probably 蜜 bit8 "honey", with the "-t" elided. If it is this character, then of course it should be written bit4 phang1.
16. O7 bui1 (sandfly) - these are tiny, black, biting (blood sucking) insects, the size of a pin-head. I get very large bumps from their bites, and the bumps itch for weeks, as I appear to be very allergic to sandfly bites. They're found in sandy soil near marshes.
17. ku3/7 sin5 (aphids) - these are chalky/whitish "alien-looking" animals, which cling to the stems of plants and suck their sap (and weaken the plant, so they were considered pests).
18. hue1 kim7 chE*1 (firefly) - would this be 火金青?
Of course there were a huge number of other insects in the book, but not really others which were animals I came across in my daily life as a child in Malaysia.
---
Hong: thanks for the words for "cricket".
Mark: interesting that "sat4" appears to be the general word for "flea". In my usage, we never called ticks anything but gu7/kau1 pi1. I don't remember ever seing a *real* "flea" (the small, hopping things) in my childhood in Malaysia. The first fleas I saw were after I'd moved to Australia, in the early 70's, and even then, never in tropical Australia, only in the cooler southern regions. Do fleas actually exist in Malaysia? Perhaps they do, and this was a gap in my perceptions during my childhood. Strange.
In my own "map of the world", I never considered fleas, bedbugs, and ticks as belonging to a single group. Even though they all bit / sucked blood, for me, fleas were small, very agile things which disappeared before you had a chance to kill them; bedbugs were very flat things; and ticks were very round, rather helpless things. We used to pick them (ticks) out of the fur of our pet dogs and put them in methylated spirits (or step on them on the concrete driveway outside the house). Whenever we found them, they would already have sucked as much blood as they could from the dog, so they were swollen up to full capacity, like little grapes (I guess that's why we could find them). They had this glossy *grey* colour, and all they could do when captured was wave their tiny little legs in the air helplessly (because their bodies were so full of blood that their legs couldn't even touch anything anymore). This is what made them so different from bedbugs, whose distinctive characteristic was in fact their flatness (and their not being shiny grey).
Which all goes to show that human grouping of animals as being "the same" or "different" can sometimes be quite arbitrary. The classic example of this is of course that Westerners find it very strange that in Chinese "mouse" and "rat" are considered the same animal. And (British) English (as opposed to German and Dutch) distinguishes "tortoises" from "turtles".
The only "insects" I knew from everyday life in my childhood for which I still don't know the Hokkien words are: "praying mantis", "silverfish", and "millipede". The praying mantis is a large - 8-10 cm - grasshopper-like insect with large "claws", which it uses to catch other insects. Silverfish are tiny wriggly things which eat the glue in books. Millipedes are different from centipedes in that they have many more legs, and they don't bite. The ones from my childhood were quite large - 5-8 cm long, dark red in colour, and curled up into a spiral when you threatened them. I say "insects" in quotes because silverfish and millipedes are not in fact - biologically speaking - insects.
Sim.
PS. In connection with the word "firefly", we had a nonsense poem we used to recite. It began:
hue1-kim7-chE*1 (firefly)
cap4-gO3-mE*5 (15th night (of the lunar month))
chia*1-lang5 lai7 ciah4-tE5 (invite people to come to drink tea)
tE5 sio7-sio1 (tea hot-hot)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 kin7-cio1 (walk to buy bananas)
kin7-cio1 be3-ki1 pEh4 (forgot to peel banana)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 chEh4 (walk to buy books)
chEh4 be3-ki1 thak8 (forgot to read book)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 bak8 (walk to buy ink(stone))
bak8 be3-ki1 bua5 (forgot to rub ink(stone))
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 cua5 (walk to buy a snake)
cua5 be3-ki1 so5 (snake forgot to crawl)
kia*7-lO7 khi1 be1 go5 (walk to buy a goose)
... etc
It went on and on, I don't really know how it ended, or indeed *if* it ended... People would start reciting it until they couldn't remember any more verses.
I wonder if other people knew this poem?
-S.
-
Sim
Hi Niuc!niuc wrote: 1. 粥 is pronounced as cok8. We use 糜 ber5 for Hokkien porridge and 粥 cok8 for Cantonese porridge/congee.
...
2. I used to argue with my friends from Medan who insisted that che* was green.
1. I make the same distinction between Hokkien and Cantonese porridge.
But we don't say "ber5", but rather "mOi5". Given the b-/m- relationship in Hokkien, I wonder if it might be the same word?
2. For me, "che*" is green too, not blue. For blue we only use "lam5".
There is of course the word lek8 (which I suppose is 绿). I don't think I would ever use that word to describe something which had a green colour though (but that's probably a limitation in my own Hokkien). I only know it in the fixed compound-noun lek4-tau7 ("mung beans"), the things one grows tau3-gE5 (bean sprouts) from.
Funnily, I used to think that was tau3-gE5 was 豆牙. When just starting to sprout from the seeds, they *do* look like little "fangs"
. Only now that I'm learning Mandarin do I see that it's actually 豆芽. Sim.
-
Sim
Hi Hong,hong wrote:...I think a lot of people know how to say it correctly chui-ke in markett where some guys are selling it....
Yes, I remembered this word when you said it. But for me, "chui-ke" is only the edible one (which is why it's at the market). It's found in padi fields. I would never call all the other toads and frogs which I saw on the road "chui-ke" (but, as I always say, my usage may be "wrong").
Is "chui-ke" 水鸡?
Sim.
To the best of my knowledge, "ber5" and "mOi5" have the same common Hanzi, i.e. 糜. The b-/m- relationship appears to be a blending in between Hokkien and Teochew. Many b- words in Hokkien have m- beginnings in Teochew, and the rising tone becomes a high tone, e.g. 明 "béng" (bright/clear) in Hokkien becomes "mêng" in Teochew. In the case of 糜, it appears to be a "meet-halfway" between adopting the m- beginning of Teochew, yet keeping the rising tone in Hokkien.Sim wrote: I make the same distinction between Hokkien and Cantonese porridge.
But we don't say "ber5", but rather "mOi5". Given the b-/m- relationship in Hokkien, I wonder if it might be the same word?
Another of Penang Hokkien's hint of Teochew influence is its use of the word "mâe" (is it 猛?) for "fast/quick", rather than the Amoy 緊 (kin).
There is a Praying Mantis kungfu academy along the Railway Road leading towards Penang Hill (the terrace house two doors to the left of the Lai Lai supermarket where the World War II cenotaph is), where I trained for a very brief period. They refer to the praying mantis boxing as "tăng lang kún" 螳螂拳. Note the difference between this and the Mandarin pronunciation tang2 lang2 (螳 has N aspirated t- and with a rising tone in Mandarin, but unaspirated t- and low tone in Hokkien).Sim wrote: The only "insects" I knew from everyday life in my childhood for which I still don't know the Hokkien words are: "praying mantis"... The praying mantis is a large - 8-10 cm - grasshopper-like insect with large "claws", which it uses to catch other insects.
Take heart... "chae" is green for me, too... as is "lam5" for blue.Sim wrote: For me, "che*" is green too, not blue. For blue we only use "lam5".
There is of course the word lek8 (which I suppose is 绿). I don't think I would ever use that word to describe something which had a green colour though (but that's probably a limitation in my own Hokkien). I only know it in the fixed compound-noun lek4-tau7 ("mung beans"), the things one grows tau3-gE5 (bean sprouts) from.
I think "chae" as blue exists only in Classical Chinese, some dialects (as Nuic has pointed out for Tang Ua) and Japanese.I don't think I have ever heard of anyone refer to green objects as lek4 sek4, either. Like many Hokkien words, lek4 appears only as compounds in technical terms, probably to comply with the mainstream.
Yes, it is. "Water chicken". From my experience in Penang, 水雞 is the equivalent of 田雞 or paddy chicken, as you mentioned.Sim wrote:Hi Hong,hong wrote:...I think a lot of people know how to say it correctly chui-ke in markett where some guys are selling it....
Yes, I remembered this word when you said it. But for me, "chui-ke" is only the edible one (which is why it's at the market). It's found in padi fields. I would never call all the other toads and frogs which I saw on the road "chui-ke" (but, as I always say, my usage may be "wrong").
Is "chui-ke" 水鸡?
Sim.
Four more Hanzis to feed my curiosity (I think Sim is starting to tire of my obsession for finding Hanzis to Hokkien words!):
"sĕ" (as in "hō sĕ / be hō sĕ" or "good/bad") - is it 勢? I often hear it in a corrupted form "sǐ" when referring to someone ill (as in "lăng bŏ hō sǐ).
"căe" (as in "plenty"). Is it 侈, 儕, or possibly just the baidu for 多? 侈 carries the meaning of "being extravagant" (e.g. 侈用), but 夏門方言志 says 儕 is the baidu for 多.
Similarly, is "cîo" (as in "few") the baidu for 少? This one seems likely, since there are some words where the wendu has a s- beginning, while the corresponding baidu has a c- beginning (e.g. 石 - wendu "sik7", baidu "cio7").
Is "iông" (strong, heallthy) 勇?
"sĕ" (as in "hō sĕ / be hō sĕ" or "good/bad") - is it 勢? I often hear it in a corrupted form "sǐ" when referring to someone ill (as in "lăng bŏ hō sǐ).
"căe" (as in "plenty"). Is it 侈, 儕, or possibly just the baidu for 多? 侈 carries the meaning of "being extravagant" (e.g. 侈用), but 夏門方言志 says 儕 is the baidu for 多.
Similarly, is "cîo" (as in "few") the baidu for 少? This one seems likely, since there are some words where the wendu has a s- beginning, while the corresponding baidu has a c- beginning (e.g. 石 - wendu "sik7", baidu "cio7").
Is "iông" (strong, heallthy) 勇?
-
Andrew