To return - huan or heng?

[Mark Yong]

Is 还 (to return something) huan or heng? I have heard both versions being used among Penang Hokkiens, in the ratio of approximately 20-80.

[hong]

I am not in my house when I send this post but chuanchiu has another sound for this baidu 還。hing for chiang and xia.It seems like hainn5 for tongan.
In prof.chiu xiamen dict 還數--hing siau-paying back the money.
Another hing where prof chiu doesn't know the benzi as 2 other meanings of giving angpau,etc to some one.
As for wendu huan 還。Prof.Chiu did give a few examples -你還你﹐我還我。Don't mix .用在兩個相同的名詞之間。
another one is 返回原來的地方。還原huan5guan5

[Mark Yong]

還數--hing siau-paying back the money.

You brought up another interesting word - siau. I always thought the 'siau' in 'hing siau' (and 'sui siau', for that matter) was 賬 (debt, money due for payment). My reasons are as follows:

1. I noticed that in general, words with Mandarin endings -u and corresponding Yue endings -ou, will have -or endings in Minnan (e.g. 路, 穌, 捕, 祖) - so I had the impression that 數 would therefore be along the lines of "sor".

2. As for 賬, the reason I thought it should be 'siau' is because similarly, words with Mandarin endings -ang and corresponding Yue endings -iong, will have baidu (note: not wendu) ending -iau or -iu - the choice depending on locality (e.g. 長, 張, 兩, 想).

3. Finally, 算賬 (suan1zhang1) in Mandarin means precisely "calculate payment", so I figured that further re-inforces the point from the angle of definition.

Does that make sense?

If siau is really 數, is it the wendu or baidu? How do you say, for instance, 數碼?

[hong]

賬﹐帳 are just tiong/tiunn.數 is wen soo3sak4 bai siau3,sok4.
More commonly siau is used in many words like pang siau 放數。However some words dict put wenbai is possible.
數目wen=soo-bok
bai =siau-bak
same goes for 總數I think words like mandarin should be wen du while those minnan special word should be only baidu-siau,like lam-kha-siau=懦夫。

[niuc]

還 lit. huan5, col. hing5/heng5 -> hai*5 in Tang-ua*.