Penang Hokkien

Casey · Post by **Casey** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:12 am

The correct pronounciation of 咱们 in Hanyu Pinyin is za3 men2 (not "cha men" which might caused some confusion), meaning "we, us" inclusive of the people we are speaking to. The Minnan pronunciation of 咱 is "cam2", not "ka". The Minnan word for "we, us" is gun2 or guan2 元 ( 人字旁 )(exclusive of persons speaking to) or lan2 自 ( 人字旁 )(inclusive of persons speaking to). I do not think anybody has ever used "ka mui" in their conversation. If only gun2, guan2 or lan2 are being used in the common Minnan conversaton, there is no way that they could be related to the Malay word "kami".

hong · Post by **hong** » Wed May 11, 2005 9:36 am

Tang,
How do you expect us to learn minnan if not by studying books,can you sponsor us for two months trip to zhang/xia/quan to have practical experience from local people.Also to photocopy out print materials over there.
You keep on saying you are in Shanghai but you cannot contribute anything.You can post some part of out of print books by Prof.Mei and wu about wu and Min languages for us.If you are rich enough ,you can walk into bookmall in shanghai and send us some free minnan books.The book is not costly if you are a rich guy.
For you infomation,there are no min languages in Qin period.The first Minnan language started only during 三國 1800 years.The earliest is 粱安=南安currently.

tangoloonokongo · Post by **tangoloonokongo** » Wed May 11, 2005 10:57 am

To Casey and others who are interested.

The meanings of 'kami' and 'kita' in Malay need to be explained more clearly. They are used in different contexts.

Both mean 'we' in English. But different kinds of 'we'.

To Hong

It is not quite profitable to come pilgrimming to Fujian to learn what is the 'real' Hokkien. As I have told this forum long time ago, the Hokkien dialect here would have changed due to unfavorable factors. We need to check out the 'Hokkien' diaspora at least in the South East Asia, where much of the original cultures are preserved.

Tang Loon Kong
Shanghai, China

Casey · Post by **Casey** » Wed May 11, 2005 11:27 am

Tang Loon Kong

From my limited knowledge of Malay language, "kami" (exclusive of people speaking to) and "kita" (inclusive of people speaking to) are different in their usage. This further proves my point of " 咱们 " is definitely not "kami" because its usage is like "kita".

hong · Post by **hong** » Wed May 11, 2005 12:15 pm

Casey,you can't argue with him because for him every malay word is minnan.He is a guy who like to sit down and find out which word in other languages sounded like minnan.That is the way he learn minnan.

Sim · Post by **Sim** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 8:21 am

I didn't really want to start a new topic for this question, so I'm sticking it in here.

The word we use for "handkerchief" in Penang is "pan3 jiu5". However, my Amoy-speaking maternal relatives never called it this. Instead they used the word "chiu1 kun1". In my Mandarin lessons, I came across 手巾, which I suppose are the characters used to write the latter.

Does anyone know the characters for "pan3 jiu5"?

Sim.

BTW, I think my Amoy-speaking relatives called a "towel" a "cang7 cui1 kun1", a "bathing water cloth", but we only ever used the borrowed Malay word "tua3 la1".

At the risk of invoking the wrath of some readers of this Forum, I'll venture to also ask what the character for "cang5" (to bathe) is.

hong · Post by **hong** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 1:34 pm

揉 is liu 5.
pan7 範﹐,it means cloth used for making cloth.
水 on top of 石 for cang5

hong · Post by **hong** » Tue Jul 05, 2005 2:23 pm

Prof.Chiu's Singapore minnan dict put 班揉。The meaning is not correct if my dict is not wrong .The sandhi is 1 to 7 for pan 班。
範 pan7 is just my idea .We just have to wait and see what he will put in his new dict as well as chiangchiu gov's dict.

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:58 am

Sim - don't be reticent about asking questions - the forum is a bit quiet at the moment. It'd be bad if everyone took their enquiries offline, as that's what this board is for.

Sim · Post by **Sim** » Thu Jul 07, 2005 3:08 pm

Andrew wrote:Sim - don't be reticent about asking questions...

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the encouraging words. No, I wouldn't go off-line. But I'm sometimes reluctant to post here because people react so aggressively to innocent questions. I guess that happens in all newsgroups and forums, but it does intimidate me.

My interest in Hokkien is as strong as ever, but has taken a bit of a back-seat to Mandarin in the last few weeks.

Regards,
Sim.

Chinese languages

Penang Hokkien

Handkerchief