Some terms in Hokkien that I never quite figured out...

Casey · Post by **Casey** » Fri May 20, 2005 9:57 am

Niuc

According to "Putonghua Minnan Fangyan Cidian", "nng3 cng3" is written as " 沦钻 ".

hong · Post by **hong** » Fri May 20, 2005 10:29 am

The sound is correct nng3 but I think we only take it as just pure min people invention from 沉沒。old books like說文解字,etc mostly talk about water.
I think Prof.Chiu doesn't agree with above zi is because his example also has 四界nng and nng 無空
His two examples of nng鑽 has nothing to do with digging hole anymore ,it seems too far from 淪。

Mark Yong · Post by **Mark Yong** » Fri May 20, 2005 4:28 pm

Okay, here's a curveball from me (after a few posts on digging holes!):

Has anyone ever heard the term "pŭi có" 肥皂 being used for soap, instead of the more common "sa bun" (which was borrowed either from Malay 'sabun' or Italian 'savon')?

hong · Post by **hong** » Sat May 21, 2005 8:49 am

I don't think we have to care anymore about 肥皂 or sabun because modern people even in China are using body shampoo or hand soap.Just find a putonghua version with minnan pronunciation of it will do.
Taiwanese use 芳pang/香hiong co ,etc follow the product name.
There is an article about color from Taiwan although pdf version is down.we can read html version only
www.baidu.com type 色彩形容詞之台灣話表達研究。