I am new here, but spent 3 hours familiarising with the forum.
But is the any place where there can be auto translation of the Hokkien words? Like, u know even for Thai or Chinese there are such digital dictionaries.
Or even a physical dictionary which we can use to check our pronunciation will b good. BTW, wat is this Singapore Minnan dictionary?
I have self translated sum hokkien words, especially the tones. I am most likely wrong but experts here do correct me:
siork[8] sek[4] Shou[2] Xi[4] familiar
lan[2] wo[2] men[2] us
shiu[7] zhuay[7] tai[4] duo[1] too many
horng[7] fang[2] be resistant against
ark[8] si[3] yao[4] shi[4] if
ru[3] gwok[4] ru[2] guo[3] if
kang[1] gong[1] work
hiong[2] xiang[4] towards
jing[7] jiah[4] hen[3] very
che[7] zhao[3] find
dan[7] si[3] dan[4] shi[4] but
zhao[1] gu[7] zhao[4] zhiu[4] carry on, as of old
hian[7] zhai[7] Xian[4] zhai[4] now
nah[3] si[3] yao[4] shi[4] if
suo[1] yi[4] shuo[2] yi[3] hence
hun[2] yong[4] fern[1] siang[3] share
zhuay[2] zit[4] eh[5] yi[4] qi[3] together
bang [2] zhork[4] bang[1] zhu[4] help
mah[3] si[3] yeh[3] zhi[4] also
siong[3] siong[3] chang[1] chang[1] frequently
si[3] siong[3] shi[2] chang[2] frequently
lim[3] ren[4] recognise
baht[8] ren[4] know (a person)
The first one or two column are Hokkien words, The second in Chinese and the third is the English translation. But correct me on the hokkien tones.
Written form
-
Andrew
The only automated dictionary I know of online is at
<http://daiwanway.dynip.com/cgi/tdict.acgi>
but it uses a very unusual romanisation based on pinyin. The standard romanisation used on this board i peh-oe-ji or Church romanisation.
<http://daiwanway.dynip.com/cgi/tdict.acgi>
but it uses a very unusual romanisation based on pinyin. The standard romanisation used on this board i peh-oe-ji or Church romanisation.
-
hong
-
Aurelio
Hi Ephrium,
Never mind -
Here are those I am using:
厦門方言詞典 - great Minnan to Mandarin dictionary with (correct) Hokkien characters - only of use, of course, if you speak some Mandarin (and know how to write it). Bought this one at Vista Culture Square in Singapore (23.20 Singdollars) ISBN 7-5343-1995-1
"Taiwanese-English Dictionary" by Maryknoll Taiwan (i.e. the Maryknoll fathers' mission in Taiwan)- Hokkien dictionary in POJ romanization to Mandarin characters and English.
The same Maryknoll fathers have the only English-Hokkien Dictionary I am aware of: "English Amoy Dictionary" (英語閩南請字典).
Both dictionaries ae very good - the only downside is that they do only have Mandarin characters but not Hokkien characters. Can give you the ordering information for the Maryknoll fathers if you're interested - they have other books on and in Hokkien, too (for a few $US per piece - really cheap).
The last one I have (an invaluable resource for me) is Douglas' "Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy" published in 1873 (!) - it's the only one I know that has all the dialectal variations, idiomatic expressions etc. There is a reprint with a supplement from the 1920s which (again) I bought from Vista culture square (ISBN 957-9482-32-2) for a few dollars. Only the supplement has characters, unfortunately - there is a version which is said to have all characters throughout published by Ganesha publishing or something like that, but sadly, this version costs $300 US instead of 92 Singapore dollars (just looked up the price I paid
)
Hope that helps. There are more dictionaries out there in Chinese, but the Xiamen Fangyan Cidian is the only one I am personally familiar with (it uses IPA transsciption as opposed to POJ - but that's not to bad, you can learn how to navigate between the two different romanization systems very easily - as a matter of fact, if you want to learn Hokkien, POJ is a must, but you're well served if you know the others, too).
The online dictionary described above is the only one I am aware of, either - it's pretty good, although the characters are typically the ones which are commonly used, but not the ones etymologically correct
- but, well, people will understand what you mean.
Best regards,
Aurelio
Never mind -
Here are those I am using:厦門方言詞典 - great Minnan to Mandarin dictionary with (correct) Hokkien characters - only of use, of course, if you speak some Mandarin (and know how to write it). Bought this one at Vista Culture Square in Singapore (23.20 Singdollars) ISBN 7-5343-1995-1
"Taiwanese-English Dictionary" by Maryknoll Taiwan (i.e. the Maryknoll fathers' mission in Taiwan)- Hokkien dictionary in POJ romanization to Mandarin characters and English.
The same Maryknoll fathers have the only English-Hokkien Dictionary I am aware of: "English Amoy Dictionary" (英語閩南請字典).
Both dictionaries ae very good - the only downside is that they do only have Mandarin characters but not Hokkien characters. Can give you the ordering information for the Maryknoll fathers if you're interested - they have other books on and in Hokkien, too (for a few $US per piece - really cheap).
The last one I have (an invaluable resource for me) is Douglas' "Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy" published in 1873 (!) - it's the only one I know that has all the dialectal variations, idiomatic expressions etc. There is a reprint with a supplement from the 1920s which (again) I bought from Vista culture square (ISBN 957-9482-32-2) for a few dollars. Only the supplement has characters, unfortunately - there is a version which is said to have all characters throughout published by Ganesha publishing or something like that, but sadly, this version costs $300 US instead of 92 Singapore dollars (just looked up the price I paid
)Hope that helps. There are more dictionaries out there in Chinese, but the Xiamen Fangyan Cidian is the only one I am personally familiar with (it uses IPA transsciption as opposed to POJ - but that's not to bad, you can learn how to navigate between the two different romanization systems very easily - as a matter of fact, if you want to learn Hokkien, POJ is a must, but you're well served if you know the others, too).
The online dictionary described above is the only one I am aware of, either - it's pretty good, although the characters are typically the ones which are commonly used, but not the ones etymologically correct
- but, well, people will understand what you mean.Best regards,
Aurelio
-
Ephrium
-
Aurelio
Hi Ephrium,
All right, fair questions
When it comes to writing down Hokkien (or Minnan in general), there is a startling variety of different options(*). Some of them, however, are far more common than others. So, here we go:
(1) Goa2 beh4 khi3 boe2 mih8 kiaN7 (I want to go shopping)
That's written in POJ (PehOeJi = 白話字 = Vernacular Characters), also known as 'Church Romanization', because it was introduced by the missonaries. This method is very common and used a lot on the web.
(2) 我卜去買物件。 (Same sentence as above)
That's the same in "true" Hokkien characters. If you could zoom back in time hundreds of years to the point where the ancestors of the modern variants of Chinese (like Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonse, Hakka, etc.) split off from a common ancestor (O.K., it's a bit more complex than that) - then you would find they'd use e.g. the character 件 for what was to become jian4 in Mandarin and kiaN7 in Hokkien. What I mean becomes more clear when you look at:
(3) 我要去買東西。
Write Mandarin - Read Hokkien: So you write the characters for Mandarin: Wo3 yao4 qu4 mai3 dong1xi1 which would be read as Goa2 iau2 khi3 bue2 tang1 sai1, if you read the characters with their true values (that doesn't mean anything good in Hokkien) and you read the whole thing (surprise) as goa2 beh4 khi3 bue2 mih8kiaN7. So, basically you write one language and read out another. This seemingly confusing approach is actually quite popular - the reason is that a lot of people do know how to write Mandarin (since they learned it in school), but they do not know how to write Hokkien.
(4) 我beh去買mihkiaN。
Mixed Chinese characters and romanization - that's like a middle way: write whichever word you know the character for and write everything else in romanization, e.g. in POJ. Works and is used a lot, even for books.
(5) Others
By now you probably know everything you always wanted to know about Hokkien writing and more But there are more options: TMSS romanization (which I think is horrible), japanese transcription, pin-yin based romanization and of course the enormous amount of makeshift romanization based on e.g. English (which is not a system , but you see that in Hokkien jokes, short quotes on the web etc.). Looks typically like this:
Wah bay kee buay mee-kyah
Does this help? Now I got a question for you: Why do you want to learn Hokkien (if you don't mind telling us)?
Best regards,
Aurelio
(*) The reason there are so many is that there was never an official standard endorsed by any government.
All right, fair questions
When it comes to writing down Hokkien (or Minnan in general), there is a startling variety of different options(*). Some of them, however, are far more common than others. So, here we go:
(1) Goa2 beh4 khi3 boe2 mih8 kiaN7 (I want to go shopping)
That's written in POJ (PehOeJi = 白話字 = Vernacular Characters), also known as 'Church Romanization', because it was introduced by the missonaries. This method is very common and used a lot on the web.
(2) 我卜去買物件。 (Same sentence as above)
That's the same in "true" Hokkien characters. If you could zoom back in time hundreds of years to the point where the ancestors of the modern variants of Chinese (like Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonse, Hakka, etc.) split off from a common ancestor (O.K., it's a bit more complex than that) - then you would find they'd use e.g. the character 件 for what was to become jian4 in Mandarin and kiaN7 in Hokkien. What I mean becomes more clear when you look at:
(3) 我要去買東西。
Write Mandarin - Read Hokkien: So you write the characters for Mandarin: Wo3 yao4 qu4 mai3 dong1xi1 which would be read as Goa2 iau2 khi3 bue2 tang1 sai1, if you read the characters with their true values (that doesn't mean anything good in Hokkien) and you read the whole thing (surprise) as goa2 beh4 khi3 bue2 mih8kiaN7. So, basically you write one language and read out another. This seemingly confusing approach is actually quite popular - the reason is that a lot of people do know how to write Mandarin (since they learned it in school), but they do not know how to write Hokkien.
(4) 我beh去買mihkiaN。
Mixed Chinese characters and romanization - that's like a middle way: write whichever word you know the character for and write everything else in romanization, e.g. in POJ. Works and is used a lot, even for books.
(5) Others
By now you probably know everything you always wanted to know about Hokkien writing and more
But there are more options: TMSS romanization (which I think is horrible), japanese transcription, pin-yin based romanization and of course the enormous amount of makeshift romanization based on e.g. English (which is not a system , but you see that in Hokkien jokes, short quotes on the web etc.). Looks typically like this:Wah bay kee buay mee-kyah
Does this help? Now I got a question for you: Why do you want to learn Hokkien (if you don't mind telling us)?
Best regards,
Aurelio
(*) The reason there are so many is that there was never an official standard endorsed by any government.
-
hong
The second best dict iusing POJ s is 廈門音字典﹐it is better than Douglas but can't compare to Japanese version written in 1930s
Order from this church
http://www.pctpress.com.tw/catalog/prod ... cts_id=136
Order from this church
http://www.pctpress.com.tw/catalog/prod ... cts_id=136