More Chinese characters for Hokkien words
Flies
That was way back in May 2005. Since then, I'm back into the Mandarin classes again, and came across the Mandarin word for fly, namely: (cang1) ying0/2 (苍)蝇.Sim wrote:...
2. hO3/7 sin5 (fly).
...
Well, of course we all notice that it looks nothing like Hokkien hO3/7 sin5 , so I was wondering what the hanzi for the latter is? Surely it isn't something like "雨神".
.Thanks,
Sim.
Hi Niuc,niuc wrote:Sim, I don't know the characters for ho`7/5-sin5, but sin5 there seems to refer to a category of insect. Aphids (ants' cows) are called ku1-sin5.
Thanks for pointing that out. In fact, "aphids" were even on my list of creepy-crawlies in one of the replies to this thread, but I never noticed that they shared the same final syllable "sin" with "flies".
The chances are 99% good that it's the same character, but I guess with Chinese, one can never be sure. It amazed me to learn that "nian2 qing1" and "qing1 nian2", both connected with "youth", had a different character for "qing1"!
And of course, there's "sin7/3-thang5" for the common house gecko or "cicak", but I suppose the chances of that being the same "sin" as the other two are much less.
Cheers,
Sim.
Hi Sim
Glad to hear from you again. You are right that we can't be 100% sure unless we know the character. In sin7-thang5 [sin5-lang5 in my dialect], many say that it's actually sian7-thang5 善蟲 i.e. benevolent reptile [thang5 can mean bug, insect, worm, reptile, etc].
Regarding nian2qing1 年輕 [an adjective, literally: "age light/small"] and qing1nian2 青年 [a noun, "green/young age"], the former is ni5-khin1 [seldom used, usually 少年 siau3-lian5] and the latter is ching1-lian5 in Hokkien.
Glad to hear from you again. You are right that we can't be 100% sure unless we know the character. In sin7-thang5 [sin5-lang5 in my dialect], many say that it's actually sian7-thang5 善蟲 i.e. benevolent reptile [thang5 can mean bug, insect, worm, reptile, etc].
Regarding nian2qing1 年輕 [an adjective, literally: "age light/small"] and qing1nian2 青年 [a noun, "green/young age"], the former is ni5-khin1 [seldom used, usually 少年 siau3-lian5] and the latter is ching1-lian5 in Hokkien.
Yes, thanks. I knew the hanzi for the first one, but was only aware of the second one in my subconscious. How nice of you to point out that these two sound quite different in Hokkienniuc wrote:...Regarding nian2qing1 年輕 [an adjective, literally: "age light/small"] and qing1nian2 青年 [a noun, "green/young age"], the former is ni5-khin1 [seldom used, usually 少年 siau3-lian5] and the latter is ching1-lian5 in Hokkien.
.Sim.