Literary 文讀 and colloquial 白讀 readings in Minnan

[Mark Yong]

What is the general rule on determining whether a character/word should be pronounced in speech using the literal 文讀 or colloquial 白讀 pronunciation?

According to Nicholas Bodman's textbook, the rule-of-thumb is that single characters are pronounced using the colloquial pronunciation, whereas words (character combinations) are read using the literal pronunciation, e.g. 東 is read as 'tang', but 東方 is read as 'tong hong', especially when one or both of the characters is a bound morpheme.

(There appear to be some exceptions, e.g. Bodman uses 'hui-ki' for 飛機, but in Malaysia, 'pue-ki'/'pe-ki' is used).

Actually, I am asking this question because, on many occasions, I encounter words in texts, whereby I am unable to decide whether to use the literal or colloquial pronunciation for them, when reading them out loud using Hokkien pronunciation.

[Heruler]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately there are no hard rules to go by. It's mostly according to customary usage. For examples: 作 in literary reading is chok: chok-chiá 作者, chok-ka 作家, chok-phín 作品, but choh in vernacular reading: choh-chhân 作田, chèng-choh 種作.

There is an excellent book published in Taiwan, 實用漢字台語讀音 (Practical Hanji Pronunciation in Taiwanese) by 吳秀麗, published by 台灣學生書局, 1997 (ISBN 957-15-0818-7), which deals specifically with this difficult problem. The Taiwan School in Chicago is planning to use this book as textbook for an advanced Taiwanese class.

Heruler

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Heruler,

Thanks for your reply, and for the book recommendation.

Well, for long-established terms, I guess one would just adopt what has been in common use over the decades or centuries. The tricky part comes when encountering newer terminologies, e.g. technological or commercial, mostly those jargon developed in modern Mandarin over the past century.

Cheers,
Mark

[Andrew]

I guess you will get eventually to a stage where you will know if something should be pronounced in colloquial pronunciation, and anything else new comes up you can pronounce in literary.