Hokkien Jokes

[ong]

This is wrong because you cannot get the cuanciu sound mng for it

[niuc]

BTW, up to 2 minutes ago, I had always thought that the word for "Westerner" was 紅毛 rather than 紅魔.

Hmm that's interesting and even surprising... in my variant, although we pronounce 毛 as mng5 [we also understand mo`5 btw], ang5-mo`5 for us is always 紅毛 rather than 紅魔. I have never thought of the latter. In Singapore, the former is also the one considered correct.

Btw in my hometown we usually call "Westerners" as chau3-kau5 i.e. smelly monkey [can't type the Hanji with this computer, the ones above are copied hahaha]. Now although we don't particularly think badly about "Westerners", and even without racist intention, the term has become a "normal" word. Sip8-kuan3 sing5-cy7-lian5 [xi2guan4 cheng2 zi4ran2], "habits become (second) nature"!

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote: BTW, up to 2 minutes ago, I had always thought that the word for "Westerner" was 紅毛 rather than 紅魔.

I also thought that it was 紅毛. The reason is because I heard the exact two characters pronounced in Cantonese in a Hong Kong movie. And in Cantonese, there is a clear distinction between the pronunciation for 毛 mo and 魔 mO, so I doubt I could have been mistaken.

[SimL]

This is wrong because you cannot get the cuanciu sound mng for it

Thanks Ong. I think this is a very good point. Even my Amoy relatives call them ang-moo, not ang-mng.

Furthermore, when reading histories of China in *English*, one always reads about how the Chinese of that period referred to Westerners as "foreign devils", so the 魔 fits with that image.

Mark & Niuc: thanks. To see that you both had the same idea re-assures me a little that I'm not just an ignorant English-speaking Hokkien , i.e. other quite linguistically capable Hokkiens feel this too!

Sim.

[ong]

amoy is also ang mng.see the new dict under ang mng huan

[SimL]

Some amusing poems, written in "Malaysian/Singaporean traditional informal orthography". If you read them out as if they were English words, you'll understand what they mean (the English translation helps, but isn't really needed, in my humble opinion).

I actually find this orthography less painful to read than pinyin-ish b-, k- for Hokkien p-, g-.

http://thepenangfileb.bravepages.com/fe ... baba51.htm

[jilang]

Thanks for that Sim. They were quite amusing and reading it in Hokkien made it interesting although I had trouble with variant of Hokkien they used so I had to rely on the English translation for those lines which used specific words which were different in my variants.

[SimL]

Hi there,

Not much activity on the Forum lately.

Here's a Hokkien saying which I've known for ages. I don't think anyone has posted it here, I did a search for a few of the words in it on the Forum.

做好心 给雷亲

In Penang Hokkien, it's pronounced: "co3 ho2 sim1, hoo7 lui5 cim1".

I had a disagreement with someone about the meaning of this saying the other day. He says it means "if you help somebody, he will make you in trouble". My interpretation is wider than that. I think it means "when you help other people, you get into trouble yourself" (i.e. the trouble doesn't have to come from the person you tried to help).

Cheers,
Sim.

[ong]

There are no co ,co ho sim is from cantonese.Just ho sim will do.It can be kha or tsing for cim.Khit for ho.
ho sim lu mai an ni......That ho sim is from cantonese as well.

[hsia]

some good ones here: http://taiwanesevocabulary.wordpress.co ... ory/jokes/