English - Penang Hokkien Dictionary?

[Andrew]

So, between 予 and 與, both having the correct meaning and pronunciation notwithstanding, which of the two 漢字 Hanzi does hoo7 refer to exactly? What I mean is, logically it has to be only one of them.

I don't believe in the one-to-one correspondences of written characters and spoken words as a matter of unyielding principle. The sheer number of unrelated meanings given to each character in a dictionary is testimony to the fact that word-character and word-meaning associations develop and change.

The choice of the use of characters and their meanings is often a matter of convention over etymology or ancestry. For example, you could plausibly argue that the character for bu2, dance, is 無 rather than 舞; equally you could argue that the character for bo2 is 毛 rather than 無. I recall my Chinese teacher telling me that 的 and 之 were the same word, and that the words used by the various Mandarin dialects showed there was a continuum of pronunciation between the two - at some stage the difference grew so big that the character 的 was borrowed to represent the new sound.

Similarly, you will be aware of the similarity between the groups of pronouns such as 爾 汝 而 若 乃 戎, not to mention the modern 你. Were the old characters all different words, or were they inflections of a single word? Either way, which is the origin of the modern Hokkien li2/lu2?

Also, I had the impression that in 古文 Old Chinese, 予 had a specific meaning for "I/me", and that the meaning "to give" is a later development that occurred along a different etymological line from Hokkien (bearing in mind that the 閩 Min dialects developed around the 1st century CE, before the development of Mandarin).

I wasn't aware of that; if it were so it would be a good argument. I think it interesting that two words with the same pronunciation have the same meaning.

[Andrew]

I don't have time to check but you can see that 予 has no qusheng if I am not wrong

Yes, but the wendu for hoo7 (to give), and interestingly also hoo7 (rain), is u2, which is shangsheng.

[ong]

I already mentioned it could be 莫 bo
There is qusheng for 雨 http://140.111.1.40/yitia/fra/fra04468.htm
I can only find this taiwan 's dict 汇音宝鉴 and teochew dict from china which menioned qusheng for 与 http://140.111.1.40/yitia/fra/fra03398.htm
林宝卿 gave a shangsheng 反切

[Ah-bin]

Just in case no-one knew this yet.., I'll post it in Hokkien (Tng-lang-ji and Ang-mO-ji) and English...It's very good news for me.

Su-kah oh Penang Hok-kian-wa e lang....
Su-kah 学Penang福建话个人。。。。
People who like to learn Penang Hokkien....
Tong-kim u Ang-mO Hok-kien Ji-tian liau.
当今有红毛福建字典了。
(There's now an English-Penang Hokkien Dictionary)
ThiaN-kong i u che koe si-chheng e ji.
听讲伊有多过四千个字。
(I heard it has more than 4000 words)
Si Penang e kongsi Areca Books chhut-poaN (?) e
是penang个公司Areca Books出版个。
Wa a boe than khoaN, so-i m chai i si ha-mih-khoan e.
我犹（勿会）趁看，所以（口吾）知伊是何物款个。
I haven't been able to read it yet, so I can't say what it is like.


Also If I have written anything really incorrect in my Hokkien, tolong tai-ke lai kong u ha-mih m tioh...

Kam-sia

Ah-Bin

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

Lovely! .

Three small points:

1. I would adjust "Penang Hok-kien-wa" to just "Penang Hok-kien". I may be wrong, but my gut feeling says that "-wa" is not needed, when "Penang" is present. This happens a lot in Chinese, as you well know. A normal 2-syllable ciyu might lose one of the syllables (usually the first) when a qualifier is added, because the qualifier helps to make the meaning clear - Chinese being a language where syllables are only present to help disambiguate one another, of course .

2. I would perhaps replace "Ang-mO" with "eng-bun" in "Tong-kim u Ang-mO Hok-kien Ji-tian liau". "Ang-mO" usually means - by circumstance - English-speaking, but technically, as you of course know also, it's any Westerner/white person. Hence, in the specific "technical" context of an English-PgHk dictionary, I would use "eng-bun".

3. "Wa a boe than khoaN, so-i m chai i si ha-mih-khoan e." I would say "Wa a bue khuaN/h(i)en tioh (i), sO-i ...". I tend to use "(bo) than" for "I don't get to" (either past or future), as in situations like "wa siauN uaN lai, suah bo than chih tioh he-le ho ciah e mih" (= "I arrived late, so I didn't get to taste (try) the nice stuff"), or "wa nO ni cit pai nia (e) than khi holiday, in-ui wa bo kau lui" (= "I only get to go on holiday once every two years, because I don't have enough money". Both situations are pretty fixed: the past because it's over, and the future one because of actual constraints which (probably) won't disappear. For something which you might well get a chance to do in the future (i.e. seeing a copy of this book), but for which it just happens that you haven't done it yet, just "a bue" + <verb>, without the "than" might be better.

SimL

[Ah-bin]

Wow, thanks Sim, I'm feeling pleased with myself that there were only three mistakes.

The Ang-mO Eng-bun thing is interesting. One of the reasons I like Penang Hokkien is because everything to do with westerners becomes "red-haired", but now I remember how strange I thought it was when a guy from Penang told me he could count in "indian" i.e. Tamil. I think he would have said ki-ling-a-wa (?) had he been speaking Hokkien.

Hien-tioh is another really interesting word. I haven;t found it in my other dictionaries with tioh on the end, but I'm guessing it is actually 现, which used to mean "appear" in older Chinese. I wonder if other varieties use this.

Regards,

Ah-Bin

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

They weren't even mistakes, but slight differences in nuance. I've been pondering on the last one - about the usage of "than" - and perhaps it's more subtle/complicated than I thought and wrote originally. I'll try and formulate my thoughts on it in the coming days.

Indeed "ki-ling-a" is the normal word in PgHk for anything associated with the Indian sub-continent - as with Ang-mO, by circumstances in Penang often "Tamil", but in the wider sense any part of India or Pakistan (or Bangladesh, I guess).

I read a long time ago that it's derived from the ancient Indian kingdom of Kalinga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_(India). This seems vaguely plausible, but I've no idea if it's actually correct.

I also recall reading (perhaps from the same or another source, now long forgotten) that the term derives from the "kelings", who were Indian Muslim settlers in Malaya. Here are two from the first page of hits from Google: http://travelmalaysiaguide.com/kapitan- ... ue-penang/ and http://www.wcities.com/en/record/,17231 ... ecord.html. I perhaps both are true, in that "ke-leng-a" / "ki-ling-a" entered PgHk via "keling", which is ultimately derived from "Kalinga", but this is pure speculation on my part.

I pronounce it more "ke1-leng7-a2" (sandhi-tones on the first 2 syllables), but I think there's quite a lot of -e-/-i- variation in PgHk.

[SimL]

Hien-tioh is another really interesting word. I haven;t found it in my other dictionaries with tioh on the end, but I'm guessing it is actually 现, which used to mean "appear" in older Chinese. I wonder if other varieties use this.

Hi Ah-bin,

This is great. I had always thought that "hien" was 見, because there are often "k-" and "h-" alternations, certainly between Mandarin and Hokkien, like 骨滑 "kut4", "kut8" in Hokkien, but "gu3", "hua2" in Mandarin (or between "kanji" and "hanzi" for that matter!). But now that you pointed it out, I checked the Etymology page, and 見 only has the pronunciations "kiN3", "kian3", so I was quite wrong. The same site gives 现 as "hian7", so your guess seems very reasonable.

SimL

[Mark Yong]

In Penang Hokkien, I have found that the most common usages for the word 現 hiăn are in:

1. 出現 ch'ût-hiăn v. "to appear"
2. 現煮 hiăn-chû v. "to cook (something) on-the-spot" (you usually see it at hawker stalls)
3. 現鐳* hiăn-lūi n. "cash"

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
...見 only has the pronunciations "kiN3", "kian3"...

The only occasion that I have heard the word 見 kiN3 regularly is in 見面 kiN-bin "to meet someone (face-to-face)". For most other times, Penang Hokkien tends to use tû for "meet" in general (not sure about the benzi), though I suspect tû comes closer in meaning to "encounter / chance upon", rather than a pre-meditated, pre-planned meeting per se.