Old-fashioned Vocabulary in Penang Hokkien

[xng]

Thanks for the list.

I'm feeling a bit 戇 myself for forgetting, but I've just remembered why you won't be able to find an original character for this morpheme - because it isn't Chinese to start with. It is an example of retention of the language spoken in what is now Fujian before the speakers of the language ancestral to today's Hokkien settled the area.

I believe I saw it in Anne Yue-Hashimoto's 1976 "Southern Chinese dialects--the Tai connection," Computational Analysis of Asian and African Languages, Tokyo, No. 6, pp. 1-9.

In "Zhuang" (a collective term for several Tai languages Spoken in Kng-sai 廣西(Guangxi), Kng-tang 廣東 (Guangdong), and Hun-lam 雲南 (Yunnan) it is pronounced "pai". The Chinese-based scripts these people used sometimes wrote it as (冫皮) there were about five or six different ways to write it, which I can try to input if you're interested.

擺 fits for sound so it is either that, or a empty square, or romanisation, or 次 which fits for meaning but not sound.

Yes, you may be right. But let's not use chinese character to represent foreign words. If there is a similarity with Tai (zhuang) words then it is most probably a foreign word. It is just like 'Mata' in Malaysian/Singaporean hokkien which has a malay origin.

I've heard taiwanese saying "Pien" which I think should be 遍 as the meaning and sound is correct. Perhaps, this was the original minnan word before it was substituted with 'Pai'. What's your opinion on this ?

However, one must be an expert in classical chinese to find the right character as some of these are actually old chinese words which can be found in classical chinese.

If you have anything to contribute to that list, please do so. We are only interested in those characters that are not commonly used in both cantonese and mandarin. Some words are not commonly used in mandarin (eg.飲,細 which use 喝,小) but are commonly used in cantonese so we won't list them there as the list would be too long.

[xng]

Someone tried to test my knowledge in Amoy once by telling me "I bet you don't know what chi-chui means".

In Southern Msian hokkien, we call it

Sia Mit Lang 啥乜人
Ha mit lang
Si Mit lang

I suspect the last two is a corruption of the first. I've never heard of Chi chui until I went to penang so I suspect it is unique to Chiang chiu hokkien.

[Andrew]

(eg.飲,細 which use 喝,小) but are commonly used in cantonese so we won't list them there as the list would be too long.

If you are thinking of lim, it is 啉. Chi-chui is 是誰

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
Yes, you may be right. But let's not use chinese character to represent foreign words. If there is a similarity with Tai (zhuang) words then it is most probably a foreign word... However, one must be an expert in classical chinese to find the right character as some of these are actually old chinese words which can be found in classical chinese.

Andrew once posted a reply to this thread that I started sometime back, on what the idea method for codifying Hokkien for educational purposes should be:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=4021

This discussion has now morphed to a point where it is partially related to this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5988

Given the above, then it appears we would have two contending methods for writing Hokkien, i.e. whether one should use 假借字 for words of non-Sinitic origin or where the 本字 has been obscured by time. That would rest on whether we want to keep written Hokkien fully Sinitic, or recognise its non-Sinitic elements and have those represented, say, with Romanisation.

[xng]

(eg.飲,細 which use 喝,小) but are commonly used in cantonese so we won't list them there as the list would be too long.

If you are thinking of lim, it is 啉. Chi-chui is 是誰

The sound of 是 is Si and 誰 is Sui. So this is completely wrong.
The fact that it doesn't exist in other minnan dialects indicate that it might be a foreign word.

The sound for 啉 is lam which is wrong in both meaning and sound. The mouth radical shows that it is most probably a make-up character.

飲 is the right character which is also used by the cantonese. It has the right meaning and the colloquail sound is 'Lim' and literary sound is 'Im'. Some of these original characters can be found by just comparing with cantonese which is an older language than mandarin. I believe hakka also use 飲.

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
The sound of 是 is Si and 誰 is Sui. So this is completely wrong.
The fact that it doesn't exist in other minnan dialects indicate that it might be a foreign word.

xng, this point is arguable. Like most words in Minnan, 水 has two readings, i.e. the literal (文讀) reading sûi and the colloquial (白讀) reading chûi - even though the fanqie readings provided by 正韻 and 集韻/韻會 give it as 式軌 and 數軌 respectively, i.e. sûi. Another example of the s-/ch- literal/colloquial interchangeability in Minnan is 深 (literal sim, colloquial ch'im). While I am unable to confidently suggest the character for chi in chi-chui nor confirm that it is 是 (though I do not dispute the possibility), I am quite certain that chui is 誰.

Also, 誰 chui is recorded as one of the words in 廈門方言誌 (廈門市地方志編委會, 1996), so it's not a word peculiar to just Penang Hokkien or Chiang Chiu Hokkien in general.

xng wrote:
The sound for 啉 is lam which is wrong in both meaning and sound. The mouth radical shows that it is most probably a make-up character.

We have to be careful about using 'correctness of meaning' to identify characters, too. In Classical Chinese, 吃 meant 'to stutter', 喝 meant 'to shout' and 那 was just a surname - yet today, we now accept them to mean 'eat', 'drink' and 'that', respectively.

[xng]

xng wrote:
The sound of 是 is Si and 誰 is Sui. So this is completely wrong.
The fact that it doesn't exist in other minnan dialects indicate that it might be a foreign word.

The colloquail is already Si as in "gua si hokkien lang" so literary would also be "si".

Usually the 'C' consonant is colloquail whereas the 'S' consonant is literary as middle chinese seems to have changed the consonant from 'C' to 'S' (look at cantonese). And not the other way around ie. from 'S' to 'C'.

Definitely, it seems to be unique only to Penang or Chiangciu ? hokkien. The word 'cui' alone is not peculiar to penang hokkien but 'ci cui' is peculiar. And since chinese has a lot of homophones, it's difficult to ascertain whether that 'cui' is the same 'cui'.


啉 is a make-up character, the Lim character was taken not for the meaning (forest) but for the sound (lim, lam) because they can't find the original character just like 唔 in cantonese which uses an artificial character instead of the original character 毋.

The correct character is still the one used by southern chinese languages such as cantonese ie.飲.
I am not familiar with hakka but I think they should be using the same character. My guess is that hakka uses 'Yim'.

[Andrew]

飲 is the right character which is also used by the cantonese. It has the right meaning and the colloquail sound is 'Lim' and literary sound is 'Im'. Some of these original characters can be found by just comparing with cantonese which is an older language than mandarin. I believe hakka also use 飲.

How do you get the pronunciation "lim" from 飲?

[Andrew]

The colloquail is already Si as in "gua si hokkien lang" so literary would also be "si".

Usually the 'C' consonant is colloquail whereas the 'S' consonant is literary as middle chinese seems to have changed the consonant from 'C' to 'S' (look at cantonese). And not the other way around ie. from 'S' to 'C'.

Definitely, it seems to be unique only to Penang or Chiangciu ? hokkien. The word 'cui' alone is not peculiar to penang hokkien but 'ci cui' is peculiar. And since chinese has a lot of homophones, it's difficult to ascertain whether that 'cui' is the same 'cui'.

Douglas lists 是誰 chi7-tsui7; 是誰仔 chi7-tsui7-a2: who?, with no indication that it is peculiar to any Hokkien dialect, so it appears to be a standard Hokkien expression.

啉 is a make-up character, the Lim character was taken not for the meaning (forest) but for the sound (lim, lam) because they can't find the original character just like 唔 in cantonese which uses an artificial character instead of the original character 毋.

The correct character is still the one used by southern chinese languages such as cantonese ie.飲.
I am not familiar with hakka but I think they should be using the same character. My guess is that hakka uses 'Yim'.

The 廈門方言詞典 says

集韻覃韻盧含切：“一說飲畢曰啉。”按反切廈門話應讀［lam1］ 或 ［lam5］，今音韻母和反切不合

[xng]

Douglas lists 是誰 chi7-tsui7; 是誰仔 chi7-tsui7-a2: who?, with no indication that it is peculiar to any Hokkien dialect, so it appears to be a standard Hokkien expression.

standard ? Try speaking chi cui to people in southern malaysia and singapore (or even taiwan) who has not visited penang and you get blank stares.

Douglas could have made a mistake because the colloquail and literary sound of 是 is Si and not chi. And we are talking about the colloquail sound here which is obviously Si.