Old-fashioned Vocabulary in Penang Hokkien

[SimL]

王家 made me think of 國家.

How often in Hokkien is "kok-kE" or "kok-ka" (國家) used to say "country"? Ah-bin says he's heard it used by the speaker in the Buddhist lectures, but I have to say that I never heard this term in Penang Hokkien when I was young. We only ever said "kok" (but that may well be because my own knowledge of Hokkien (even Penang Hokkien) is so limited). For example: "i si ha-mi kok e lang?" (= "what nationality is he?") not "i si ha-mi kok-kE/ka e lang?", or: "pa-le kok co ci(t)-khuan e mih-kiaN kha ho" (= "other countries do this sort of thing better"), not "pa-le kok-kE/ka co ci(t)-khuan e mih-kiaN kha ho".

In the absence of any further information, my initial reaction is to feel that "kok-kE" / "kok-ka" is a "borrowing" or "adaptation" from Mandarin. My own private theory is that Hokkien, having had less phonetic decay than Mandarin (e.g. Hokkien still has post-vocalic stops, and 3 post-vocalic nasals), needs correspondingly fewer 2-syllable 詞 than Mandarin. [This theory arises out of another theory that Mandarin 2-syllable 詞 arose out of the fact that many old monosyllables which were formerly distinct (before the phonetic decay = loss of consonant clusters and post-vocalic stops) slowly became indistinguishable, as a result of the phonetic decay. To compensate for this, 2-syllable compounds became increasingly common, where each syllable helps to disambiguate the other, the 2-syllable combination being more unique. This ties in with the idea that Ancient Chinese had both consonant clusters and post-vocalic stops, and hence had a lot more monosyllables as words. (And this all ties in with the oft repeated assertion that Classical Chinese poems are comprehensible to the eye, but not to the ear when read out in Mandarin, whereas they are still comprehensible to the ear when read out in Cantonese or Hokkien.)]

In any case, this whole picture matches my experience in the years when I was learning Mandarin: many concepts which are single syllables in Hokkien are disyllabic 詞 in Mandarin (I can't produce any examples off the top of my head, because my Mandarin has declined so badly in the past 1-2 years). That's not to say that Hokkien doesn't have a lot of 2-syllable 詞 also. It has. And that too is connected with the fact that Hokkien too has undergone phonetic decay (e.g. no consonant clusters). Just less phonetic decay than Mandarin, and hence, fewer 2-syllable 詞.

Anyway, according to this theory, Hokkien has no need of a 2-syllable 詞 to express "country" - "kok is sufficient.

What is the usage of other Hokkien speakers?

[niuc]

Hi Sim

I never heard of 王家 to mean "government". Personally if it is pronounced as 'ong5-ka1', I tend to think of it as meaning (a) royal family; and 'ong5-ke1' as (a) family with surname "Ong". But even these I hardly ever heard of.

國 'kok4' and 國家 'kok4-ka1' have different meanings, though surely they are closely related. I suppose in Mandarin we can say 五個國家 to mean 5 countries. While 'go`7-e5-kok4-ka1' sounds OK for me, it is better to say 五國 'go`7-kok4' . However, it is better to say 國家的領袖 'kok4-ka1 e5-ling2-siu3' country's / national leader(s), 國的領袖 'kok4 e5-ling2-siu3' sounds awkward. Some define 國 as country and 國家 as nation. I think that is right for Hokkien too.

[SimL]

Hi Niuc,

Thanks for your replies.

>> I never heard of 王家 to mean "government".

This supports Ah-bín's original statement that this term is now defunct. My father was born in the 1920's and my mother in the 1930's, and they never used this term actively either. And I too had never even heard of it, until Ah-bin mentioned it.

>> Some define 國 as country and 國家 as nation. I think that is right for Hokkien too.

This makes sense to me. It is exactly the sort of distinction which my background and limited knowledge of Hokkien would make me unaware of. Thanks a lot.

[Ah-bin]

I've just found a Taiwanese-Mandarin dictionary online...very good it is too. You have to enter things in traditional characters (not a problem for anyone I hope?), Not only does it have examples and sounds, but it also has a concordance (click on the green characters in the centre box) of words in sentences from Taiwanese literature = many many examples of usage.

http://203.64.42.21/iug/ungian/SoannTen ... taihoa.asp

Why am I posting in this thread?
Because I found a whole lot of old words were used in Taiwanese at one time as well. Including 唐人字 點聲 even 風車!

[SimL]

Wow, thanks Ah-bin! Yes, it looks like a very good site. The list of compounds is a very big plus.

[Ah-bin]

I was looking through the book I bought in Canton (Three Chinese Dialects of Thailand) when I remembered that in the other book by the same author (Three Chinese Dialects of Malaysia) had another old word used in Techiu/Hakka/Cantonese of the Nanyang, but lost in the modern versions in China it was

Thiⁿ káu chiáh jít　天狗食日 for a solar eclipse. The literal meaning is "the Heavenly Dog eats the Sun", and people really used to believe at one time that this was what caused eclipses. Even as late as 1940 there is a description of the terror caused to ordinary people by a solar eclipse in a town in the mid-west of China in Graeme Peck's book "Two Kinds of TIme", as most of them still believed it was a dog eating the Sun.

A lunar eclipse was also called Thiⁿ káu chiáh goéh 天狗食月

Has anyone heard of these expressions in Southeast Asian Hokkien?

[niuc]

Hi Ah-bin

In my variant, 'thi*1-kau2-cia8-ger8' (thiⁿ káu chiáh gə´h) 天狗食月is sometimes used, but I don't remember 天狗食日(though it would have been easily understood also). As a child I was told the story of heavenly dog swallowing the moon, therefore causing lunar eclipse. Last time people in Bagan would create noise, usually by beating empty tins ('long3-sia4-tin1' [撞]錫[珍]), in order to scare the heavenly dog away. This myth & practice should be widespread among all Chinese last time.

However, we usually just call them 'sit4-ger8' 蝕月and 'sit4-lit8' 蝕日. Btw, it is interesting to notice that 蝕 's etymology is "to eat up and make go away like a snake - eclipse". ( http://www.internationalscientific.org/ ... =Etymology )
May be the older myth was about a heavenly snake or dragon eating the moon (similar to some ancient myths) instead of a heavenly dog.

[SimL]

However, we usually just call them 'sit4-ger8' 蝕月and 'sit4-lit8' 蝕日.

Hi niuc,

Thanks for sharing the experiences from your youth in relation to "older" Chinese culture and beliefs.

Is this 蝕 sit4 the same sit4 as in "when a flame goes out (because of wind, or because the material is too damp to burn)"? E.g. "wa tiam he-le chek-a saN pai liau, tapi i ti-ti sit khi, in-ui hong siauN thau" (= "I've lit that candle three times already, but it keeps going out because the wind is too strong").

The meanings are close from an "outside" point of view (eclipse = light of the sun/moon going out vs. extinguishing of a candle/flame), but that could be a coincidence, and they could be two totally different word/characters.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

Is this 蝕 sit4 the same sit4 as in "when a flame goes out (because of wind, or because the material is too damp to burn)"?

Glad you notice this also. In fact I always assumed that, before I learned this Tng-lang-ji (TLJ, Hanji). According to dictionaries 蝕 is 'sit8'. TLJ for 'sit4' in your example is 熄 (fire+rest, so the flame goes out to take a rest ). In my variant we don't say 'sit8-ger8' but 'sit4-ger8', probably it should be 熄月, but for "pan-Chinese" context, I think it is ok to write/match it as 蝕月.

E.g. "wa tiam he-le chek-a saN pai liau, tapi i ti-ti sit khi, in-ui hong siauN thau" (= "I've lit that candle three times already, but it keeps going out because the wind is too strong").

Glad that even without reading the English translation, I can understand what you write (Penang Hokkien) completely! I only read the translation afterward to confirm.

[SimL]

Hi niuc,

Thanks for the explanation of the two "sit"s. My "sit" for the candles is tone4 (at least, it has the same contour as all the other words which are labelled as tone-4 by other Forum members and reference dictionaries). In Chao's tone-contour convention (5 for highest and 1 for lowest pitch of any individual speaker), I'd guess that my tone4 is 2 (one digit only, to indicate the shortness of the ru-tone), perhaps even 1.

Great to hear that you could read the transcription, independent of the translation. I guess this also "supports" the idea that (at any rate) Hokkien could actually be written in an alphabetic system and still be workable (as is obviously the case for Vietnamese).