闽南语学习网 & 闽南语教程

[niuc]

Hi Mark

Actually, the tonal difference is preserved in Mandarin. I am writing this from out-of-town, so unfortunately I do not have my reference material with me. But off-the-cuff, I do recall that in the case of 王, wang2 means 'king' and wang4 means 'to be king' (i.e. 'to rule').

Thanks for the info. In my ignorance, I didn't know about that, and I have not heard anyone using that (e.g 王 -> wang4). A check at the dictionary does prove that you are right

I am not sure if such noun-verb tonal differences are well-preserved (if at all) in Hokkien, but I do know that pronunciation differences are preserved in Cantonese. One example that comes to mind is 度. When pronounced dou, it is a noun meaning ' degree' (in the sense of a measurement); when pronounced dOk, it is a verb meaning 'to measure (normally the length of an object)'. No other major dialect group I know has preserved 度 as a verb.

I don't know about 君君、臣臣、父父、子子 or 王王 in Hokkien. However, 度 as a noun is 'to`7' in Hokkien (du4 in Mandarin), as a verb it is 'tak4' in Hokkien (duo2 in Mandarin, this website also gives duo4).

Wow... how in the world did you manage to get hold of a Bible and Hymnal in Hokkien using full hanji? Could you share a scanned page of it, or perhaps some sample verses (Psalm 23 or John Chapter 1 comes to mind!)?

If the Hymnal was written with Hokkien readings in mind, then I am assuming that it dates back to the 19th century, i.e. the Literary Chinese period. If so, then the bulk of the words would use literal readings, which means the majority of the hanji would have small circles beside them, right? Or was the Hymnal deliberately written in fully-colloquial Amoy? And if so, how did it get around those words with no known hanji?

It is indeed rare, so really thank God that I do have them The Amoy Hymnal is bilingual (E-mng/Amoy Hokkien & English), published in Singapore. But I don't think there are any on sale now. I got it free from book bazaar at a church here. The Bible is titled 聖經台語漢字版 but actually it is in 廈門話 (E-mng Hokkien) instead of 台語 (Taiwanese). I bought it from a Christian bookstore here in Singapore, but there may be none anymore due to no demand. It can be find here though: http://www.bolbookstore.com/front/bin/p ... ory=206037

The Bible and the Hymnal are in daily speech, incorporating colloquial and literary pronunciations. "Hanji purists" won't be happy as they use many Mandarin equivalents, but IMO they are good and easily understood (with the marking or POJ clarifications, of course). Here are some samples, please click the jpg files to get the bigger images:
http://hokkian.blogspot.com/2009/10/hok ... ter-1.html
http://hokkian.blogspot.com/2009/10/hok ... lm-23.html
http://hokkian.blogspot.com/2009/10/hok ... -sing.html
http://hokkian.blogspot.com/2009/10/hok ... ng-us.html

[SimL]

Hi Niuc,

Thanks for scanning these and putting them on your blog. They're great!

My mother will be delighted to know this, because the only Christian-related song (perhaps it's not officially a hymn) she can remember in Hokkien from her childhood was the "Ia-SO thiaN gua, gua cai iaN" which I posted here a long time ago.

When I visit my parents later this year, I'll call up your pages, and show these to her. I'll have to check my notes again, but I seem to remember her telling me that "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was one of her mother's favourite hymns.

Could you add "Silent Night, Holy Night" to your blog...?

[Ah-bin]

Yes, many thanks for putting these on.

Those Bibles and hymnals are still easy to find in Taiwan. I went into a Christian bookshop in Amoy a few years ago (up the road from the University near to the Museum of Overseas Chinese, and nnot only did they not sell it, they were not even aware that such books ever existed!

My favourite thing about it is the Christmas carols, which Sim has mentioned. Lots of fun to let people hear at Christmas, especially in an Ang-mo country.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

Welcome. Great if your mother will like it, also as part of your grandmother's memory

Believe it or not, there are neither "Silent Night" nor "Amazing Grace" in The Amoy Hymnal. It is kinda strange not to have those well known hymns, right? It does have "We three king of Orient are.." and "Once in royal David's city" among the Christmas carols.


Hi Ah-bin

Welcome. Glad to hear that they are easily found in Taiwan. Regarding E-mng/Amoy, it's bad that they don't know their own heritage... anyway, I heard that it (the city) was fastly mandarinized.

O yeah, from which country are you from? Lots of fun to hear Christmas carols here too, Christmas decorations & performances at Singapore's Orchard Road is a tourist attraction. We welcome everyone's visit to our garden-city

[Mark Yong]

Hi, niuc,

Excellent page scans! And the crisp and clarity of the pages, too! You must keep your books really well.

It is interesting to note the fairly large number of Mandarin words that made their way into the text, suggesting that even during the days when writing Hokkien using Chinese characters was still in vogue, the authors/translators still struggled to get the correct characters.

Here is a link that I got (from another Chinese forum), which archives scanned pages from various old editions of Chinese Bibles dating as far back as the early-19th century, searchable by chapters and verses: http://rare.fhl.net/

In particular, I checked out John 1 from the 1852年白話字聖經約翰福音 edition of the New Testament (http://rare.fhl.net/gm.php?fn=b053/m43_ ... 01_018.jpg). It appears that the POJ Romanisation pretty much maps word-for-word with yours!

The only Hokkien Chinese-character version that is listed there is the 羅馬書、漢字本閩南話(手抄本). Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any scanned pages uploaded.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the info. In my ignorance, I didn't know about that, and I have not heard anyone using that (e.g 王 -> wang4). A check at the dictionary does prove that you are right

Verbs like 王 wang4, 衣 yi4, 雨 yu4, etc. are only really used in classical Chinese, but words like 好 hao4 (to be fond of), 少 shao4 (to be young) still exist in modern Mandarin compounds.

[niuc]

Hi Mark

Thank you for the link, it has so many versions! Yes, the 漢字版 is a recent transliteration from POJ Bible into hanji, so it maps word-to-word.


Hi Andrew

Thank you for the information. I knew about 好 and 少 but not the classical ones.

[Andrew]

Interestingly, in Hokkien 雨 is pronounced hO7 with a 去 tone like the verb, whereas the literary pronunciation u2 has a 上 tone like the noun. Is this simply a case of tone change from 上 -> 去?

[niuc]

Interestingly, in Hokkien 雨 is pronounced hO7 with a 去 tone like the verb, whereas the literary pronunciation u2 has a 上 tone like the noun. Is this simply a case of tone change from 上 -> 去?

This shouldn't be the only case, however I can't recall of any now.

[Ah-bin]

There are more, but I can only remember 想 siauN/siuN,

and the original character for "give" 與 does the same thing as 雨