Andrew wrote:That's a shame, but it parallels developments in Malaysia & Singapore. Where is Hokkien most predominant / what would be the best place to learn Hokkien? I have heard that Tailam is the Taiwanese standard, and that Gilan has a dialect that is still quite Chiangchiu in some respects.
Actually, you may be happy to hear that I think Penang might be such a place . The last time I was there (2007), the children of my cousin (3 kids, 7-12 years old) all spoke Penang Hokkien (mixed with English, in the same way that I did). And this despite their being sent to "Chinese School" (their mother is also a Penang Hokkien speaker who taught herself Mandarin as an adult, in order to help her children with their homework!). My impression of that family was that the mother and kids speak Mandarin quite well, but that it still remains a "well-learned foreign language", whereas they speak Penang Hokkien and English natively, like me. The father of the family (my cousin) doesn't speak Mandarin, so only speaks Penang Hokkien and English (plus, I suppose, Malay). The only natural mode of communication within the family and between the family and (Chinese) strangers in public was Penang Hokkien and English.
Another example was a group of 3 boys (late primary school or early secondary school) who sat next to me in an internet cafe, also in Penang. They spoke Mandarin to one another for quite a while (discussing stuff they were looking at together on the net), so I initially thought they were Mandarin speakers, but then they switched to Penang Hokkien, and had quite a long conversation / several exchanges in it. They seemed to switch between Mandarin and Penang Hokkien with total ease, the way my family does with English and Penang Hokkien.
If I understand correctly, Ah-bin is encouraged by such reports (and others he's heard independently from other people), and this is one of the reasons that he's taken such a keen interest in Penang Hokkien specifically.
Ah-bin wrote:
No, this simply isn't true any more for people under thirty-five, and I've lived in various places in Taiwan for two years with various families of Hokkien origin (not including Taipei, where the taiwanese level is worst of all). Ah-mei was born in 1972, so she's hardly an example of a young Taiwanese any more.
That's a shame, but it parallels developments in Malaysia & Singapore. Where is Hokkien most predominant / what would be the best place to learn Hokkien? I have heard that Tailam is the Taiwanese standard, and that Gilan has a dialect that is still quite Chiangchiu in some respects.
Ah Bin,
I am sad to hear that even the Taiwanese are abandoning their mother tongue. The impression I got from watching Taiwanese hokkien shows is that the young are still actively speaking it. I supposed it's actually the minority now.
Andrew,
There's no acceptable Minnan standard that is acceptable to all minnan dialects. People are still stubbornly holding on to their own regional minnan dialect. If Amoy, Taiwan, Quanzhou, Teociu and Zhangzhou (maybe puxian too) will get together someday and come up with a standard just like what they did to Beijing Mandarin, it will go a long way to preserving the language.
The differences between Zhangzhou (Penang) and Quanzhou (Klang) hokkien is quite significant.
Last edited by xng on Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
SimL wrote:
Actually, you may be happy to hear that I think Penang might be such a place
SimL,
I hardly consider Penang to be the 'savior' of Hokkien Language for the following reasons.
1. It has more malay words than the Klang version. eg. they use 'Batu' instead of 'Cio Tau' which Klang people use.
The list that I posted are the malay words used commonly for the whole of Msia/Singapore. Although I'm not sure whether Klang/Singapore use 'Kesian' instead of "Ko lian".
2. The level spoken by Penangites is of the elementary level (ie. primary school level), if you want to hear the secondary school or university level, look at how they speak in Taiwanese shows. Of course, to go to that level, you must be chinese educated first.
3. Everytime I hear penangites try to speak hokkien with me, I usually switch to mandarin or English because I can't tolerate the rojak and low level hokkien they speak. Call me a purist, I don't expect 100% pure hokkien but to have 50% foreign words is too much.
4. Penang hokkien (parts anyway) is based on Zhangzhou hokkien and is quite different from Taiwan or other hokkien versions.
Erm... did you perhaps mean to write "..., and *I* had to act as an interpretor"?
No, it was the little one. they would say things in Mandarin and he would translate them through for me! It was fun, and he felt very pleased with himself.
The reason for young people who could speak Hokkien not speaking Hokkien to each other, when I asked in Taiwan was "because we're not used to it" "because it feels strange" and "because it is song" - the word, pronounced "som" in Chiang-chiu, meaning "uncultured" or "rough". In China they said "because we have to promote Mandarin". You might get the same response from Singaporeans, I suppose, but I haven't asked too many of them. In Amoy the other reason was because there were people in the city from all over Fujian.
By the way, I learnt Maori in New Zealand before, (that's how I knew what kutus were before I even knew there was a Malay language) and it although it is a very small language, it does have a standardised written form, a Bible translation, a TV Station, and several radio stations, and lots of children's books.
Several of the issues of standardisation are the same. Hokkien and Maori were both mainly spoken languages rather than written, and there were quite a few different dialects. Every Maori teacher I've met told us to learn the language of the place where we lived, rather than an official standard, and told us to use our local words but be aware of all the different ways to say things, and have respect for them. In that way, people eventually learnt just to understand each other and still go on using their own ways of saying things and their own pronunciation.
As far as linguistic purity is concerned, many Maori were against having English loanwords in their language, and some were a little ashamed of having no Maori words for English things. So some scholars went and invented new words for things that are now taught in the schools. Some loanwords have stayed, others have been repleced by new words that children learn at school, but the problem is that old Maori speakers don't know them.
So the case of Maori at least proves that a small language can survive in many dialect forms without having a single standard. What it also shows is that nothing much can be done for languages without some government support.
The problem with Taiwan is that the people who are most interested in promoting Hokkien don't necessarily care about what happens in Amoy or Southeast Asia, and the PRC language poilcy is just like Singapore on a larger scale. Malaysian Chinese, on the other hand are used to doing things for themselves and are not as restricted in their actions as Chinese or Singaporeans, so Malaysian Hokkien looks like it might be the saviour in some ways...that's where lots of the young people who are proud of their Hokkien live, and where most of the people on this forum seem to come from.
It takes only one generation in-between to lose a language, e.g. the grandparents speak Hokkien and barely know Mandarin, then the parents are fluent in Hokkien and Mandarin, they speak Hokkien to communicate with their parents (the grandparents) and speak Mandarin to the youngsters, so the youngsters are fluent in Mandarin and barely know Hokkien. This can and is happening with many languages. Indeed without governmental support, many are heading toward extinction.
For Hokkien (and may be Chinese languages other than Mandarin), the problem is quite different from Maori. Most Hokkien people believe (regardless right or wrong) that Mandarin and Hokkien are simply different dialects of "one" Chinese language ("mother tongue of all Chinese"), so nothing is lost to switch from "non-standard speech" to "standard speech", in fact there are huge economic & socio-political gains. In comparison with Cantonese (and may be Hakka), Hokkiens are more "nationalistic", more often refer to themselves (at least in my experience) as Chinese than Hokkien. Surely there are events when people would say 'lan2-hok4-kian3-lang5' (we Hokkiens), but mostly 'lan2-tng5-lang5' (we Chinese). Many Hokkien leaders including Tan Kah Kee and Hokkien Huay Kuan in Singapore were fervent supporter of Mandarin for unification of all Chinese. It is easier to preserve Maori, because it is not related to English and Maori people don't think of English as part of their original tradition, not to mention governmental support in preserving it. Hokkien, without any governmental support, is happily exchanged by its own speakers for "standard Chinese". It is hardly a surprise if Mandarin will totally replace Hokkien.
Yes, I agree with that totally, I've said to Sim before that Hokkien's problems originate in the three word phrase "just a dialect".
The lack of interest in Maori was at it's height when Maori saw English as the way to get on society, it was also coupled with the old idea that learning two languages stunts children's development. Once the majority of Hokkien speakers are materially well off, they may well start thinking about Hokkien more too. By that time it may be too late.
The word dialect was a terrible mistranslation of 方言 to start with, as any kind of Chinese (including Mandarin) is a "dialect" in technical English usage (it's any variation of a language, not excluding standard variations).
In ordinary usage in English it is used for non-standard varieties exclusively, but then again, in ordinary usage in China 方言 is the term for regional language in general, whether it is related to Sinitic or not (I have heard people call Tai languages and Miao-Yao 方言).
So neither of the terms fit each other in the different levels of usage, but the non-specialist English usage does fit nicely with the political usage that Singapore and the PRC like to promote.
In Taiwan the government calls Hakka and Taiwanese 本土語言 or 母語 in official documents. Officially the attitude has changed, but to get young people (particularly those who will have children soon) to speak something they think is uncouth is the biggest challenge of all.
I’m not talking about Penang Hokkien being a saviour of anything. I’m not suggesting that Penang Hokkien is going to become the international standard for Hokkien (ridiculous!). Andrew simply asked where there were places where (very) young people were still speaking Hokkien. And I simply gave an answer.
I respect your point of view, and I understand what you are trying to get at. I just don’t feel that you understand my point of view, and what I’m trying to get at. Below is what I originally wrote, but deleted, because I wanted to see what the direction this discussion would take. I’m (re-)posting it now.
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Start of deleted post:
xng,
Most of the people who are defending the use of regional terms (Malay or whatever) in Hokkien (me and Ah-bin, specifically, the last few replies) have taken the trouble to hear what you say, and acknowledge the validity of your point of view. It makes me quite sad that you don’t seem to make the effort to try and understand the point we are making in return.
If two people have basically different (even opposite) attitudes to a particular issue, they can still try to understand and appreciate what the other people is trying to say on that issue. Mark and I have very different opinions on the “correct” use of Chinese characters to write Hokkien, but in many discussions with him (both through email, and on this Forum), he will often make the effort to put “correct” in quotes (sometimes even laughing at himself, even though this subject is so dear to his heart). I understand and respect his very different opinion on this issue, and he understands and respects mine. I have no desire to try and persuade him to change his view (on the contrary, I have on various occasions explicitly told him that I understand and respect it), and the same the other way around.
End of deleted post
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Similarly, I like POJ, and I like (even better) my personal modification to it. But I respect tadpole and his attempt to write it in his own way. I imagine that he has a consistent and coherent vision of why he wants to write the tones using consonants at the end. I myself personally believe that doing so gives each word a more distinctive look than having a tone-number after the word or a diacritic above the vowel (i.e. from an intellectual point of view, I’m actually in favour of a system like tadpolese). I have to confess I don’t like this use of consonants purely from an “aesthetic” point of view, but I know for myself that aesthetics is often just a matter of getting used to something anyway. So, I (think I) understand, and I (know I) respect tadpole’s point of view on writing Hokkien with roman letters, even if I don’t agree with it. In POJ, I think it’s a waste to write “ch-” and “chh-”, when “c-” and “ch-” would be sufficient. I don’t like the fact that it writes “au” but “oa” - I feel it should be “au”and “ua” (or “ao” and “oa”). But Ah-bin likes POJ because it’s a standardized orthography. To me, Ah-bin’s point of view is perfectly coherent and sensible. I understand and respect why he has it. It’s different from my own point of view, but I don’t criticize it, and I don’t try and make him give up POJ in favour of my modified orthography.
The ability to understand a different point of view enables a person to understand his own point of view better. It also enables two people to have a fruitful discussion on the topic in question.
I know Hong/Ong in the past had this purist line, criticising this or that form of Hokkien as “corrupt”, and telling me and various other people how we should talk, and what words we should use. I don’t think this is very useful. I’m not going to change the way I speak. I’m not going to stop being proud of my Penang Hokkien. I’m perfectly well aware that it’s a “rojak” Hokkien, and that my level of mastery of “real Hokkien” is not high (indeed, I often point it out myself, and “apologise” for it). But I (and many Penang Hokkien speakers) love our Penang Hokkien, with all its borrowed words: we’re proud of it! It wouldn’t be Penang Hokkien without these words. Nothing any purist says is going to change that love and pride. Better a language we are proud of and teach our children, even if it’s a “rojak” language which we speak badly, than a “pure” language that we speak at an advanced level, but are not proud of and don’t teach our children (and which hence dies out in the next generation).
One of the greatest languages the human race has ever known is English. At its best, it can be incredibly subtle, and flexible, and poetic. And it’s the biggest “rojak” mix of Low German dialect, Old Norse overlay (“at least” Germanic!), a weird form of French (Norman French, which is not a direct ancestor of Modern French), and (neo-classical, i.e. practically “fake”) Latin. These four are massively present in basic English vocabulary, affecting its very soul. Along with them, there are (in total) hundreds of words from (Modern) Dutch, German, the languages of the Indian sub-continent, Malay, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, etc, etc, etc, which give it such rich additional colour. All of this in total reflects the amazing history of English. None of this detracts from the wonder and beauty of the English language. So there are millions of people who respect and love this “rojak” language.
Indeed, a language which doesn’t change and adapt and borrow is dead. German, French, Dutch - they’re all borrowing from English these days. Purists may not like it, but is shows that these languages are alive!
Hong never managed to understand this point of view, much less to respect it.
I would like to give one last example of differing opinions where the two people respect one another’s viewpoint.
I respect Ah-bin’s opinions based on his own personal experiences, even where I don’t necessarily agree with him. He believes that Taiwanese is seriously threatened in Taiwan. But I’m less pessimistic, because, for example, I heard from a Taiwanese guy that there are extremely rich southern Taiwanese families where if the girl wants to marry a boy from Taipei, one of the first questions they will ask is “does he speak Taiwanese?”. If the answer is “No”, then the marriage is off! This I take as “reassurance” that some Taiwanese still care very much about their language (quite aside from the fact that I don’t like it that a family should grant or withhold consent for the marriage of their daughter based on this criterion!!!).
What I’m trying to say is, Ah-bin believes something, based on his experience, and what he has heard, and I believe something (slightly) different, based on what I have experienced, and what I have heard. But I respect Ah-bin’s opinions. I listen to what he has said from his examples, and (because I understand his point of view), I see that he has a consistent, coherent point of view. He has a lot of experience with how they “saved” Maori in New Zealand (promoting it right from Kindergarten, and getting grandfathers and grandmothers who still spoke it well to teach it to little kids), and so he believes that that is a very good way to revive the language in the next generation (once it has been badly lost or “badly damaged” in one generation). Because of that, he’s concerned when he sees little (Taiwanese) children not learning the language, and he believes that that will lead to that language being lost. This is why he chooses not to accept my “piece of evidence” relating to rich southern Taiwanese families as support for the idea that Taiwanese is not dying in Taiwan.
So, nobody really knows the truth. We make our inferences and base our beliefs on various pieces of evidence, and we choose which pieces of evidence we accept, and which we reject. But we cannot make another person accept the ones we accept, and reject the ones we reject. Indeed, I see no need to. In my opinion, the important thing in the whole process is to understand and respect the other point of view.
Because I understand Ah-bin’s point of view, I was able to give an interpretation to the following piece of evidence I saw: I watched a video clip from (presumably) Amoy, where the adult maker of a documentary went to a kindergarten to speak to the little children. She spoke to them (exclusively) in Hokkien. They all understood everything she said, but they flatly refused to answer in Hokkien - they all answered only in Mandarin. As I said, because I had been open to hearing Ah-bin’s opinions, I was able to interpret the evidence I saw in this video clip. I gave it a very negative interpretation: it’s a very bad sign for the survival of Hokkien in Amoy.
Summary:
All of us in this Forum care about Hokkien. We have different conceptions of what is good Hokkien, what is bad Hokkien. We have different opinions about where it is dying and where it will survive. We have different opinions on how to save and/or promote it. We have different opinions on how best to write it. I just wish that you could see that, and understand (and respect) these differences better.
Best regards,
SimL
Last edited by SimL on Thu Oct 08, 2009 9:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Good points made by both of you. I hadn't quite realised that Hokkiens have such a weak sense of "separate" identity compared to other dialect speakers, though I remember reading that the Hokkien Hoay Kuans are very pro-Mandarin, and don't support the promotion of Hokkien language at all. I think you've said it here before in the past, niuc.
>> Surely there are events when people would say 'lan2-hok4-kian3-lang5' (we Hokkiens), but
>> mostly 'lan2-tng5-lang5' (we Chinese).
Yes, this sounds very familiar to me too. I wonder whether this is connected to the fact that historically, except for the middle bit of peninsular Malaysia (say from slightly north of Ipoh to slightly south of KL), Hokkien was the predominant form of Chinese spoken (this area covering even Sumatra). From what I've read about the "formation of identity", people tend to identify themselves "in contrast" to other people around them. So, if we have Hakkas and Teochews and Hockchews living among Hokkiens, then they would see themselves as Hakkas and Teochews and Hockchews, contrasting to the "Chinese" majority (= Hokkiens), whereas if the Hokkiens are in the majority, then they would contrast themselves to the Malays and Indians, and hence see themselves as "Chinese".
I've read a number of accounts of something similar among Eurasians, specifically those who might have identified as more European, and who might then have gone "back" to live in England or wherever. In these accounts, one of the common themes is that while they were living in Malaysia, they felt very "white/English/European", but once they moved to England they felt very "un-European". This fits very well with what I was describing with the Hokkiens above. In Malaysia, these Eurasians would have contrasted themselves to the Chinese, Malays, and Indians, and hence felt very "European", but in England, they would have had to contrast themselves with the English, and hence then felt very "Eurasian".
That's just a very tentative explanation about the original point niuc made - just thinking out loud really.
Ah-bin wrote:The lack of interest in Maori was at it's height when Maori saw English as the way to get on society, it was also coupled with the old idea that learning two languages stunts children's development. Once the majority of Hokkien speakers are materially well off, they may well start thinking about Hokkien more too. By that time it may be too late.
Hi Ah-bin,
Indeed, there seems to something similar happening in Singapore. Recently, there have been several threads on Singapore-related forums, where (some) Singaporeans mourn the loss of dialect. The common themes that come up in these threads are:
1. The "dialects" were an important part of Singapore's history, and it's sad that we've now lost them.
2. We don't speak Mandarin as well as people in the PRC and Taiwan anyway.
3. We would love to have our real mother tongue, not some "import" from Northern China.
4. We can't communicate with our grandparents, which is tragic.
5. It's all LKY's fault, with his "Speak Mandarin" policy.
I've shared the first two of these links with you, but they all relate to this theme of Singaporeans "re-discovering" their dialect past:
. The last time I was there (2007), the children of my cousin (3 kids, 7-12 years old) all spoke Penang Hokkien (mixed with English, in the same way that I did). And this despite their being sent to "Chinese School" (their mother is also a Penang Hokkien speaker who taught herself Mandarin as an adult, in order to help her children with their homework!). My impression of that family was that the mother and kids speak Mandarin quite well, but that it still remains a "well-learned foreign language", whereas they speak Penang Hokkien and English natively, like me. The father of the family (my cousin) doesn't speak Mandarin, so only speaks Penang Hokkien and English (plus, I suppose, Malay). The only natural mode of communication within the family and between the family and (Chinese) strangers in public was Penang Hokkien and English.