Msia/Singapore Hokkien borrowed words

[Andrew]

I enjoyed reading the articles about Singapore. I thnk they have it easier in that their dialect is more like Amoy and Taiwan, and so all they really need to do is allow more Taiwanese tv programmes to be shown in order for the dialect to be maintained to some extent, but I think the reason that Penangites are so attached to their dialect is because it is so prevalent across dialect groups and so different from what is spoken in other parts of Malaya. Even some Malays and Indians will sometimes speak a bit of Hokkien (and there are many who are extremely fluent) to show that they are from Penang.

[SimL]

Penangites are so attached to their dialect is because it is so prevalent across dialect groups and so different from what is spoken in other parts of Malaya.

I think you're right. So many times through the years, I've seen two people or two groups of people who don't know one another, speaking in a public place, outside of Penang, and suddenly noticing that the other person or group is speaking Penang Hokkien, and then a big smile comes on everyone's faces: "Oh, you're from Penang!".

Even some Malays and Indians will sometimes speak a bit of Hokkien (and there are many who are extremely fluent) to show that they are from Penang.

Yes, my mother tells me that a close friend of hers in Penang, Tamil, spoke Penang Hokkien so fluently that if one closed one's eyes, one would have no way of knowing that she wasn't Chinese. I knew this lady, but we only ever spoke in English, so I never knew this when I was young.

If I'm back in Penang, I'll try and get hold of such an Indian or Malay and make a videoclip of them, to put on youtube.

[Ah-bin]

xng wrote:

Everybody seems to have forgotten that Mandarin was promoted as a national language in China mainly to act as a medium of communication between the various Han chinese ie. use as lingua franca. Mandarin was NOT supposed to replace all the chinese dialects with mandarin.

This is what CCP propaganda says, but who believes that? What they say to and what they do are usually completely different. Actually, at the beginning that may have been the case, but it isn't any more.

The result of their policy is eliminating all the dialects except for Mandarin by restricting their use so tighly it appears that they are dying a natural death. There is a lot of pressure at schools (just like in 1960's-70's Taiwan) to prohibit the use of the local language on school premises. This is particulary the case in Cantonese-speaking areas. Teaching in Cantonese may have been popular in the 80's and early 90's, but not now.

Article 16 of the language law (brought into effect in 2000) states:

Where the relevant provisions of this Chapter are concerned, local dialects may be used under the following circumstances:

(1) when State functionaries really need to use them in the performance of official duties;

(2) where they are used in broadcasting with the approval of the broadcasting and television administration under the State Council or of the broadcasting and television department at the provincial level;

(3) where they are needed in traditional operas, films and TV programs and other forms of art; and

(4) where their use is really required in the publishing, teaching and research.

But this is selodom carried through in action. Sure, you can watch Hokkien programmes in Amoy, but they are there because they want Taiwanese to watch them. They have a lot of propaganda advertisements for Taiwanese in between the programmes. Go a little further away from Taiwan or Hong Kong, and you won't find much in the way of local language programming. There is one city I know (Nanning) and have lived with a populations bigger than the whole of New Zealand which has had its local language completely wiped out, the kids there can't even understand Cantonese, let alone speak it. These were kids whose mothers worked in the markets and spoke Nanning-style Cantonese every day. There are no radio or TV programmes allowed in the local dialect.
Added to this you can find official complaints in the press about how narrow-minded parents make their children speak "dialect" at home, and about how backward it is. There are propaganda posters up all around Amoy with "Be civilised and speak Mandarin".

Putonghua promotion may not have started out as a campaign to get rid of the other dialects, but it is certainly the way things are going now.

Also promoting Putonghua was never just for Han Chinese, it's also for all the other poor suckers who've ended up within the PRC boundaries and have had to waste hours as kids learning to read speak and write Chinese when their own languages use alphabets. It's a bit like teaching five-year-olds in England who can't speak any Chinese. I love Chinese characters and Chinese language myself, but I would never dream of imposing the task of learning Chinese on kids for whom it isn't a native language.

In China, the average southern chinese need not learn English, so there's no excuse not to learn their mother tongue plus mandarin which do share a lot of common vocab and grammar since they belong to sinitic language family anyway.

All Chinese who go to high school (and in the last two years or so, middle school) are made to learn English, and they need it if they want access to higher education.

Poor Uighurs, Tibetans etc. have it worse they have to learn Chinese AND English two completely different scripts.

[niuc]

This is the text of a recent speech by him on the subject (I guess many readers of this Forum will already have seen it): http://www.news.gov.sg/public/sgpc/en/m ... 317-1.html

Although the speech was delivered on 17 March 2009, the content is basically standard and well known for years, may be have become a kind of "doctrines". I agree that English should be primary and Mandarin secondary, but I don't agree with his phobia for "dialects". I hope he is wrong, otherwise it means that Singaporean are really not smart enough to master English, Mandarin and their respective mother tongue at once.

I would like to think that one can be a happy, well-adjusted, pro-English, pro-Western-civilization Chinese without betraying one's Chinese roots!

Yes, indeed. We must pro-goodness when it is found in Chinese and English (etc), Eastern and Western (etc), regardless of race etc.

Yes, my mother tells me that a close friend of hers in Penang, Tamil, spoke Penang Hokkien so fluently that if one closed one's eyes, one would have no way of knowing that she wasn't Chinese. I knew this lady, but we only ever spoke in English, so I never knew this when I was young.

There were some Malays and Bataks who spoke considerably good Hokkien in Bagansiapiapi. Just around the place I live in now in Singapore, there is an Indian man (may be in his fifties) who speaks Hokkien fluently with perfectly native accent. The first time I heard him talking to other Chinese, I was really surprised. Without seeing, he definitely would be mistaken as a Hokkien.

[niuc]

There is one city I know (Nanning) and have lived with a populations bigger than the whole of New Zealand which has had its local language completely wiped out, the kids there can't even understand Cantonese, let alone speak it. These were kids whose mothers worked in the markets and spoke Nanning-style Cantonese every day. There are no radio or TV programmes allowed in the local dialect.
Added to this you can find official complaints in the press about how narrow-minded parents make their children speak "dialect" at home, and about how backward it is. There are propaganda posters up all around Amoy with "Be civilised and speak Mandarin".

This is really a sad news.

Also promoting Putonghua was never just for Han Chinese, it's also for all the other poor suckers who've ended up within the PRC boundaries and have had to waste hours as kids learning to read speak and write Chinese when their own languages use alphabets. It's a bit like teaching five-year-olds in England who can't speak any Chinese. I love Chinese characters and Chinese language myself, but I would never dream of imposing the task of learning Chinese on kids for whom it isn't a native language.

Personally I believe that every kid regardless of race in any country must learn its national language or lingua franca, e.g. Mandarin for all PRC citizen, English for all those in USA, GB, NZ etc. Yet what they shouldn't do is to have that language replacing others, as everyone have the right to learn and preserve his own mother tongue.

[Ah-bin]

Personally I believe that every kid regardless of race in any country must learn its national language or lingua franca, e.g. Mandarin for all PRC citizen, English for all those in USA, GB, NZ etc. Yet what they shouldn't do is to have that language replacing others, as everyone have the right to learn and preserve his own mother tongue.

With Mandarin this is a big problem, as it takes considerably longer to learn it to a reasonable standard, especially if you are a Uighur or Kazakh. Tibetan at least is related to Chinese, and then there are those non-related Tai languages that are tonal have a similar sort of grammar to Sinitic. Getting Uighurs or Turks to learn Mandarin is asking them to give up a lot of time that they could use to learn more useful things in their own languages.

I think the minority groups who have an identity as a different group (not like "Zhuang" and "Bai" and so on who had their identity imposed on them) get annoyed because the migrants into their own areas (often many times the size of places that are independent countries) don't ever think it's worth learning the local language, and are not made to.

I really shouldn't have brought these other groups into the discussion, as their situation is more like the Estonians, Latvians and so on in the Soviet Union.
Forcing a lingua franca on people who see themselves as different is just asking for trouble, but as Niuc has mentioned, Hokkien people don't necessarliy see themselves as different.

Not all countries in the world have the policy of a single language for the whole country. Switzerland and Finland are two examples. I haven't checked, but think there are more Uighurs in China than there are Finns in Finland.

[Shawn.Lin]

I guess trade links between the two places would have been greater in colonial times.

I think so too. From my family history research, I found out that my Penang Baba relatives had Malaccan Baba relatives, who in turn had (presumably) Peranakan relatives in Medan. My dad only vaguely knew the Malaccan relatives (wasn't even really sure how they were related to us), and never knew the Medan ones at all, just knew of their existence.

Perhaps I'm even related to Shawn!

I read somewhere along time ago that Penang and Medan were sister cities but don't quote me on that. My mum tells me she had quite afew high school friends who went to Penang to attend a college afetr high school. Apparently this was quite common for Medan high school graduates who can afford it.

Talking about non-Chinese who can speak Penang/ Medan hokkien, I know an angmo lang who grew up in Singapore who can speak perfect Medan hokkien. He had alot of Hokkien friends from Medan. The look on my mum's face when she first met him was priceless .

[SimL]

I read somewhere along time ago that Penang and Medan were sister cities but don't quote me on that.

You remembered correctly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medan states that Ichikawa (Japan), George Town (Malaysia), Chengdu (PRC), and Gwangju (South Korea) are sister cities of Medan. (George Town is the official name and capital city of the Island of Penang, though hardly anyone ever calls it that.)

[xng]

Tibetan at least is related to Chinese, and then there are those non-related Tai languages that are tonal have a similar sort of grammar to Sinitic.

The most difficult thing to learn about chinese are the tones and monosyllabic way of speaking which is difficult for turkic speaking people ie. uighur which are toneless.

I though tibetan is tonal ? And it does share lots of basic vocabulary as the older chinese languages such as hokkien or cantonese.

Tai speakers have a much easier time learning chinese because their language is also tonal and monosyllabic. Their tones are even much more than mandarin ie. 9 to 10 tones.

[Ah-bin]

I would have thought that having to learn more than two thousand obscure hieroglyphics was the hardest thing about learning Chinese. They are demanding hat minorities learn to write as well as speak.

I suppose the cognate vocabulary of Tibetan might help them learn Chinese a bit, but only as much as Indo-European cognates help english speakers learn Hindi or Russian