How to get rid of a Hokkien-speaking school bully

[Ah-bin]

Strange title for a thread, but I was inspired by the video "don't eat my Pringles"

what I was really interested in finding out is how to say "leave me alone" or "stop teasing me" in Hokkien. "Stop hitting me" I know already. Mang/Mai phah wa!

A very nice woman from Penang taught me a good expression on a bus ride to Sydney once, but I stupidly didn't write it down straight away, and I can't remember it now.

I'm sure there are tough versions too. In HK schools I was told that you'd continue to be beaten if you said 唔好打我 m-ho ta ngoh "Don't hit me", but not if you said 唔好打你嘅阿叔 m-ho ta nei-ke a-suk! "Don't hit your uncle"

I suppose there might be something using lin-pEh (limpeh is how they spell it a lot online now).

[SimL]

One very staid equivalent would be "mang (lai) cha wa", "mang (lai) co-luan wa" (= "don't (come and) disturb me"), but that could be said of a father to his son, a boss to his underling, two people of equivalent standing who don't know one another (well) etc, and so doesn't have that "tough guy" tone you might be looking for.

[SimL]

唔好打你嘅阿叔 m-ho ta nei-ke a-suk!

Seeing your Cantonese phrase here reminds me of a (degoratory) term I knew as a child. We've spoken here about the former conflicts between Babas and Sin-Kheks. Well, I don't know to what extent the term below was used only by Babas about (more countrified) Sin-Kheks, but I can imagine it might often have been the case. The term in question was "thong1-san2 a-suk8" (using POJ spelling and tone-numbers for Cantonese) = 中山阿叔. It was a term borrowed into Hokkien from Cantonese. It conjured up the image of a man in those baggy pajama-like half-long trousers, made of light cloth, with draw-strings at the waist. It was meant to convey that the speaker thought that the person so described was very "ignorant, countrified", a "country bumpkin", perhaps (but not necessarily) illiterate. I don't think it was exclusively used by Babas, as I seem to recall more highly-educated, sophisticated Sin-Kheks saying it too, of other poorer, less well-educated Sin-Kheks.

I suppose I should add that I do not support the use of such a term - I'm merely describing the linguistic situation of my youth. I realise as an adult that a lot of people who were looked down on as being "stupid", "ignorant" were just people who just never had access to education and the right opportunities in life - there should have been no disgrace attached to being illiterate or having little education.

A similar term was "China gong7" (= literally, "China stupid"), with very similar connotations. In my memory, this term was only used by Babas, never by Sin-Kheks, (perhaps) for the obvious reasons.