Hi niuc,
Thanks for your explanations. Wow, the variation in Hokkien never ceases to amaze me (which, after all, is the title of this topic)! Even something as standard in Chinese culture as "the dishes one eats with rice" has such a wide variation in terms. Before my mother explained it, I had never heard of "mih-phe" and would not have understood it if I had heard someone use it. Similarly, I wouldn't have understood the use of "kiam5" in this context.
How would you say something like: "a-yo! puiN an-nE ce, sam-phoe an-nE cio - ma-na e ho ciah!" (= "gosh! there's so much rice and so few dishes - how on earth would it be a nice meal!")? Would it be "a-yo! png an-ni cue, kiam an-ni cio - <???> e ho ciah". [I suppose here, co-incidentally and peripherally, I'm also asking how you'd express the Malay borrowed word "mana".]
The whole subject of "sam-phoe" vs. "mi-phe" came up when I was interviewing my mother about her childhood, and she told me about the "mi-phe-tu" ("tu" = "cupboard") they had in the house when she was a child (this was the first time I'd heard the term). Hers was quite different from the ones we knew in my childhood. As far as I know, ours was fairly standard in households of that time. In Malaysian/Singaporean English, it was called a "meat safe". It was used to keep left-over food, for eating the next day.
Our meat safe was a made of wood, in the shape (and size) of a small cupboard. At least, it had a basic wooden frame, which gave it the shape of a cupboard, including the frames of the doors (there were two, which opened in the middle), but the "surfaces" of the sides and doors were made of squares of very fine wire mesh. This meant that one could see the dishes inside (unclearly, through the mesh). The mesh was meant to keep flies out, and hence protect the food. There were about 4-5 "shelves" in the meat safe, where one would put the left-over food, in cooking pots, or in bowls, each covered with a plate. For me, the most interesting aspect of the meat safe was that it was on 4 legs (as opposed to a cupboard, which "went all the way to the ground"). They were *deliberately* made with these legs, because these legs were (each) meant to go into (what I as a child thought of as a) "moat" (actually, I should explain that it was not so much the legs, but the "moats", which I found so interesting). The "moat" was an earthenware / rough ceramic, approximately cylindrically-shaped object, about 5-7 cm high and perhaps 8-9 cm in diameter (perhaps a bit smaller - things look bigger when one is a small child!). The "moat" was filled with water (which had to be topped up every now and again, as it evaporated). There was a special "inside part" which had no water, which the legs of the meat safe stood in. This part was dry, so that the wood of the legs of the meat safe wouldn't rot. The whole idea of the "moat" was to stop (particularly) ants from crawling up the legs and into the meat safe to get the food. That was hence also the reason for the four legs - so that they could be placed in the four "moats".
It took a while, but I've made an "ASCII-graphics" drawing of a cross-section of the moat (seen from the side). [Looked at from above, one would have seen two concentric circles: the "outer wall" of the moat (to stop the water running out), and the "inner wall" of the moat (to keep the legs of the meat safe dry).]
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+-+ +-+ +-+ +-+
\ \ | | | | / /
\ \~~~~~~| | | |~~~~~~/ / A = water
\ \ | | | | / /
\ \ A | | B | | A / / B = where the leg of the meat safe was placed in
\ \ | | | | / /
\ +--+ +-----+ +--+ /
+----------------+
No doubt this piece of kitchen furniture (and the "moats") would be known to many readers of the Forum. I imagine that this formerly common piece of kitchen furniture has nowadays been totally replaced by fridges. (We had a fridge too, but that was only used to make ice and keep cold drinks - left-over food was always kept in the meat safe.)
PS.
1. The sides were not as steep as shown in my drawing, but I only had the symbols "/" and "\" to use. Also, the diagram is more just to express the idea, and is not to scale. In reality, the distance of the water was much wider than the thickness of the ceramic "walls" (otherwise, ants are "smart enough" to link their bodies to form a "living bridge", which other ants would then walk on, to cross the water). From memory, the ceramic walls would have been like 1-2 mm thick, whereas the water would have been 1.5-2 cm wide - wide enough, at any rate, to prevent the ants from doing their "bridge" trick.
2. While my mother's family called it a "mi-phe-tu", we didn't have a special name for the meat safe in Penang Hokkien. If I remember correctly, it was just called a "uaN-tu" (= "crockery cupboard"). The meaning was clear, perhaps either from context, or because we didn't have any other cupboards specifically to store crockery.
