美珍香 Bee 'Cheng' Hiang

[duaaagiii]

It was interesting to see the 「美珍香 Bee Cheng Hiang」 sign in Taiwan, as very few signs in Taiwan have Minnan romanization, and Bee Cheng Hiang is a company from Singapore.

http://www.bch.com.sg/
http://www.bch.tw/
http://www.bch.hk/

Unfortunately, they got the pronunciation wrong; while 珍 and 貞 are homophones in Mandarin, 珍 should be pronounced as tin1 in Minnan, not tsing1 (Cheng).
I wonder if any Singaporeans realize this error?

[Mark Yong]

I recall seeing 美珍香 Romanised as Bee Chin Hiang somewhere before, but for the life of me, I cannot remember where.

Also, strictly speaking, should it not be hiong in Singapore?

[Ah-bin]

Hiang is the Chiang-chiu 漳州 thak-chheh-im 讀冊音.

I've always assumed this was from HK, as I have only seen it there and in Canton (I never saw it in Taiwan ten years ago and I lived in three different cities), either way it is very likely a Teochiu reading rather than a Hokkien one. Teochiu also reads "Hiang" and they make no distinction in thak-chheh-im 讀冊音 between final -n and -ng. These are all merged (in reading pronunciation) into -ng, hence "Chiang"

[Mark Yong]

Interesting point about the -n and -ng fusing in Teochiu. I had a Teochiu colleague called 文珍, which was Romanised as Boon Tiang.

[Ah-bin]

Quite right, I went back and looked up the readings and found out it was "tiang" I suppose that could sound like "chiang" to some people.

[niuc]

I also wondered about the romanisation. Anyway there are many "strange" spelling here e.g. 聯 as "Bian" in some stores. There is a building called 福海 "Fook Hai", which I thought was Cantonese, until my friend told me that it should be "Hoi" in Cantonese. So I am not sure which Chinese language that is.

About 肉乾 'ba4-kua*1', 美珍香 "Bee Cheng Hiang" is good but I prefer 林志源 "Lim Chee Guan" that is smoother and saltier. The former tends to be sweeter. Indonesian Chinese that I know usually prefer LCG to BCH. My Thai Chinese and native friends prefer BCH. LCH only has 2 stores, both at Chinatown, and before Chinese New Year there are always a lot of people queueing for hours. My friend did it for 5 hours, so I asked him to buy for me at once. I can't even imagining myself queueing for 1 hour. No queue at BCH as it has so many branches.

[xng]

I recall seeing 美珍香 Romanised as Bee Chin Hiang somewhere before, but for the life of me, I cannot remember where.

Also, strictly speaking, should it not be hiong in Singapore?

Most (95%) of singaporeans/malaysians are not educated in any romanisation spellings. And since there are no standards, it all boils down to the whimsical thoughts and education level of the parents or the (sometimes non chinese) nurse.

So romanisation was especially poor and don't reflect the real pronounciation.

eg I have some friends with spelling 'Ung' instead of 'Ng' (surname) when it is the same sound. I have also seen a lot of funny romanisation that distort the original sound. So my conjecture is they just hired a BAD person to romanise.

Proper romanisation would be 'Bee Tin Hiong'.

I have a teochiu relative and 珍 is pronounced as Tin and not Cheng. I know because her name since birth is Ah Tin.