Getting angry in Penang Hokkien

[Ah-bin]

I've discussed with Sim sometimes about how to write the word khí-hōng "to get angry", and my instinct when I heard it was to write 起風, but Sim pointed out that the tone is different, (hòng or hōng, not hong) and so I changed my mind and began to think it must be 氣放 instead, (hòng is the literary reading for pàng) sort of like "ch'i given vent to or released".

I haven't been able to find the word in any other Hokkien dictionary I own, so it seems to be a term peculiar to the Hokkien of Malaysia (don't know about Indonesia).

Then, after looking through the glossary of Raymond Kwok's "Malay Echoes from the Past", I found the Baba term "naik angin", meaning "to lose one's temper". Where the "naik" corresponds to the Hokkien "khí" meaning "to rise up". So now I think it's actually 起風 again, just like "makan angin" is chiáh-hong 食風, another word calqued from Malay and not found in China or Taiwan.

Why is the tone of 風 altered? I think it's to do with the fact that in Penang Hokkien you often 起風共儂 khí-hng kah lâng, (get angry WITH people), and it causes the tone of "hong" to sandhi to "hōng". Phrases with "kah" are so common that the sandhied tone has become the ordinary tone on the end of the word as well. This is a documented phenomenon in the Teochiu spoekn in Cambodia, but if I am right about khi-hong, it is the first time I've come across it in Penang Hokkien.

[aokh1979]

I personally think there's a character for it.

It should be something to do with 火 or 心 as it relates to an emotion. If I am not mistaken, the pronunciation is exactly the same as 發癀, "swell". So it should be something to with 黃 or 皇 in Chinese.

惶 is what I choose, it means worry, fear. I dunno if it makes sense......

[Ah-bin]

It's another possibility, but I see 癀 is also a different tone (hông) as well, so it could be 氣癀 with a changed tone as well.

[niuc]

I had never heard of 起風 with that meaning. However, my mom says that there is a phrase 無風起風波 'bo5-huang1 khi2-hong1-pho1' to mean getting angry without any [apparent] reason. 'huang1' is colloquial reading for 風 in my variant (also in Cuanciu variants & Teochew).

[Andrew]

We also sometimes just say khi2 by itself as short for khi-hong. Does anyone else do this?

[SimL]

I haven't been able to find the word in any other Hokkien dictionary I own, so it seems to be a term peculiar to the Hokkien of Malaysia (don't know about Indonesia).

Hi Ah-bin. I wonder if it mightn't be confined to even just Penang Hokkien? My Amoyish sin-kheh side of the family never said "khi-hong", but always "siu-khi". Would this be 修氣? Niuc has confirmed that he didn't know it in Indonesia. Mark, did you know the term before learning Penang Hokkien? (Hmmm... perhaps you didn't know any Hokkien, before you learnt Penang Hokkien, so the question might be silly.)

We also sometimes just say khi2 by itself as short for khi-hong. Does anyone else do this?

Hi Andrew. No, I'm not familiar with this usage.

[Ah-bin]

I've started to think that as well. But then again, the speaker of the Buddhist sermons uses khi-hong, and he does things sometimes that aren't entirely Penang-style (uses sioN for siauN 想 and so on)

Taiwanese books usually write 受氣 for siu-khi

[SimL]

Taiwanese books usually write 受氣 for siu-khi

Ah, thanks!

Funny, when I'm angry I (often!) yell at people. So, I would write this 授氣 rather than 受氣 . [Just for clarity, I'm not doubting the correctness of the character you gave, just making a joke...]

[SimL]

I've too have always wondered about that the characters for "khi-hong" are.

One of my wild speculations was that it might be 起兇, with "hiong5" corrupted to "hong5".

[SimL]

Ah-bin,

Sorry for "kidnapping" your topic with an off-topic comment, but I'm reluctant to have a proliferation of topics with only 3-4 posts per topic. So, I'm posting my question here.

I've been wondering about this since I started learning Mandarin a few years ago.

In Mandarin, the word 句 ju4 covers multiple characters - from a compound word, to a phrase, to a sentence. The equivalent in Hokkien is ku3, but my usage of it is quite different. In my perception, Hokkien ku3 is only a single syllable.

- "gua kio i ka gua kong cit le kO su, tapi i liam kui na ku liau toh cau liau"

i.e.

- "I asked him to tell me a story, but he after muttering a few syllables, he left"

For me, "kui na gu" would be just a few syllables (say 3-4), definitely not a few "sentences", not a few phrases, and probably not even a few di-syllabic compound words.

So for me, in Hokkien, 句 "gu3" is simply the "spoken/aural/verbal" equivalent of the "visual" 字 "ji7". One writes or reads a few "ji7" on paper or on a computer screen, and one speaks or hears a few "gu3", each "gu3" corresponding to one "ji7".

Is this the usage of other Hokkien speakers, of have I misunderstood this completely?