I'm not sure this is the reason (i.e. I'm still not sure it's from 風). If we look at "khi kiaN ka i" (起行共伊) - "go and walk with him", or "khi ciah ka i" (起食共伊) - "go and eat with him", then we don't see any tone-sandhi on the 行 and 食. Now, I do acknowledge that these may be grammatically (but primarily semantically) slightly different from the proposed 起風共儂, but I still think that this should be taken into consideration.Ah-bin wrote: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".
Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Sim, you said it well. I also came to realise that about 句 ('ku3' in my variant) when I learned its meaning in Mandarin. However, if we are to scrutinize it, even in daily Hokkien it can mean something more than a syllable, e.g. 一句話 'cit8-ku3-ue7' can be one word/syllable, one phrase or one sentence (may be in short: one utterance). So I guess its meaning depends on its context. Nevertheless I still share the same feeling about 句 as primarily means a syllable. May be this is "colloquial meaning" vs "standard meaning"?SimL wrote: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?
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Hi Niuc,
Thanks for confirming my suspicion about "ku3". Indeed, I was vaguely aware of the phrase 一句話 'cit8-ku3-ue7' too, and saw it as not fitting what I was talking about. Perhaps one can see it as functioning as a "measure word" in that particular case, with a slightly different meaning than when it functions as a noun.
Thanks for confirming my suspicion about "ku3". Indeed, I was vaguely aware of the phrase 一句話 'cit8-ku3-ue7' too, and saw it as not fitting what I was talking about. Perhaps one can see it as functioning as a "measure word" in that particular case, with a slightly different meaning than when it functions as a noun.
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Hi SimL:
This is very new to me. I grew up in a Hokkien speaking family in Penang, I was educated in Chinese. 句 to me does not mean just a syllable. It means a sentence, a phrase. In your example, I would say that person said a few lines and left, not just a word. That's what I understand from it.
Besides, regarding the khi being used as "angry". I do use it often, especially when I try to emphasise the level of anger, eg: 氣徦挴死, khi-ka-bue-si. Literally, "angry until die".
徦 ＝ until (according to 康熙字典)
挴 ＝ to want (my understanding from the phonetic and meaning in 康熙字典 where it means 貪也)
Does it make sense ?
This is very new to me. I grew up in a Hokkien speaking family in Penang, I was educated in Chinese. 句 to me does not mean just a syllable. It means a sentence, a phrase. In your example, I would say that person said a few lines and left, not just a word. That's what I understand from it.
Besides, regarding the khi being used as "angry". I do use it often, especially when I try to emphasise the level of anger, eg: 氣徦挴死, khi-ka-bue-si. Literally, "angry until die".
徦 ＝ until (according to 康熙字典)
挴 ＝ to want (my understanding from the phonetic and meaning in 康熙字典 where it means 貪也)
Does it make sense ?
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Hi aokh1979,
Wonderful to get your input - thanks very much!
Well, it's good to have a dissenting voice about the use of 句 in Hokkien. I'll ask my parents what their impression is when I next speak to them. There could of course be two different usages among (sub-)cultures in Penang, e.g. "Baba" vs "Sin-khek". Is your family Baba or Sin-khek (in as much as the terms mean anything nowadays)? If 1979 is the year of your birth, then the fact that you were educated in Chinese may not say anything about your Baba or Sin-khek roots. In my youth, it would have - Babas practically never went to Chinese school in the 1950's to 1970's.
What you said makes perfect sense. However, the "khi-hong" thing wasn't so much whether the first syllable was 氣, but rather whether the second syllable was 風.
Hope to see lots more postings from you in the future!
Wonderful to get your input - thanks very much!
Well, it's good to have a dissenting voice about the use of 句 in Hokkien. I'll ask my parents what their impression is when I next speak to them. There could of course be two different usages among (sub-)cultures in Penang, e.g. "Baba" vs "Sin-khek". Is your family Baba or Sin-khek (in as much as the terms mean anything nowadays)? If 1979 is the year of your birth, then the fact that you were educated in Chinese may not say anything about your Baba or Sin-khek roots. In my youth, it would have - Babas practically never went to Chinese school in the 1950's to 1970's.
What you said makes perfect sense. However, the "khi-hong" thing wasn't so much whether the first syllable was 氣, but rather whether the second syllable was 風.
Hope to see lots more postings from you in the future!
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
andAh-bin wrote: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)...
andAh-bin wrote: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".
After thinking about this a bit further, I want to retract my statement / counter-argument. This is not so much because I think it's wrong (it's not), but because I realised that I don't say khí-hōng or khí-hòng anyway, but rather khí-hông. That being the case, it can't be the sandhi-tone of anything, as tone-5 is not the sandhi-tone of any tone in Penang Hokkien (hence sort of removing the need for me to provide a counter-argument).SimL wrote:I'm not sure this is the reason (i.e. I'm still not sure it's from 風). If we look at "khi kiaN ka i" (起行共伊) - "go and walk with him", or "khi ciah ka i" (起食共伊) - "go and eat with him", then we don't see any tone-sandhi on the 行 and 食. Now, I do acknowledge that these may be grammatically (but primarily semantically) slightly different from the proposed 起風共儂, but I still think that this should be taken into consideration.
So, we need to find a syllable pronounced hông in citation tone (based on the argument I just retracted
). aokh1979's 惶 does fit the pronunciation and tone, but I'm not sure if the meaning fits well enough (I acknowledge that it is close in meaning).Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Don't know how I missed seeing this earlier! Indeed, combined with my assertion that I in fact do pronounce it with a tone-5, I think we have the solution!Ah-bin wrote: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.
Furthermore, I found in the Douglas with handwritten characters (p153): 癀 hoat4-hong5 burning with rage.
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
發癀 is my example for the 癀 where it matches perfectly with the hong we're searching.
However, 癀 is a disease, a sickness. It does not make much sense to me if khi-hong is 氣癀 or 起癀...... Personal opinion, I will vote for 惶 as "worry" or 遑 as "hurry".
I live in China. When someone's furious at me, we say in Mandarin: 他跟我急......
遑 is explained as 急也 in 說文解字 and the pronunciation should be exactly the same as 癀 or 惶......
Your thought ?
However, 癀 is a disease, a sickness. It does not make much sense to me if khi-hong is 氣癀 or 起癀...... Personal opinion, I will vote for 惶 as "worry" or 遑 as "hurry".
I live in China. When someone's furious at me, we say in Mandarin: 他跟我急......
遑 is explained as 急也 in 說文解字 and the pronunciation should be exactly the same as 癀 or 惶......
Your thought ?
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Hi aokh1979,
Sorry, I missed seeing your posting of 癀 also. I don't have an opinion about either 癀 or 遑 or 惶 because my knowledge of Chinese characters is very, very basic. I tend to trust the people in the field who know more about it than me. For me, that's Douglas, Barclay, and Mark Yong. If Mark cares to comment on this, then I'd value his opinion a lot. Other than that, I'm happy to use whichever one most other people are using.
When you say "癀 is a disease, a sickness", do you mean that you know it as a Hokkien word with this meaning? Or do you say that because it has the "disease" radical? (Please forgive my ignorance of Hokkien.) Or perhaps because of its meaning in Mandarin or Cantonese.
If you are basing it only on the meaning of the radical, then I think it is wise to be cautious. After all, 瘦 shou4 in Mandarin has the "disease" radical too, but it only means "thin". Of course, one can see the connection - if one is sick then one could become very thin, but still, the presence of the radical itself doesn't mean that the character is necessarily related to disease. Similarly, I feel that the meaning of 癀 in either Mandarin or Cantonese shouldn't weigh too heavily in deciding whether it's suitable for writing the "hong5" of "khi-hong" in Hokkien. After all, we know also that the meaning of a character can drift in relation to other dialects; the classic example being 走 for "walk" in Mandarin and "run" in Hokkien. (If I recall correctly, it's the Mandarin meaning which has drifted, and the Hokkien one preserves the original, but I may be wrong.)
Sorry, I missed seeing your posting of 癀 also. I don't have an opinion about either 癀 or 遑 or 惶 because my knowledge of Chinese characters is very, very basic. I tend to trust the people in the field who know more about it than me. For me, that's Douglas, Barclay, and Mark Yong. If Mark cares to comment on this, then I'd value his opinion a lot. Other than that, I'm happy to use whichever one most other people are using.
When you say "癀 is a disease, a sickness", do you mean that you know it as a Hokkien word with this meaning? Or do you say that because it has the "disease" radical? (Please forgive my ignorance of Hokkien.) Or perhaps because of its meaning in Mandarin or Cantonese.
If you are basing it only on the meaning of the radical, then I think it is wise to be cautious. After all, 瘦 shou4 in Mandarin has the "disease" radical too, but it only means "thin". Of course, one can see the connection - if one is sick then one could become very thin, but still, the presence of the radical itself doesn't mean that the character is necessarily related to disease. Similarly, I feel that the meaning of 癀 in either Mandarin or Cantonese shouldn't weigh too heavily in deciding whether it's suitable for writing the "hong5" of "khi-hong" in Hokkien. After all, we know also that the meaning of a character can drift in relation to other dialects; the classic example being 走 for "walk" in Mandarin and "run" in Hokkien. (If I recall correctly, it's the Mandarin meaning which has drifted, and the Hokkien one preserves the original, but I may be wrong.)
Re: Getting angry in Penang Hokkien
Hi SimL:
I know it's a disease based on a few things.
You're right, from its radical 疒 which relates 99.99% (dare not say 100% but I believe so) to sickness. 瘦 does mean thin, and that's a sickness because traditionally, Chinese believe 瘦 is due to malnutrition. 瘦 is used on human and animals. When it comes to describing a pen or even a plant, we usually tend to use 細 if those things are "meant to be" thin. However, if the ground is not fertile, we do in fact say it's 瘦田. You can see that 瘦 does express sickness.
癀 is 疸病. I was sick by 黃病 when I was born, my whole body was yellowish. I have not seen anyone with 黃病 in my life, but that's what I know from my mother. Hoat-Hong is "swelling". Therefore, I personally do not think 癀 is the right character for khi-hong. Funny enough, I ask around all my Hokkien friends from all over the province, different cities, including Teochew from Guangdong, so far none of them comes back with khi-hong. The term seems somewhat unique to Malaysia, or just Penang ? Perhaps, friends of mine have all been heavily "brainwashed" by Mandarin.
There are tons of characters used in Mandarin that do not make any (or much) sense to me. I truly believe that, when Chinese characters were created - there were rules and pattern. So I tend to think in Hokkien each time I come across any unreasonable character. Like 短 means "short" in Mandarin, but it's not a commonly used word in Hokkien. Besides, all characters with 豆 basically sound similar, like 逗, 頭, 鋀, 荳 etc, except 短. I believe it was a corruption when Hu and Manchu people tried to pronounce Han language in the past, when they took over northern region. And during that time, Hokkien should be the official language used.
Feel free to correct me if you think I am not making sense.
I know it's a disease based on a few things.
You're right, from its radical 疒 which relates 99.99% (dare not say 100% but I believe so) to sickness. 瘦 does mean thin, and that's a sickness because traditionally, Chinese believe 瘦 is due to malnutrition. 瘦 is used on human and animals. When it comes to describing a pen or even a plant, we usually tend to use 細 if those things are "meant to be" thin. However, if the ground is not fertile, we do in fact say it's 瘦田. You can see that 瘦 does express sickness.
癀 is 疸病. I was sick by 黃病 when I was born, my whole body was yellowish. I have not seen anyone with 黃病 in my life, but that's what I know from my mother. Hoat-Hong is "swelling". Therefore, I personally do not think 癀 is the right character for khi-hong. Funny enough, I ask around all my Hokkien friends from all over the province, different cities, including Teochew from Guangdong, so far none of them comes back with khi-hong. The term seems somewhat unique to Malaysia, or just Penang ? Perhaps, friends of mine have all been heavily "brainwashed" by Mandarin.
There are tons of characters used in Mandarin that do not make any (or much) sense to me. I truly believe that, when Chinese characters were created - there were rules and pattern. So I tend to think in Hokkien each time I come across any unreasonable character. Like 短 means "short" in Mandarin, but it's not a commonly used word in Hokkien. Besides, all characters with 豆 basically sound similar, like 逗, 頭, 鋀, 荳 etc, except 短. I believe it was a corruption when Hu and Manchu people tried to pronounce Han language in the past, when they took over northern region. And during that time, Hokkien should be the official language used.
Feel free to correct me if you think I am not making sense.