Some Rhymes in POJ and Characters

[Ah-bin]

Hokkien has a rich oral literature of rhymes and sayings, so I thought I'd put a short rhyme up on the forum to encourage others to remember and transcribe some that they know.
Here's a Penang Hokkien rhyme I found in Raymond Kwok's "Charm Charm Rhymes and Ditties" It was the first one I have got around to putting into POJ and characters. I've translated the English again to make it more natural.

A-kong bô lui,
阿公有鐳,
When Grandpa is poor

Châng-ék cháp-táu pún chhàu.
沯浴十搗呠臭
He can wash ten times and still be smelly.

Kiáⁿ-sun pún àu.
囝孫呠□
His grandchildren are stale too.

A-kong ū lui,
阿公無鐳
When Grandpa is rich,

Bô châng-ék chít lê ē•.
無沯浴一嚟下
He doesn't wash even once
Kiáⁿ-sun kui tòa ē•.
囝孫歸蹛下
But his grandchildren crowd around him.

The line "Bô châng-ék chít lê ē•" I'm not so sure about, RK spells it "bo ch'ang aik, ch'it lay air" and translates it as "doesn't even need to wash". But RK often uses ' to mark where there is no aspiration, so I think my POJ is all right. The character and meaning of àu I am also unsure of.

[aokh1979]

Hi Ah-bin:

First of all, you mix up 有 and 無 in your Chinese translation. Let's look at the au, which I am 96.47% sure it means "puke", 嘔 in Chinese. Regarding the sentence you point out, I do not understand it no matter how I change the tones. I may need Raymond to read it. Ha !



PS: I use Chinese to record my Penang Hokkien thought, too. I write 倴 for "pun" from Malay. 2 reasons:

1. 喯 or 呠 with 口 both mean to "spurt" or "blow" in Chinese. 倴 is used in names, only. I prefer something that does not mean anything specific in Chinese to avoid confusion.
2. Having a 口 often makes me feel informal, like many characters invented and used in Hong Kong today. To me, both Cantonese and Hokkien are OFFICIAL languages, so I try to avoid using 口......

[niuc]

As a kid, we were told not to point to the full moon, as it could cut our ears (referring to the condition of “scar” behind one’s ear that I saw some but have never known what that is). If anyone ever done that, we were taught a rhyme to avoid being cut. Although that is untrue, I still find the rhyme interesting:

月娘刀鈍, 囝仔刀利;
ger8-niu*5 to1 tun1, gin2-a8 to1 lai7;
Moon’s knife is blunt, children’s knife is sharp;

拜汝三拜, 指汝無事;
pai3-ly2 sa*1-pai3, ki2-ly2 bo5-tai7;
worship you three times, to point at you is harmless;

呒通舉金刀共阮割金耳;
m7-thang1-gia8-kim1-to1 ka7-gun2-kua8-kim1-hi7;
do not use golden knife to cut our golden ears;

金耳是阮的.
kim1-hi7 si7-gun2-e5.
golden ears are ours.

Were you guys taught this rhyme too? Or any similar ones?

[aokh1979]

We were warned the same in Penang but we did not have any rhyme like that to sing along. Maybe some did, but I certain did not sing any lovely folk like that when I was a child.

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

Thanks for starting this thread.

Kiáⁿ-sun pún àu.
囝孫呠□
His grandchildren are stale too.

Let's look at the au, which I am 96.47% sure it means "puke", 嘔 in Chinese.

This makes sense based on the 臭. In that case, it should be transcribed "áu" ("vomit" or "puke", as aokh says). I don't know if this 嘔 is the same "áu" as in "au-long5". We used "au-long5" to mean food that had gone off, putrid. If so, then that also ties in with the translation "stale".

However, there is one other possibility, also with sandhi-tone-1 (which could, for Penang Hokkien, come from citation-tone2 or citation-tone-1), namely "au-bin7". I think in this case, it's "au3-bin7". "au3-bin7" means "sulky (faced)". If someone is pouting or sulky or angry about something, and you don't know why, then you could ask: "i kiaN-jit ha-mi su an-nE au-bin?" (= "why is he looking so sulky/angry/grim today?"). This fits the general meaning of the poem, but doesn't fit the translation of "stale" at all, so probably 嘔 is better.

So, basically, if you can hear the poem recited, if it's "áu" then 嘔, and if it's "àu", then it's the "sulky" one.

The line "Bô châng-ék chít lê ē•" I'm not so sure about, RK spells it "bo ch'ang aik, ch'it lay air"

Based on the "sense" of the line, I'd say almost definitely not aspirated, i.e. the POJ "chit8", my "cit8" (一), with the "lay" being simply the transformed form of the "e5", the Hokkien possessive/relative particle 的 / 個, with "intrusive-L". Have we spoken about transcribing it 嚟 before? The character doesn't look familiar to me.

[SimL]

PS. I just looked up 嚟 on the unihan database (http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUniha ... point=569F). I guess you're borrowing this character to write the "intrusive-L" form of 的 / 個.

[SimL]

Hi Niuc,

I found the poem that you posted fascinating. There are wonderful pieces of historical "sociological" information recorded in such poems. Thanks very much for posting it.

As a child, I remember distinctly being told not to point at the moon, but I only vaguely remember the consequences about a cut to the ear. I didn't know this poem to go with the belief. I only remember that it was explained to me that because the moon was sacred, it was disrespectful to point at it. In that context, I can share that I was 11 when the Apollo 11 mission put the first man on the moon, in 1969. I remember at the time that some of my relatives said that they had heard other people discussing whether one should still pray to the moon, because people had now walked on it, and that it might hence no longer be sacred.

On a slightly different tack, there was the belief that peeping at things one shouldn't (particularly looking through keyholes) would lead to a "stye" in the eye. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stye.

[SimL]

Douglas has both "au-long" and "au-bin".

au3-long5 臭膿: p7 very stinking, as a dead rat, &c., said also in scolding men or women; p322 very stinking (said in vile scolding).

This is again one of those rather awkward situations where it is claimed that a character (in this case 臭) is used for a syllable where we have another, very common and different pronunciation for it. Even more extreme is the case Niuc mentioned recently of 事事 for "tai-ci", and one I mentioned a long time ago 公公 for "ang-kong" (this one suggested by Douglas), both written with the same character, read in two different (phonetically unrelated) ways.


au3-bin7 [面+幼]面, bin7-au3-au3 面[面+幼][面+幼]: p7 angry face.

Actually, the handwritten character given for au3 on p7 - [面+幼] - has a 刀 instead of a 力, but I’m pretty sure this is the character intended. Contrary to Douglas' usual thoroughness, au3-bin7 and bin7-au3-au3 are not – as far as I can see - listed under 面 on p20-21.

[SimL]

Just as a totally irrelevant side-note, when I was young, I used to think that "au2-long5" as 嘔狼. I suppose I associated something putrid with the "vomit of a wolf", but I now realise that if it had meant that, it would have been written 狼嘔 or 狼的嘔.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

Although theoretically praying to the moon (or sun etc) should be quite natural to Chinese folk religions, I never saw any, neither in Bagansiapiapi (one of the most Chinese town in Indonesia) nor in Singapore. May be because I was born after Apollo 11! Was it done in Penang last time?

We were taught that peeping would cause stye (thanks for the term!) too. It is called (生) 目尖 '(si*-) bak8-ciam1' in my variant. In Mandarin it is 針眼, which can be 目針 in Hokkien. Although 針 is 'ciam1' in many Hokkien variants, it is 'cam1' in mine. Anyway the rhyme regarding this seems to confirm that it is 尖 in my variant.

To cure it, we were told that one should touch the corner (below the buttons or button holes) of his shirt slowly and lightly to the stye while saying: 衫裾有尖, 目珠無尖; ‘sa*1-ky1 u7-ciam1, bak8-ciu1 bo5-ciam1’; “the border of the shirt has a pointed corner, but not the eye”. I think even last time the people who practised this 秘方 ‘pi4-hng1’ (“secret formula”) also put on medication, as Chinese usually do not see any contradiction between science and mystical/spiritual, beside typically are willing do practically anything to get the good result. Although I do not believe in this “cure”, I think the rhyme (“spell”! ) is about psychological effect, reminding yourself (subconscious mind?) of the reality that it is the shirt that should have pointed corner, not your eye. Also the rhyme about the moon reminds (or even warns ) the moon (actually comforting the child) that the moon’s knife is blunt and the child’s knife is sharp.

Another interesting 秘方 we were told is when you get 脫枕 ‘thut8-cim2’ (stiff or sprained neck after sleep), you should go to the main door, each leg at each side of the threshold/sill (‘ho`7/5-tai*7’ ->anyone knows the hanji?) and use your hand to “chop” (‘tai*2’ -> hanji?) the affected part of the neck as many times as the number of your age. I think this does have physiotherapy (the “chopping”) benefit, though I don’t see why you have to stand that way across the threshold.