Getting angry in Penang Hokkien

[SimL]

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".

and

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.

Hi aokh,

Now I'm really puzzled. When I talked to my Dad, he confirmed your usage, and says mine is totally wrong. So, like you, he uses "gu3" to mean sentence, just like in Mandarin. However, I'm pretty sure I didn't just invent this out of nowhere, as niuc felt something similar too. Andrew or Mark - care to comment?

[aokh1979]

SimL:

句 to me is definitely a sentence. It has never occurred to me as a "word". You can give me a few phrases in Hokkien and see if your 句 is something else ? But at one glance, I cannot recall anything with similar pronunciation that might mean "word"......

Also in response to the "angry". I found a few characters from 康熙字典 with the same pronunciation, we can deep dive

煌 = Fire (Bright)
熿 = Same as above
趪 = Press with force, ready to fight (supposedly when someone's angry)
惶 = To worry
遑 = To rush

I supposed all can be candidates for "angry" especially 趪. And the khi should be 起 without second thought, at least myself. 起趪 seems to go well with each other with the 走 radical.

[SimL]

Hi aokh,

I'm afraid I can't really give any more examples of my use of "ku", other than the one I gave. (Or if I did, I don't think they would really throw much more light on the situation.) I'm pretty sure it's the same word / character as yours.

I find that it's the case that Chinese will usually introduce a "disambiguator", if two words sound exactly the same, and could be used in a very similar context. For example, "louse" and "lion" are pronounced the same in Mandarin. This could be confusing if one said "zai wo de wo fang li you yi zhi hen wei xian de shi". [Here I'm trying to say "there's a dangerous louse/lion in my bedroom", please excuse me if my Mandarin is not correct or idiomatic.] But (if I understand correctly), "lion" is 獅子 whereas "louse" is just 虱. [This has always struck me as amusing, because a 虱 is much smaller than a 獅子 .] Anyway, my point is that two identical syllables, roughly occupying the same grammatical and semantic space will quickly need to be disambiguated, and Chinese does do this. As my "ku" doesn't have a disambiguator, and neither does yours, I imagine that they are just the same "syllable/character".

So, I imagine that either: 1) I have just picked up the "wrong interpretation" of the meaning of the word, and have been misusing it all my life, or 2) There is some sub-community of Hokkiens who use it in this slightly different meaning, but that many Hokkiens just use it identically to the way Mandarin speakers use it. If the latter is the case, then it could well be the case that when a member of each of the two groups meet, they could each use the word in the way they are used to, without the other noticing, because there would be very few situations where the difference between it being "a few sentences" and "a few syllables" makes such a crucial difference that one of them would realise that the other was trying to express something different than the first person originally thought.

That's why I'd love to hear from other native Penang Hokkien speakers.

[SimL]

PS. I noticed that I spelled it "gu" for many of the earlier postings (too much exposure to pinyin and too little to POJ the last two months!). I'm very annoyed at myself for not picking this up earlier. I mean "ku". Could THAT be the difference between the two words, or are we all talking about POJ "ku", pronounced very similar to pinyin "gu"?

[SimL]

Ok, here's an example: "gua mui i e si, i ci ku pun m in gua" (= "when I asked him, he refused to even answer me (with) a (single) word/syllable"). Here, (for me), the stress would be on total silence, i.e. not even one single syllable. Not that he refused to answer me with a even a (short) sentence or phrase.

Perhaps a speaker like my Dad or aokh could use this to mean "he refused to give me a proper answer, not even a short 3-4 syllable phrase", and I then misinterpreted it to mean "he refused to say even a single syllable". This would be a good example of what I mean where one speaker could mean it as a sentence, and the other interpret it as a syllable, and neither would notice the difference in interpretation.

[aokh1979]

Hi SimL:

I would say, the "ambiguity" occurs not to Chinese, but mainly Mandarin because it only has 4 tones and only 1 type of tone sandhi. But frankly, that example seems a little unrealistic to me. Ha. Ha. I will never say such a thing. Let me think, no, not even my friends because a louse can hardly be seen !



But you're right, Mandarin does have many more "ambiguity" like this. Especially today when people tend to shorten a term, say 巴士停靠點 (bus stopping point) to 巴點 in daily Mandarin. You would be confused if you heard for the very first time: 師傅，巴點下車...... You're either asking the driver (師傅 is more widely used instead of 先生 in China) to let you alight at the bus station, or at 8 o'clock.



The only example I can think of, will be 琵琶 (a musical instrument) and 枇杷 (loquat) but I never got them mixed up because one is a device, one is a fruit. The actions involved "play" and "eat" clearly distinguish their functions.

Now, if I hear what you say: 我問伊丌時，伊一句倴毋應我...... It is definitely a sentence. Even a monosyllabic "唔 (just Hmmm)" will be a sentence because you will end it with a full stop or exclamation mark, not a comma. It is a complete answer if someone responds with just "Hmmm" with a full stop. Language is indeed a living thing, speakers can say it differently as long as hearers understand. For this example, I would say: 伊一聲倴毋應我...... He does not even respond with any sound.

[niuc]

I had never thought of [Hmmm.] or [Yes.] as a sentence, but apparently it is called "word sentence" (ref. wikipedia). With this broad meaning of "sentence", 句 'ku3' may pretty well fit. However, stuttering in my Hokkien variant is called 重句 ('ting5-ku3'; ting5 = to repeat). Although stuttering can be a repetition of a phrase, usually it is repetition of a syllable (e.g. "i i i i i si si si" rather "i si i si i si i si"). Interestingly, in wikipedia (one of) its "scientific name(s)?" is "alalia syllabaris"... I assume "syllabaris" is related to "syllable". Personally I still think of 句 as having a broader meaning than a "sentence", i.e. it can mean "syllable" in certain context.

[SimL]

Hi aokh and niuc,

Thanks for your responses. Yes, it looks like for me and niuc, Hokkien "gu" can be shorter than Mandarin "ju". I agree that my sentence with the "louse" and "lion" is a rather silly one! Those are very nice examples from Mandarin, aokh, so thanks for taking the trouble to think of them and write them out.

Indeed, I shared some time ago with Ah-bin that I think Mandarin has a lot more disyllable ci2 than Hokkien has. Even very basic nouns, verbs, and adjectives are often disyllabic, with only *extremely* basic nouns, verbs and adjectives like "dog", "cat", "eat", "walk", "big", "small" etc as monosyllabic, whereas Hokkien has many more basic monosyllabic nouns, verbs, and adjectives (but still quite a lot of disyllabics too, just noticeably fewer than Mandarin). At least, that's my impression - I have no concrete proof of this. If I get some time, I'll try and make a list of examples.

And I believe that this is exactly because Hokkien has more variation in syllables: final -p, -t, -k, -h, -m (and perhaps more initial consonants?).

[aokh1979]

You're right, the older a language is, the more monosyllabic words. Hokkien and Cantonese indeed have way more than Mandarin. Mandarin is too young.

And true, Hokkien and Cantonese have the richest p / t / k / h finals in Chinese dialects - in fact I dun like to call both Hokkien and Cantonese dialects. They're classic Chinese, to me, they're as official as Mandarin.

If you spend some time on Classic Chinese, you will realise almost all verbs and adjectives are monosyllabic. Today, as far as I can see, Hokkien is still using the most Classic Chinese amongst all other Chinese dialects.

The most noticeable Classic Chinese from Confucius are: 知也, 有也, 無也...... And many beautiful words still exist in Hokkien today. I dunno if they're true, but they do make sense to me, not sure about you all.

昧 = Unclear; 曉 = To know; 昧曉 = Do not know how to (be hiao in Hokkien)
瞭然 = Exposed everything to people (liao lien in Hokkien)

Many more...... I love Hokkien and Cantonese. ^.^

[kkslok]

We use "Khi Hong" for angry too in Taiping, Perak, Malaysia. Anyway, Taiping Hokkien is 99% = Penang Hokkien.