"easy" and "difficult" in Penang Hokkien

[SimL]

Oh - I just remembered another word for "difficult", which I hadn't thought of or used for years!

The word is "oh", but I'm not completely sure if it's "oh4" or "oh8", I think "oh4". In any case, it was quite a common way of saying "difficult" in Penang, when I was young. For example: "very difficult to do" = "cin-nia oh-co" (with sandhied/non-citation tone for the "oh").

I'll try and find it in Douglas/Barclay over the weekend.

Of course, "difficult to learn" would then be "oh-oh8" .

Sim.

[khalao]

I first came to notice this book was when im listening to Penang Hokkien Podcast. I've forgotten which particular episode of podcast it is .

[hohomi]

I am from Quanzhou, Fujian, China. Nice to meet you guys.

"Tng-lâng-jī pháiⁿ-óh" and "Tng-lâng-jī bô-hó-óh"
The two sentences above are very good. That's exactly how we would say.

Still, you can also say:
Tng-lâng-jī tsiâⁿ oh o̍h
Tng-lâng-jī tsiâⁿ bô kuē o̍h
in which "oh" and "kuē" mean hard and easy respectively.

[aokh1979]

eng as "easy" is only used in Penang Hokkien. It does not appear in anywhere else. Nobody understands me when I say eng in China (including Teochew, Swatow). I suspect:

容易 = iong i > eng i > eng
閒 = our ancestors may have derived it from "free time", to do something that requires less time, to do something that does not take up much time.

We can tell that "easy" and "free" are more related than we can imagine. (I am getting myself used to Tailo)

無焉爾濟閒工去做 - Bo an nee tse eng kang khi tso
I do not have the luxury of time to do it, so it is something "not easy".

愛做即項物件，誠閒工爾也 = ai tso tsit hang mih kiann, tsiann eng kang nia.
Doing it, is just an "easy" job.

By the way, 閑 and 閒 are 2 different characters. Simplified Chinese combines both of them into 闲 thus we should use 閒 when we mean "leisure".

[xng]

容易 = iong i > eng i > eng
閒 = our ancestors may have derived it from "free time", to do something that requires less time, to do something that does not take up much time.

Eng is not a contraction of 容易 but 閒 which means 'Free/Idle time'.

In southern Malaysia, they use Iong I 容易 or Gan Tan 簡單 for 'Easy'.

[SimL]

hohomi, aokh1979, xng: thanks for the very interesting information on "eng" and its related concepts.

I would tend to agree with xng that Penang Hokkien "eng" for "easy" comes from "eng" for "leisure". If one has a lot of leisure, then one doesn't have to do very much, so one's life is simple and the "living is easy". Very important for us Penang Hokkien speakers to know that "eng" for "easy" won't be understood anywhere else in the Hokkien-speaking world!

hohomi: nice to meet you. Welcome to the Minnan Forum! Hope you find lots of interesting things to read and write here.

Penang Hokkien has "eng-eng cheng-cheng" (= "nice and simple"). I imagine the last two are 清清.

[kkslok]

In Taiping;
"eng" - "easy" and also "free"
"iong i" is also used for "easy" but less often.
"Kan Tan" = "Simple".
"khan khor" = "difficult"