Different variants of minnan

[xng]

Can anybody tell me what is the pronounciation for 還 in the 3 dialects quanzhou, xiamen, ciangciu ?

I hear 3 versions ie. Hai, Hing and Huan.

Which is which ?

[hohomi]

huân is the literary reading, which is the same in all the 3 dialects.

The vernacular reading differs in Tongan(tâng-uaⁿ) and Zhangzhou(tsiang-tsiu). Tâng-Uaⁿ uses hâiⁿ. Tsiang-Tsiu uses hîng.

Tsuân-Tsiu doesn't have a vernacular reading of 還, which means we always use "huân".

[niuc]

Tâng-Uaⁿ uses hâiⁿ.

Hi Hohomi

Glad to have you as a native speaker of Tsuân-Tsiu (Cuan5-ciu1) variant here.

You are right about Tâng-Uaⁿ (Tang5-ua*1) having colloquial hâiⁿ (hai*5) for 還. My variant is basically Tâng-Uaⁿ. Final "-ing" becomes "-ai*" for many words in Tâng-Uaⁿ variant, including 閒 ai*5, 揀 kai*2, 間 kai*1, 硬 tai*7, 先 sai*1, etc; but not 宮 & 弓 king1, 升 sing1, 重 ting5, etc.

May I know how those sample words are pronounced in colloquial Tsuân-Tsiu? Thanks!

[hohomi]

Tâng-Uaⁿ uses hâiⁿ.

including 閒 ai*5, 揀 kai*2, 間 kai*1, 硬 tai*7, 先 sai*1, etc; but not 宮 & 弓 king1, 升 sing1, 重 ting5, etc.
May I know how those sample words are pronounced in colloquial Tsuân-Tsiu? Thanks!

Thanks. Those characters with a rhyme "ai*" are pronounced with a rhyme "uiⁿ" in Tsuân-Tsiu.
閒 ui*5, 揀 kui*2, 間 kui*1, 硬 tui*7, 先 sui*1
And those with an "ing" are pronounced in the same way in all the 3 dialects.
Both of the two groups of characters are pronounced with a rhyme "ing" in Xiamen(ē-mn̂g) and Zhangzhou(Tsiang-Tsiu). However, the first group has another vernacular reading with an "an" in Tsiang-Tsiu (but not in ē-mn̂g). For example:
閒 an5, 揀 kan2, 間 kan1, 硬 tan7, 先 san1
And, this vernacular reading coincides with the literary reading for the character "間" .

[SimL]

Hi hohomi,

Can you understand ciang-ciu and e-mng without any difficulty at all, the same way someone like me understands Canadian, and US English?

[hohomi]

Hi hohomi,

Can you understand ciang-ciu and e-mng without any difficulty at all, the same way someone like me understands Canadian, and US English?

When I went to Xiamen University, I talked to my friends in Tsuan-Tsiu-ue and they talked to me in E-Mng-ue or Tsiang-Tsiu-ua. I understood e-mng-ue much better than tsiang-tsiu-ua.

I understood about 90% of E-Mng-ue. I understood almost perfectly when people were talking to me.
It became less understandable when two residents of Xiamen talked to each other.
Some of them said they understood me perfectly. Some of them complained that they didn't understand some of my words.
I wasn't able to understand when I tried to talk with a friend from Zhangpu(tsiu*-phoo2) - a county in southern Tsiang-Tsiu. But, my father was able to talk with his father in Hokkien.
I think mutual comprehensibility depends on how far the two person's home towns are away from each other. Generally speaking, older people have better understanding of different accents.

[kkslok]

I'm quite new here, just wondering if there was a suggestion before to gather everyone here from different background to put together a research/document on variants today's live Hokkien aound the world.

[SimL]

I think mutual comprehensibility depends on how far the two person's home towns are away from each other. Generally speaking, older people have better understanding of different accents.

True. Another factor is exposure. Generally Scottish people can understand American English because they are so much exposed to it in films and TV, whereas Americans can often not understand Scottish people because they aren't that much exposed to it. (Same applies for many regional British accents for Americans; or many more obscure regional American accents for us, for that matter).

This shows that "mutual intelligibility" is not really a very "scientific" way to try to determine how close or distant two variants of a language are, because it's not even a symmetric relationship. i.e. given Speaker A of variant X (e.g. a Scotsman from a small and remote village) and Speaker B of variant Y (e.g. an speaker of educated American English), then A may be able to understand B very well, but B may not be able to understand A at all. This clearly shows that it's not a good way to try and determine how close variant X is to variant Y.

[SimL]

I'm quite new here, just wondering if there was a suggestion before to gather everyone here from different background to put together a research/document on variants today's live Hokkien aound the world.

I think this would be an immense undertaking.

The individuals who happen to be on the Minnan Forum wouldn't (IMHO) be representative enough. They are - just by chance - the people who happen to enjoy discussing about Hokkien in English. It wouldn't surprise me if similar discussions take place in Mandarin, without me being able to follow them. And if one wanted to try and get a more representative sample of speakers, then even just describing one particular variant is difficult. For example, if one tries to describe "Penang Hokkien" (or "North Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien", if you prefer), then it's already difficult to work out what that is, before you even begin to describe it. It will have a lot of common characteristics for all speakers in Penang (or N.Penin.Malaysia). But what about the variation between these speakers? Where does one draw the line of what is or is not "proper" Penang Hokkien?

This is a huge problem for all non-standard languages. English, French, German all have the luxury of having a long-established standard language, but even German is relatively late in its standardization (begun in 18th century, really gaining momentum at the end of the 19th century, only really achieved in the early 20th century), and Mandarin even later (off and on to various degrees of success for 4000 years, really gaining momentum in the first half of the 20th century, only really achieved in the second half of the 20th century).

The most I hope to achieve here (personally) is to learn about other people's variants, and tell other people about mine, and to learn more about Hokkien in general. That's not a bad goal in itself though, and thoroughly enjoyable .

[xng]

huân is the literary reading, which is the same in all the 3 dialects.

The vernacular reading differs in Tongan(tâng-uaⁿ) and Zhangzhou(tsiang-tsiu). Tâng-Uaⁿ uses hâiⁿ. Tsiang-Tsiu uses hîng.

Tsuân-Tsiu doesn't have a vernacular reading of 還, which means we always use "huân".

Thanks for the reply. But I am slightly confused here.

Ciang Ciu - Hing
Cuan Ciu - Huan
Ay Men - Hai ?

I am not sure whether Tongan should be part of Ay Men...(forgive my ignorance here)

Surprisingly, Putian (Hing Hua) pronounced it as 'Hai' too.