aokh1979 wrote:Seriously, most Malaysians or Singaporeans don't speak "standard" Mandarin, but we're exposed to a new Mandarin world, everyone has to speak - and "variants" will start to shrink, a "standard" will then be achieved. Either you adopt mine, or I adopt yours. Frankly, we don't go to school for Hokkien anymore, we're not going to sit down and learn "standard" from anyone, we just need to SPEAK it proudly and loudly, we will watch Hua Hee Dai, and we will pick up some vocabulary from Taiwan, and we may even use them in daily conversation very naturally. The "standard" is forming without us even knowing it.
Hi aokh,
I like this approach very much! Many languages in N.W. Europe slowly moved towards the standard (for example, English, from the 15th to the 17th century) without the help of standardization bodies, governments etc. Just the fact that people from different regions came into contact with one another in the capital and major university cities (London, Oxford, and Cambridge) resulted in a gradual levelling of regional differences, exactly as you describe. Nowadays we have the internet and other modern forms of communication, so we can get the same exposure without having to physically live in the same place.
As niuc, Ah-bin, and others have said repeated in the past, it's only a matter of having pride and positive feelings towards Hokkien, which will then result in speaking it to our peers and to the next generation.
SimL wrote:
I like this approach very much! Many languages in N.W. Europe slowly moved towards the standard (for example, English, from the 15th to the 17th century)
English has a standard.
If an outsider ie. cantonese, hakka, ang moh wants to learn hokkien, which version do they learn ? They would be as confused as the hokkien themselves because there are 3 different ways to speak the same thing. I wouldn't be surprised if they give up.
Let me share with you what I have in mind. English has standards, not just one, several. We speak English in our country that's why we don't have much problem understanding English variants. I live in China for more than 7 years now. I work in an American company, day in day out all our e-mail, MSN, most importantly, spoken language during meeting will be English and Mandarin. Mandarin, from all over China, some colleagues speak with a very heavy Sichuan accent. Then English, people in China adopt American accent, since they have more exposure to American media. I manage Europe region, most of the time I listen to English with very heavy Irish accent. Some of my buddies manage Australia, they have to get used to the heavy Australian accent. I grew up in half-English environment, I don't have much problem catching words with slightly different pronunciation. But those Chinese colleagues of mine, they don't speak English at home or anywhere else in the city, except in the company.
Question to the version which an outsider should learn. If he's going to spend most of his time in Penang, like a Dutch author here, why does he need to be so concerned about Taiwan variant or Xiamen variant ? He needs to make sure he has the fundamental ability to communicate, in a local variant, before he embarks to learning other variants. If he's not going to live in a Hokkien-speaking region, he can decide any variant that he wants. Like a Beijing resident, a Taipei resident, are we really convinced that people from both cities speak exactly the same "standard" Mandarin ? I personally, would say, the answer is NO. They just have to learn and absorb from each other. They have a Mandarin background, they speak Mandarin, they just need to fill up the possibly 20% gap. At the end of the day, both of them will be 120% Mandarin speaker because none of them needs to give up what they originally know about anything in their own variant.
I learned French, my teachers were French. Then I met a Canadian friend previously, I found it very difficult to understand Canadian French. Phonetically, some words are not pronounced the same, they have differences in accents, too. Vocabulary, Canada and France both have different ways of saying things. I heard from my teacher before, that he had problem talking to Canadian. Then, he managed to listen to Canadian French, respond in European French.
Personally, I don't consider Hainan or Teochew a "variant" in Hokkien. When one person starts to learn Hokkien, he's going to face Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Taiwan. I also don't believe that we have so much variances among the 4. If, when he learns Quanzhou and he finds it difficult to understand Zhangzhou, he can ask the speaker to speak more slowly. If he doesn't know how to ask, he's not ready in the language yet.
We hear people speaking the same Cantonese today because everyone tries to learn from Hong Kong TV series, my family is one of them. Personal thought, there's no standard in Cantonese, there's only trend in Cantonese. People pick up words and lines from what they hear. None of my friends actually learns Cantonese by sitting in class. That's why, I encourage people to learn Taiwan variant because that's by far the only region that produces media to help you learn Hokkien. Learn from the variant that you will most likely come in contact with. Like I said, Xiamen variant "may" be the 1st to extinct even though it is the "standard" in China. If a foreigner comes to Malaysia, does he need to worry about Indonesian variant ? Master Malay, then he will be able to start absorbing differences in Indonesian.
I apologise if I sound a little offensive when it comes to this. I love Hokkien, I will help as much as I can, if anyone's about to give up.
aokh1979 wrote:I apologise if I sound a little offensive when it comes to this. I love Hokkien, I will help as much as I can, if anyone's about to give up.
Not at all! You express yourself very carefully and with well thought out opinions. I really like all of what you said in the previous posting.
I'd just like to highlight one of your many sensible thoughts for comment:
aokh1979 wrote:Like a Beijing resident, a Taipei resident, are we really convinced that people from both cities speak exactly the same "standard" Mandarin ? I personally, would say, the answer is NO. They just have to learn and absorb from each other.
Exactly. Ah-bin and I have been saying this a number of times in the past (Ah-bin quoted an example from Maori; I'll include it at the end of this posting, in order not to break the flow). That's one of the reasons I'm always pleased to learn that a certain Penang Hokkien phrase or word is not used in other variants. (That is to say, I'm pleased when I become aware that a normal term I use may not be understood by speakers of other variants, not (of course) that I'm (specifically) pleased that there is a lack of standardization (though of course, I accept it)). And I'm also pleased to learn what the term is which I must use in conversations with people who speak other variants. Furthermore, I seem to remember that some other Forum member once even praised the "wonderful variation and diversity in Hokkien". Each variant has "local colour", which we can take pride in too.
So, thank you again for your very well-expressed thoughts.
Ah-bin wrote:Several of the issues of standardisation are the same. Hokkien and Maori were both mainly spoken languages rather than written, and there were quite a few different dialects. Every Maori teacher I've met told us to learn the language of the place where we lived, rather than an official standard, and told us to use our local words but be aware of all the different ways to say things, and have respect for them. In that way, people eventually learnt just to understand each other and still go on using their own ways of saying things and their own pronunciation.
Most people can only understand/master TWO languages, one of them must be mandarin, the other could be English or mother tongue.
Xng, that's just rubbish. It may be true for you, but don't go and say it's true for "most people".
People now over 40 in Holland mastered three foreign languages as children. My Malaysian Chinese friends could all speak Cantonese, English, and then slip into Malay when they wanted to keep secrets from me and the Hongkies. Aboriginal people in Australia who live in the north can usually speak at least three languages.
Multilingualism was also the norm in Eastern Europe before World War II. Most ordinary people could speak German, Hungarian, Croatian and Romanian natively.
Does that mean they are/were cleverer than all other people in the world? No. The reason why some people can't do it any more is because of changes in the education system and the ethnic makeup of the areas (people are now organised into nation-states with well-defined boundaries).
If it wasn't for these reasons then we just have to conclude that people have become more stupid in certain places and at certain times. I know that Lee Kwan-yew said that people didn't have enough space in their brains to master more than two languages, but people who actually know what they are talking about (experts in language learning and neurolinguistics) say otherwise.
Another thing, if instead of complaining about how everyone else's Hokkien is so bad and non-standard, people would actually get off their arses and start broadcasting or making podcasts/youtube videos in their own variety, we might actually get to listen to it and understand it.
No change ever came from just whining on internet forums about one's personal dislikes. The only way to succeed is by direct action, speaking, writing, broadcasting, and learning how to romanise properly so the pronunciation can be set down accurately in writing. No-one will ever listen otherwise.
Ah-bin wrote:start broadcasting or making podcasts/youtube videos in their own variety
I look forward to watching them. I am a supporter of language preservation. I hope every variant of Hokkien can be preserved to the next century rather than being supplanted by a "standard" variant.
Yes, that's also what I am doing. I think every variant has its local colour, like what SimL says.
About that, Penang Hokkien is the only variant available in podcast. I don't know about others. hohomi, you grew up in Quanzhou, right ? Do something to present Quanzhou variant in a lively way. I do stage plays in Penang, we had one very successful production last year, where 70% of the lines were in Penang Hokkien. I am working on another one with 90% in Penang Hokkien end of this year.
Languages cannot be just academically recorded, it must be a living culture around us. I find most people actually portray "dialects" as a sub-standard culture, most video clips I see in Youtube use "dialects" as a "spamming engine". I want to do it in a more elegant way.
One thing I hate about Chinese schools in Malaysia, is the restriction of speaking dialects. I seriously don't understand why does one have to give up a language to learn another. I don't think Malay schools restrict students from speaking loghat-loghat Melayu. We're killing ourselves.
