Some more Hokkien words

[aokh1979]

...nobody in Penang says "i-keng" for "already" / past tense...

Oh, impossible. I hear it all the time. Although most of my family members are English educated, but you will be surprised they use i-keng for "already", in-ui or eng-gue (Teochew influence) for "because", sui-lien for "although", soo-i for "so"...... Those are definitely living words in Penang. I hope they last longer, till end of next century......

[Ah-bin]

I haven't ever heard sui-jian used on the podcast, but all the others I've heard many times. Sui-jian is an example of the influence of written Chinese on Penang Hokkien, I think. It is one of those words that adds greater precision to what is said, but I notice there are ways to work around it in ordinary speech, like using pun or tapi or both.

Oa ka i kong nO saN pai, i pun bo thiaN.
我共伊講兩三擺，伊呠無聽。
Although I told him two or three times he still didn't listen.

I si Penang lai e, tapi pun e-hiau kong kong-hu-oa
伊是Penang來个, tapi 呠會曉講廣府話。
Although he's from Penang, he can speak Cantonese too.

Actually this last one I am not so sure of, it sounds a bit odd to me, perhaps it really does need an "although" - and I do notice that they sometimes say it in English on the podcast. Or maybe the "pun" is in the wrong place, and should be on the end of the sentence, or perhaps I should stick a "koh" in instead?

Also I was thinking wouldn't it be sui-jian in Penang? I know it's sui-lian in Amoy and Chuan-chiu, but I know that PGHK makes the l/j distinction that has been lost in those areas. If people are using sui-lian it might suggest that the word was not used in the older Baba Hokkien, and was introduced by sin-khek. Just guessing out loud.

Another thing is it's also often hard to tell whether people are saying sO-i or just sO, so it often sounds like "so" in English. I don't think that has happened in other types of Hokkien.

[aokh1979]

Half of my family's English-educated, especially my uncle. He doesn't speak or read Chinese, except his own name. He uses sui-lien.

I always thought Penang Hokkien was a mixture of both Tsiang Tsiu and Tsuan Tsiu, although more inclined towards Tsiang Tsiu in most cases. Lien, I have never used jien in all words I could think of.

自然 tsu-lien
瞭然 liau-lien
雖然 sui-lien
當然 tong-lien
果然 ko-lien

The 2nd sentence makes total sense to me. True, most younger Hokkien speakers in Penang use English directly for below......

Although, because, but, so, about, then, actually...... I have been keeping myself away from these words. Though some of my colleagues say I sound "deep" to them. Well, think about it, if my parents have no problem understanding / using the real Chinese version of those words, why would we ?

Today, someone brought her son to our home. Every adult spoke Hokkien but talked to the 7-year-old in Mandarin. Even my uncle who knew nothing about Mandarin until couple of years ago, talked to the child in broken Mandarin. Why do they try so hard to raise the child monolingual in Chinese ?

[Ah-bin]

Though some of my colleagues say I sound "deep" to them.

That "deep" is an interesting term. I haven't quite worked out whether people are using in in a pejorative sense or not. Sometimes they use it when someone says a word that they don't understand.

Today, someone brought her son to our home. Every adult spoke Hokkien but talked to the 7-year-old in Mandarin. Even my uncle who knew nothing about Mandarin until couple of years ago, talked to the child in broken Mandarin. Why do they try so hard to raise the child monolingual in Chinese ?

Chinese? Surely you must mean Mandarin...When we start unconsciously saying that Hokkien isn't "Chinese", we echo one of the strategies for the destruction of Chinese languages that are not Mandarin: i.e. to call Mandarin "Chinese" and denigrate anything else by calling it "dialect" - but actually Mandarin is "just a dialect" as well (find any book written by a linguist on the technical definition of "dialect" and you will find that it refers to ALL varieties of language, not just those that a government deems to be substandard. Even the Chinese translation of Trudgill's 社會語言學 says that "方言是語言的變體" - "A dialect is a variation of a language" - very democratic - all variations are "dialects", including those that are promoted as a standard.

As for that seven-year-old....
The death of Hokkien is a self fulfilling prophecy: "Children don't understand Taiwanese so we speak to them in Mandarin" was the dumbest excuse I have heard, and I've heard it a few times. You can imagine the results when everyone goes around saying that. No-one actually thinks about how languages are learnt or lost until it is too late.

[aokh1979]

Chinese? Surely you must mean Mandarin...

Nope, I mean "Chinese". I was saying, we're trying too hard to make the child monolingual in "Chinese". I am multilingual in Chinese, I speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and am improving my Hainanese. I can understand some Hakka and Teochew if one speaks slowly.

The child will grow up knowing Mandarin as the only variant in Chinese. When it comes to "Chinese", he will only be able to express himself, make himself understood in Mandarin. That's why I said: Monolingual in Chinese. Hokkien is DEFINITELY a Chinese language.

[aokh1979]

"Children don't understand Taiwanese so we speak to them in Mandarin"

True, I too find it the stupidest excuse. Parents don't realise they're the teachers. What kind of language can be learnt automatically without anyone teaching us or talking to us forcing us to pick it up ? Those people are just not being logical.

Some of my friends think Hokkien is a vulgar language. Language is a creation by human. If you don't want it to sound vulgar, don't use it in a vulgar way. English is so widely spoken but I hear tons of vulgar words spoken in movies. I grew up in a Hokkien speaking family, I never heard my family members say any vulgar and yet, the language is active and well in our neighbourhood.

[Ah-bin]

Nope, I mean "Chinese". I was saying, we're trying too hard to make the child monolingual in "Chinese". I am multilingual in Chinese, I speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and am improving my Hainanese. I can understand some Hakka and Teochew if one speaks slowly.

Sorry, I just misunderstood your meaning. I've been spending the last few days reading about the "Speak Mandarin Campaign" and that's just how Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kwan Yew were speaking - using Chinese for Mandarin and "Dialect" for the others, so I just assumed you were doing it (the first, not the second) too.

I'm very impressed that you're learning Hainanese. May I ask what you are using to learn it? I'm on the lookout for some materials at the moment - I'll supply you with them when I get hold of them. The sound changes from Hokkien to Hainanese are often predictable, and it looks like good fun to learn. It also seems to be in even more trouble in Southeast Asia than Hokkien, so that is an even better reason to learn and promote it.

Oh, I'll just edit this and add in a bit about "vulgar" - anyone who thinks Hokkien is more vulgar just needs to go to northern China and listen to some yahoos drunk on 二锅头 growling away in their own special sort of "refined" Mandarin. Where Mandarin is spoken as a native language people not only know a fair number of crude swear words, there are also huge populations of crude boors who like to use them constantly. Perhaps M'sian parents neeed to have more exposure to this kind of Mandarin speaker to knock them out of the idea that the northern Chinese language is necessarily "better" than all the others.

I think the impression that Mandarin is somehow more refined comes from the fact that only a very sanitized variety was taught in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, with the result that all the expressive swear words were left out and people just used Hokkien etc. for them instead. Then there is the dumbing down of Hokkien caused by regimes refusing to allow texts to be learnt in anything but Mandarin, which divorces all other Chinese languages from their classical heritage and limits the crossover of technical vocabulary from the written into the spoken languages.

[aokh1979]

I spent most of my childhood in Hainanese speaking district in north Penang Island. Most people today don't even remember there was a Hainan Village in Tanjung Bungah. I learn by listening and talking to elderly at home. I am half-Hainanese.

If you have any material, please share with me. I am dying for a dictionary to help me learn 文昌 variant. To be frank, I always think Hainanese is a Tshau-Lien-Tai version of Hokkien. All the S becomes T and Tsh becomes S. Therefore, 菜 in Hainanese sounds like 屎 in Hokkien......

[Ah-bin]

There's a book I've ordered on precisely that variant through interloan. I don't know when it'll get here, but when it does I'm going to scan it and give it to anyone who is interested. It's from 1914 and only 84 pages long, but looks really useful.

[niuc]

To be frank, I always think Hainanese is a Tshau-Lien-Tai version of Hokkien. All the S becomes T and Tsh becomes S. Therefore, 菜 in Hainanese sounds like 屎 in Hokkien......

No offence, but that's what people in my hometown said about Hainanese i.e. chau(tshau)3-lin1-tai1 臭乳呆.