hohomi wrote:I would add "loo" or "a" in the end of the sentence and rearrange the word order.
報紙伊讀了--loo
報紙伊讀了--a.
or
伊將報紙讀了
Interesting. These are constructs which I would not normally use, even though I can understand them. (Not meant as a negative comment, just as an observation.)
My mother (an Amoy-ish) speaker taught me about the 將-construction in Hokkien, when I first told her about the 把-construction in Mandarin, just last year. Up to that time, I had never heard the 將-construction used in my form of Hokkien. Again, this is not to say it doesn't exist in Penang Hokkien, only that it's not used by my paternal relatives.
There was a typo in my original reply to Ah-bin. I had:
3a. 伊讀報紙了, so 汝會sai去問伊看伊be出去食風無 = i ti thak po-cua liau, so lu e sai khi mui i khuaN i be chut-khi ciah-hong bo = "he's finished reading the paper, so you can go and ask him if he wants to go out
This should not have had the "ti" in the POJ transcription (it's not in the character rendition). It now reads:
3a. 伊讀報紙了, so 汝會sai去問伊看伊be出去食風無 = i thak po-cua liau, so lu e sai khi mui i khuaN i be chut-khi ciah-hong bo = "he's finished reading the paper, so you can go and ask him if he wants to go out
I've now corrected it in the original posting as well.
My mother (an Amoy-ish) speaker taught me about the 將-construction in Hokkien, when I first told her about the 把-construction in Mandarin, just last year. Up to that time, I had never heard the 將-construction used in my form of Hokkien. Again, this is not to say it doesn't exist in Penang Hokkien, only that it's not used by my paternal relatives.
They don't use chiong 將, in Penang, but they do use giâ in some similar constructions, don't they? For sentences in which you do something with something, like giâ chheh lâi thák "get the book and read it", I mean.
Ah-bin wrote:Niuc, this is very interesting as these two features are what I've always associated with Taiwanese. I also thought the final "liau" was a feature of all varieties of Southeast Asian Hokkien, but it seems I was wrong.
Bagan Hokkien (Tang-ua* 同安) is very similar to Taiwanese in many aspects, that we can easily understand Taiwanese in tv programs. Our vowels for 未, 雞, 魚 follow Cuanciu 泉州 (also Taipei?), so they are different from usual Taiwanese (Tainan?). Our tones are very similar to E-mng & Taiwanese, except (notably) our running-tone/sandhi for tone 5 is tone 3 instead of tone 7.
Ah-bin, in case you or someone may think that the two features are due to Taiwanese influence via tv programs into my variant, I would like to clarify that it is not the case. They had been in our usage long before Taiwanese tv programs became available to us.
Ah-bin wrote:They don't use chiong 將, in Penang, but they do use giâ in some similar constructions, don't they? For sentences in which you do something with something, like giâ chheh lâi thák "get the book and read it", I mean.
Yes, this is a common construct, and the example you give is perfectly correct. However, I think it's much more restricted in use than the 將- and 把-construct. This is because I think it can only be used for nouns which one can normally pick up: "gia cek-a lai sio <X>" (= "take a candle to burn <X = something else>), "gia cui lai lim" (= "get some water to drink"), "gia po(h)-cua lai chu thuah/tO-kha" (= "line the drawer/floor with newspapers"), etc. It can't, as far as I can see, be used for nouns which one can't normally pick up: *"gia chu lai tua" (= "get a house to live in"), *"gia chia lai sai" (= "get a car to drive"). [I use the "*" in the common linguistic convention for indicating imaginable phrases which are not syntactically or semantically acceptable.]
