Variant of Amoy spoken in Fujian province - Resources??

[vaskimies]

Bodman specifically teaches the Amoy variant. It is just the dialogues that are set in Malaya. Occasionally he points out how the Amoy variant is different from that spoken in south Malaya/Singapore. The north Malaya variant is largely ignored.

Really? Okay, well that sounds good. Well I guess I should stop being so worrisome and order the damn book, haha. I'm moving away on Wednesday but once I get settled into my new place I'll go ahead and place my order before the price shoots up (*knock on wood*).

Thanks for the wonderful feedback, all of you. :-D

[aokh1979]

Hi vaskimies:

Do you live in Xiamen ? I do. (>_^)/

Basically variances between the few Hokkien dialects are not a big deal, you will get along well if you start to hold conversation with the locals. People who live and speak Hokkien in Xiamen are not 100% Xiamenese, there are more people migrated from Zhangzhou or Quanzhou than you could have imagined. Xiamen is basically, I would say, about 30 years old, most of the population you see on the street speaking Hokkien today may be the 2nd or even 1st generation of migrants from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou (including some other smaller cities in Fujian).

I have lived here for 8 years now. I can tell very easily when someone speaks Xiamenese and Taiwanese. They can be quite different, but you will be able to pick up very easily, too. I grew up in Penang saying "noo uann puinn" for "2 bowls of rice" instead of "n'ng uann p'ng". I say "noo" to almost everyone in Xiamen since 2003, and I never get a blank face because most people here are exposed to Zhangzhou variant, it's just an hour driving distance. Do not worry, there's no standard of Hokkien. I love Penang Hokkien, it's just the standard for my home-town, not anywhere else (maybe Medan......) and I believe millions of Hokkiens out there are not connected by any standard but spirit and respect they hold dearly to their heart. Learn Xiamen variant if you prefer it that way, and speak it anywhere you go. You will be understood. Some confusions may arise along the way, but which language on earth can be picked up without any confusion during prelim stage ?

[xng]

vaskimies,

Just ignore the stubborn ramblings of those who hold on to their dialect. read here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Min_Nan

"As Xiamen is the principal city of southern Fujian, the Xiamen dialect is considered the most important, or even prestige dialect."

Before Xiamen was well established, the prestige dialect was Quanzhou variant. It may not be 'officially' standard but neither is HK cantonese but we all know the HK/Guangzhou cantonese is the unofficial or de facto standard due to the HK movies, location etc.

While it is true that there are many migrants to Xiamen, the same is happening to HK and Guangzhou but that doesn't mean that Mandarin or Taishanese is considered 'standard cantonese' there. Another example if there is a lot of british who migrate to america, it doesn't mean that British English will replace the standard there. I have trouble listening to British accent as I grew up understanding American accent.

For a newcomer to the hokkien language, it is wise to learn the defacto standard which is the taiwanese/amoy version.

I grew up in southern malaya and a lot of my friends/relatives who hear northern malaya version do get blank faces the first few times they hear them due to the different tones and sounds(until they explain what it means in a different language). Of course, after a few months of learning the variants you get used to it and will slowly understand but that is more for native speakers who is willing to learn the 3 versions.

[AndrewAndrew]

As with most language learning, we rarely have the luxury of choosing the exact dialect variant that will be appropriate for our future dealings, e.g. few people in the West will have access to anything other than Modern Standard Arabic, or at a push Gulf and Egyptian Arabic. It is best to stick to the dialect variant of your teacher or language CD and to master that rather than getting confused by other dialect variants. May I ask what you intend to do with your Hokkien once you have learnt it?

[SimL]

Hi vaskimies,

Great to have another Hokkien enthusiast on board. Welcome!

Learn Xiamen variant if you prefer it that way, and speak it anywhere you go. You will be understood. Some confusions may arise along the way, but which language on earth can be picked up without any confusion during prelim stage ?

Agree with this totally.

If I may be allowed one personal story about people understanding variants...

Regular readers of the Forum may remember that my father's family are Penang Hokkien speakers, and my mother's side more Amoy-ish. What I've never said is that my father's side of the family is rather weak in languages, while my mother's side is particularly good at them. [For example, when my parents came to visit me here in Holland, my mother had a great time trying to read signs in Dutch and trying to work out what they meant, whereas the idea would never have crossed my father's mind. (Fortunately, I inherited interest and abilities in language from my mother's side!)] In any case, my parents told me that in the initial years of their marriage, when their parents met one another, my father's parents had practically no idea what my mother's parents were saying - they just smiled politely and pretended that they did . But, the other way around, my mother's parents had a reasonable idea what my father's parents were saying because 1) (as explained above) they are linguistically more gifted anyway, 2) they had been exposed to Penang Hokkien from Penang people they had met earlier, whereas my father's people had had hardly any exposure to non-Penang Hokkien (Chinese on mainland peninsular Malaysia are known for being better at other dialects than Penang Chinese anyway). This sorted itself out after a number of years of exposure, so that when I was old enough to remember my grandparents' interaction, I never noticed anything other than that they understood one another perfectly well.

[Ah-bin]

Just ignore the stubborn ramblings of those who hold on to their dialect. read here...

As far as I have read on these forums there's only one person around here who does that...most of the people who've answered this thread are Penang Hokkien speakers, but when they were asked the question "How do I learn Amoy Hokkien?" they didn't say "you should learn so-and-so variety instead" they gave reasonable answers for how to do it, even though it meant advising people to learn something that was not their native dialect. If someone came to this forum and asked "How do I learn Penang Hokkien" I think most people would just answer the question, giving good references to as many materials as possible. But one person in particular would say "Don't learn Penang Hokkien....learn so-and-so instead, Penang Hokkien isn't correct, it's full of Malay words etc. etc."


BTW there is an English-to Taiwanese dictionary (Called "English-Amoy Dictionary") you can buy too, published by the Maryknool Fathers in Taiwan. Once you have got a bit into Bodman, lots of the forummers can tell you how to "convert" this sort of Taiwanese materials and tailor them to your learning of Amoy Hokkien. But I would say just stick to Bodman for the first ten lessons, using the free online English-Hokkien dictionary that I mentioned last year as a reference.

One difference you will notice straight away is that the initial l- in Amoy corresponds to either l- or j- (in POJ) in many other types of Hokkien, so you will need to convert jit, jin, jip etc. in these older dictionaries to lit, lin, lip etc. in Amoy.

Just edited this to add the link to the dictionary thread...
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7338&sid=ae913036d2 ... 5293ba574f

[SimL]

"Note: Malaya has two main variants ie. Zhangzhou and Quanzhou.(not the amoy variant). Malaya doesn't have a 'standard variant' as everybody thinks there is."

"maybe not some of the forummers here who thinks their version is standard"

Drat, there appears to be a huge readership and many topics on this Forum which I apparently can't get access to. On all the topics which *I* can reach, almost everybody DOESN'T think that their version is a standard. Most of the reasonable Forum members acknowledge the huge variety in Hokkien, and have no particular problems accepting that variety. It would be very interesting if the readers who have seen these other threads - where those people who think their version is standard - could post some extracts on this topic (which I *can* see), so that I could read them too.

[catherine]

Yes, it is really true! It is just normal. It's really funny to hear that because when my aunt told me a story regarding her engagement, the parents of the boy and our relatives can't understand each other. In addition, in a wedding party that I have attended I meet an stranger guest and we talk all the way. When he talk to pass the viand to him the host did not understand him. So, it's been an advantage to me to know a little bit of his language.