Hainanese (Bun Sio)

[aokh1979]

I asked my mother to teach me more Hainanese but she could not recall how to say "apple"......

There's 1 thing strange. Sabun should be loanword but in her Penang Hainanese, she says Tabun. Do Hainanese automatically read all S as T even in loanword ? This is strange......

[xng]

Most S is transformed to T in Hainanese and Vietnamese.

There doesn't seem to be an original hokkien word for saboon. Soap originated from portugese ?

[AndrewAndrew]

Aokh: it is only strange if there are words in Hainanese with the 's' sound. If there is no 's' sound in Hainanese, then it is normal for loanwords to be mapped to the nearest sound, e.g. there is no 'd' in Hokkien, so a lot of chau-leng-tai Hokkiens say 'loctor'.

[aokh1979]

Sabun should be Portuguese. The origin is not very essential as we all know, it is a loanword.

There are tons of S in Hainanese. Most Tsh in Hokkien is S in Hainanese, like Su (house), Sai (vegetable), Se (green), etc. That's the reason why Sabun should be imported directly, instead of being Tabun, like it's a Sinitic word from Hokkien. Do you guys have any better explanation ?

[xng]

There are tons of S in Hainanese. Most Tsh in Hokkien is S in Hainanese, like Su (house), Sai (vegetable), Se (green), etc. That's the reason why Sabun should be imported directly, instead of being Tabun, like it's a Sinitic word from Hokkien. Do you guys have any better explanation ?

The only explanation is that the Hainanese migrated to Hainan before (and not after) the importation of the loanword into Fujian province.

Sound changes are as follows:

S -> T
C' -> S