From my personal experience...
1. I have always heard/used kái-sek 解釋.
2. You are right, the verb chiāuⁿ 上 (and, for that matter, the adjective siāng 上) has just about disappeared from everyday Penang Hokkien. In fact, the only time I have heard 上 used is in ma-seong 馬上.
3. I always had the impression that som for 'warm' was derived from the Malay suam - but I could be wrong, i.e. it's the other way round.
4. Yes, alamak is a Malay-originated exclamation. Decomposing it into its individual elements, it literally means "Oh, mother!". But from my experience, not everyone uses it as a "natural" part of Penang Hokkien vocabulary.
Tan Choon Hoe's new book
Re: Tan Choon Hoe's new book
Hi Ah-bin,
>> Alamak! Translated as "Oh my goodness"?
>> Yes, alamak is a Malay-originated exclamation. Decomposing it
>> into its individual elements, it literally means "Oh, mother!".
>> But from my experience, not everyone uses it as a "natural"
>> part of Penang Hokkien vocabulary.
Yes, as Mark says, it's very common in Malay. I've always suspected it comes from (the now rather old fashioned) Dutch "allemachtig!", which is used in very similar ways. This (as Ah-bin would know) is short for "God Allemachtig!" (="God Almighty!"), used as an exclamation of surprise or strong emotion. In Malay already, and certainly in Penang Hokkien, it's restricted to negative situations. Personally, I use it only to mean "Oh dear!". E.g. In Dutch, if your friend bought an extravagantly expensive car, and you didn't know about it, and you suddenly saw him drive up in it, when you could say "allemachtig!", just an expression of strong emotion - a sort of "OMG!", without that much of a negative connotation, whereas both Malay and Penang Hokkien "alamak", a more negative situation is needed (even if only minorly negative, like having to go back home to get something one forgot to bring).
>> But the chiāuⁿ exists in other places like chiāuⁿ-thâu 上頭 the
>> hair-combing ritual the night before a wedding.
Is this combing of the hair ceremony well known in the rest of the Hokkien-speaking world? My great-uncles were the last ones I know of in my family who practiced this, on their wedding day, in a traditional Baba wedding ceremony. In my parents' generation, they all had "modern" western weddings, so no one did 上頭 any more. After skipping one generation, I think a number of my cousins, who got married in Australia, in the 1980's, did it again, as a sort of "throw-back" to their Baba roots. (As my cousins - my age and younger - would not have known anything about this ritual from their own personal experience, they probably allowed it to be done to them more because their *parents* wanted it, when the parents thought back to their childhoods and their own uncles having had it done.)
>> Just remembered one more: som for "warm". ...
>> Anybody have an idea of the tone or a character?
I'd venture to say that the tone is som1. In my usage, there are 2 restrictions. 1) I only ever use it in the reduplicated form, i.e. "som7-som1" (with sandhi-tone indicated on the first syllable), 2) It can only be used for liquids - the temperature in a room, an iron which has been turned off and cooling down, a radiator, etc would NOT be "som7-som1" - only say a cup of tea.
There may be even more restrictions in its usage:
E.g. I'm not even sure if it might be limited to *drinkable* liquids; i.e. I'm unsure if it could be used for the temperature of the water in a warm bath.
Perhaps it might be limited to drinkable liquids which are cooling *down*; i.e. I'm unsure if one could say ?*"cit le tE bo kau som" (= "this tea isn't warm enough").
Bottom line: I only use if for a bowl of soup or a cup of tea, which has slowly cooled down from being too hot to drink to being a nice comfortable temperature to drink. For all other usages - heating a drinkable liquid *up* until it's nice to drink, or the physical temperature of non-liquid objects - I'd be unsure whether to use "som1". [Which, I guess, is part of the reason why I only use it in reduplicated form - it suggests the nice, positive, sensual feelings associated with this particular context.]
I would be interested to know if other Penang Hokkien speakers use it in a more general way, without reduplication.
PS. Is this the new format for this Forum? I don't really find it easier to use - the old format seemed to me to separate the different replies better, and it was easier to skim read through the different replies (or the individual topics too).
>> Alamak! Translated as "Oh my goodness"?
>> Yes, alamak is a Malay-originated exclamation. Decomposing it
>> into its individual elements, it literally means "Oh, mother!".
>> But from my experience, not everyone uses it as a "natural"
>> part of Penang Hokkien vocabulary.
Yes, as Mark says, it's very common in Malay. I've always suspected it comes from (the now rather old fashioned) Dutch "allemachtig!", which is used in very similar ways. This (as Ah-bin would know) is short for "God Allemachtig!" (="God Almighty!"), used as an exclamation of surprise or strong emotion. In Malay already, and certainly in Penang Hokkien, it's restricted to negative situations. Personally, I use it only to mean "Oh dear!". E.g. In Dutch, if your friend bought an extravagantly expensive car, and you didn't know about it, and you suddenly saw him drive up in it, when you could say "allemachtig!", just an expression of strong emotion - a sort of "OMG!", without that much of a negative connotation, whereas both Malay and Penang Hokkien "alamak", a more negative situation is needed (even if only minorly negative, like having to go back home to get something one forgot to bring).
>> But the chiāuⁿ exists in other places like chiāuⁿ-thâu 上頭 the
>> hair-combing ritual the night before a wedding.
Is this combing of the hair ceremony well known in the rest of the Hokkien-speaking world? My great-uncles were the last ones I know of in my family who practiced this, on their wedding day, in a traditional Baba wedding ceremony. In my parents' generation, they all had "modern" western weddings, so no one did 上頭 any more. After skipping one generation, I think a number of my cousins, who got married in Australia, in the 1980's, did it again, as a sort of "throw-back" to their Baba roots. (As my cousins - my age and younger - would not have known anything about this ritual from their own personal experience, they probably allowed it to be done to them more because their *parents* wanted it, when the parents thought back to their childhoods and their own uncles having had it done.)
>> Just remembered one more: som for "warm". ...
>> Anybody have an idea of the tone or a character?
I'd venture to say that the tone is som1. In my usage, there are 2 restrictions. 1) I only ever use it in the reduplicated form, i.e. "som7-som1" (with sandhi-tone indicated on the first syllable), 2) It can only be used for liquids - the temperature in a room, an iron which has been turned off and cooling down, a radiator, etc would NOT be "som7-som1" - only say a cup of tea.
There may be even more restrictions in its usage:
E.g. I'm not even sure if it might be limited to *drinkable* liquids; i.e. I'm unsure if it could be used for the temperature of the water in a warm bath.
Perhaps it might be limited to drinkable liquids which are cooling *down*; i.e. I'm unsure if one could say ?*"cit le tE bo kau som" (= "this tea isn't warm enough").
Bottom line: I only use if for a bowl of soup or a cup of tea, which has slowly cooled down from being too hot to drink to being a nice comfortable temperature to drink. For all other usages - heating a drinkable liquid *up* until it's nice to drink, or the physical temperature of non-liquid objects - I'd be unsure whether to use "som1". [Which, I guess, is part of the reason why I only use it in reduplicated form - it suggests the nice, positive, sensual feelings associated with this particular context.]
I would be interested to know if other Penang Hokkien speakers use it in a more general way, without reduplication.
PS. Is this the new format for this Forum? I don't really find it easier to use - the old format seemed to me to separate the different replies better, and it was easier to skim read through the different replies (or the individual topics too).
Re: Tan Choon Hoe's new book
Ah, so it's happening to you too? I thought it was just me. This has happened to me before when the page doesn't load properly because of speed issues, so I thought it was because I was here in China trying to access an overseas site.PS. Is this the new format for this Forum? I don't really find it easier to use - the old format seemed to me to separate the different replies better, and it was easier to skim read through the different replies (or the individual topics too).
Actually I first came across it at my friend's wedding in Hong Kong, he is a Hainanese and his mother explained it to me as a Hainanese thing. They lit huge joss-stcks as well, and because it was a hotel room, the fire alarm had to be covered so the smoke wouldn't set it off, so I watched the ceremony while standing on a chair with my arms outstretched pressing a box against the ceiling over the alarm! Then I had to wait about an hour for the joss stick to burn down.Is this combing of the hair ceremony well known in the rest of the Hokkien-speaking world?
The ritual is described in some Chinese Hokkien dictionaries. I haven't checked Taiwan yet.
That's an interesting theory about Alamak. Maybe it's in that dictionary of loanwords.
It seems likely that som is just suam in disguise. Perhaps it has the same range of meaning in Malay?
Re: Tan Choon Hoe's new book
I'm getting the "no frills" webpage format, too. Doesn't look like a deliberate thing, perhaps something for Webmaster Mr. Thomas Chin to look into?
Hi, Sim,
My personal experience with sōm is the same, i.e. only used for liquids. I very vaguely recall it also being used for bathwater (the only time I remember hearing it used for non-potable fluids).
As for re-duplication, strangely my experience has been quite the opposite - nine out of ten times, I hear it without the re-duplication.
Hi, Sim,
My personal experience with sōm is the same, i.e. only used for liquids. I very vaguely recall it also being used for bathwater (the only time I remember hearing it used for non-potable fluids).
As for re-duplication, strangely my experience has been quite the opposite - nine out of ten times, I hear it without the re-duplication.
Re: Tan Choon Hoe's new book
Hi Mark,
Thanks for confirming much of what I felt were the semantic restrictions on the use of "som1". As for our radically different perception of the reduplication issue, my current take would be that "your" usage is the normal one, and that my reduplication is more an illusion caused by the fact that I left as a youngish boy, with a much more "childish" vocabulary.
[My leaving Penang at such an early age actually has some strange pschological side-effects... When I'm back in Penang, and see a man or woman in their mid-20's, my first impulse is to address them as "A Cek" or "A I", but then I realise that they would find that rather odd, because they would be tempted to address me as "A Pek"!!!
.]
Looks like we're all suffering from this "new" format...
Thanks for confirming much of what I felt were the semantic restrictions on the use of "som1". As for our radically different perception of the reduplication issue, my current take would be that "your" usage is the normal one, and that my reduplication is more an illusion caused by the fact that I left as a youngish boy, with a much more "childish" vocabulary.
[My leaving Penang at such an early age actually has some strange pschological side-effects... When I'm back in Penang, and see a man or woman in their mid-20's, my first impulse is to address them as "A Cek" or "A I", but then I realise that they would find that rather odd, because they would be tempted to address me as "A Pek"!!!
.]Looks like we're all suffering from this "new" format...
Re: Tan Choon Hoe's new book
I'll check with my parents on the weekend, but thinking about it, I could imagine such a sentence:
thau-seng hE kun-cui; liau kiau leng cui; kiau kau-ka i som-som e si, e sai hO baby cang-ek.
first put in some boiling water; then mix in cold water; when you've mixed it until it's pleasantly warm, you can give the baby a bath.
So, in this context, "som1" seems ok for warm, not-drinkable water.
thau-seng hE kun-cui; liau kiau leng cui; kiau kau-ka i som-som e si, e sai hO baby cang-ek.
first put in some boiling water; then mix in cold water; when you've mixed it until it's pleasantly warm, you can give the baby a bath.
So, in this context, "som1" seems ok for warm, not-drinkable water.