Basic Minnan/Teochew Grammar

[Limet]

Can anyone help explain to me the difference between the different negation words in Minnan languages? I am a Teochew speaker and we have 唔 m, 無 bo, boi, and buk. I am trying to write up a decent grammar for TC and feel like that m and bho have some overlapping usages. Is there an m in Hokkien? I will try to add more once I have access to real nonmobike keyboard. Gamsia!

[AndrewAndrew]

m¯ is the negator of sī 是. Bô 無 is the negator of ū 有. But you are correct that with other words the uses overlap, though with some difference of emphasis:

Goá m¯ khì - I will not go / I'm not going / I don't go
Goá bô khì - I didn't go / I don't go / I'm not going

I m¯tsiȧh - He doesn't eat / will not eat
I bô tsiȧh - He didn't eat / hasn't eaten / doesn't eat

Hit-kéng m¯ hó - That one won't do / is no good
Hit-kéng bô hó - That one is not good

With most adjectives, the negator is bô, rather than m¯. Some words (esp positive) can only take bô:

Tsit-liȧp bô tiN - This one isn't sweet

Some words (esp negative) can also take bē/boē which is the negative of ē 會:

Tsit-liȧp bô suiN - This one isn't sour
Tsit-liȧp bē suiN - This one isn't sour

Apart from that we have boē/bē 未 which means "is/has not yet", and p˙ut 不 which is the literary form of m¯.

[SimL]

I don't know how much this applies to other variants of Hokkien, but in Penang Hokkien, there's a distinction between "be7-sai2" and "m7-sai2".

"be7-sai2" = "not permitted to", "forbidden to"
"m7-sai2" = "not required to", "no need to"

e.g.

"cit-liap pheng-ko be-sai ciah" = "one is not permitted to eat this apple", "it is forbidden to eat this apple"
"cit-liap pheng-ko m-sai ciah" = "one is not required to eat this apple", "there is no need to eat this apple"

This "be" is distinct from the "be" 未 given by Andrew above, as 未 is pronounced "boe" in Penang Hokkien.

[Ah-bin]

There are a few verbs that use m instead of bo for negation. This is just Hokkien though, not Teochew.

KaN 敢 to dare
chai 知 to know
bat 捌 to have had the experience of doing something, or to know someone

That is three of them, but I can't remember the others offhand, I made a list of them in a book I left in my office. I'll go to pick it up tomorrow.

[SimL]

Look forward to seeing your list.

In the meanwhile (or in case these are not already on your list):

m7-kam1: can't bear to, can't bring oneself to
m7-kam-guan: to not be satisfied with, to not not settle for, to not accept [not sure of the standing tones of last 2 syllables - I have the characters for kam-guan, but not here]

e.g.
"i cin-nia suka ciah pau-hu, tapi i m-kam khai an-nE ce lui" (= "he loves eating abolone, but can't bear to spend that amount of money").
"wa kui na tau ka i kong i be-sai khi, tapi i m-kam-guan, ko(h) ti-ti mui wa khuaN e-sai bo" (= "I've already told him a number of time that he's not allowed to go, but he won't accept this and keeps asking me").

The second of the two examples above is not quite a verb, more adjectival in usage, but is also an m- negation, I think.

"ai3" = "to want to", "to like" is one which can take both "bo5-" and "m7-"; in the latter case, it's fused into a single syllable "mai3" = "to not want to". In my usage, there is a subtle distinction between "i mai-khi" and "i m-khi". The former means "he doesn't want to go" (more neutral - nobody might be pressuring him to go, and he's just expressing a non-desire), the latter "he refuses to go" (much more strong - someone is pressuring or urging him to go, but he refuses to).

Of course, this use of "m7-" is not restricted to "khi". It can be used with many verbs, and means "to refuse to <verb>". E.g. "i m-co" (= "he refuses to do (it)"), "i m-ciah" (= "he refuses to eat (it)"), "i m-khun" (= "he refuses to go to sleep").

[amhoanna]

As an adult learner, I've always found Hoklo negatives to be a bit of a challenge, esp bô and mài.

Another negative word is 免 bián, often fused with m̄ for good measure. M̄ bián.

"Thang" is another word that goes with m̄.

I saw a pretty funny blog article a few yrs ago about how in (I think) Kuching, or it could have been Kelantan and/or Trengganu, the Hokkien speakers don't distinguish much between m̄ cai, bē cai and bô cai.

It's cool that PgHK has m̄ sái. I always wanna say it, but I catch myself in time and say m̄ bián. It may've been used in TW at some point, or maybe to this day by older people in farflung cngkha. The term "āsái", = 何必 or "what need / why bother" might be more common, but I don't hear it much either. A character in a soap opera would probably say "hôpit". Hmm. Wonder where they get that from.

[SimL]

As an adult learner, I've always found Hoklo negatives to be a bit of a challenge

Wow! The breadth and depth of your knowledge of Hokkien is such that I'm amazed to be reminded that you're "an adult learner" of Hokkien. Kudos to you!

Penang Hokkien has "m-mian" too, almost inevitably shorted to "mian2". AFAIK, they are more or less synonymous. If hunting for subtle differences, I would say that there is one context where one would use "m-sai" and not "(m-)mian". That is, if someone offers to do something for you, or even starts doing it, and you're trying to persuade him/her *not* to do it (because it's not necessary, too much trouble for them, etc,etc). In such circumstances you *might* be more likely to say "m-sai, m-sai", and not "m-mian, m-mian" (though the latter wouldn't be actually wrong either).

[amhoanna]

Ho͘ⁿ... Sometimes I can barely carry a conversation!

Next time I go to Penang, I'm only going to use m̄ sái, to make up for lost time

[niuc]

Bagan-ue also uses both 'm7-bian2' and 'bian2'. There was a time when I was intrigued by the former, as both 'm7' and 'bian2' are negative, yet their combination still has the same meaning (negative).

I hardly heard 'm7-sai2', which sounds to me like Cantonese. Nowadays in Bagan they have satelitte dishes and primarily watch Taiwanese channels, which were not available to us during 80s. Back then we could watch Malaysian RTM1, RTM2, TV3 with tall antenna (and ironically almost none Indonesian channels). There were many Cantonese serials & films but very few Mandarin or Hokkien. And because of those serials, my impression of Cantonese is "m sai kong a" (m7-bian2-kong2 la0) and "mei wa" (an expression of shock. I am not sure what it means!).

However, my variant does have 'm7-khor2-sai2' which means "not really need to".

何必 is usually heard in 何必苦 'ho5-pit4-khor2', otherwise we say 'kam2-tio8/to8' or 'sua4-tio8/to8'.

[amhoanna]

Always fascinating to know what goes on in Bagan Hokkien. It's probably closer to "19th century maritime Hoklo" than any other dialect of Hoklo spoken today, except for the random Thai words.

I just checked and was kind of surprised that Tâi-Ji̍t toā sûtián has "m̄ sái" as well. One thing that surprised me at one pt is how little vocabulary Hoklo and Cantonese share besides the straight-up Sino stuff. But there seems to be a subset of shared cognate vocabulary that's very core in Cantonese, but marginal or "less functional" in Hoklo at large, if we look across Hoklo dialects.

M̄ sái could be one example, although it is core in PgHK.

Also "ún" for "to look for". I've only read and heard it a few times, and always in the context of looking for work. Cognate with Canto wán, which is the core word for "to search".

Also Hoklo "mih", Canto "màt". Seems like this is the second morpheme in "símmih" / "siáⁿmih" / "hámih". At least in TW, though, it doesn't seem to conform to tone rules. It's high level when running, and high falling when standing. (Now that I put it that way, maybe it just moved to the imciūⁿ tone...) But I recall seeing words like "mihtāi" in writing at some pt. Probably not used in TW. But related to "mei wa".

It would be interesting to know whether and to what extent these cognates exist in Hakka, Teochew and the Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai languages, esp 畲.