I am waiting for reply from aokh.
The meaning is still incorrect. I just saw a taiwanese show. The guy said
我ma有看.
Is it not meant to be a question mark or affirmation question.
He meant 'I too have seen it'.
Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
In my variant, or any other Hokkiens spoken in China and Taiwan, I think ma is not used as a question. What I meant was a "rather rhetorical form". It's not a question but a confirmation. It may have sounded like a question, which is not directly expressed in verbal form.
汝 ma 是我个朋友。
If I may exaggerate it in a series of continual emotions:
You're also my friend. Don't you know that ? You don't even have to ask. Don't you know, that you ARE my friend ? You surely are.
That's how I think and use the word ma.
There are times linguistic attitude differs when a "similar" sentence is spoken in various languages, like Mandarin and Hokkien.
你不也是我的朋友 and 你也是我的朋友 have very tiny little variance.
你不也是我的朋友 = You're also my friend, don't you think so ?
你也是我的朋友 = You're also my friend, case closed.
I am not sure if you guys say 好快樂 and 好不快樂 - it's the same, it's not negation.
我今天終於去了動物園，玩得好不快樂 = Finally I have been to the zoo, it's fun.
But above sentence cannot be translated directly into Hokkien. Our linguistic attitude is just different.
I had a deep-dive discussion with a British friend who teaches English here in Xiamen. We almost can conclude that Americans and British put a question very differently, and in most cases, she thinks British tend to ask more than Americans. Of course, we're not saying it's 100%, it's just what she and I observe.
American: This is a good painting. What do you think ? (I like it, I hope you like it too)
British: This is a good painting. Don't you think ? (I like it, I assume you must like it too)
Another example is 以爲 in Mandarin. What do you guys understand about the word 以爲 ?
我以爲這是不可能的 = I thought this was not possible. (I am not sure, I believe it's impossible)
我以爲這是不可能的 = I think this is not possible. (Well, I believe it's impossible)
The 2nd phrase uses 以爲 as 認爲 which is common in China.
Same goes for the word ma in Hokkien. This is what I feel. It can be used in many aspects, actually. It can be a confirmation, it can be trigger of a self-defence, it can be an agreement, etc. Sure, I am not 100% sure if all these ma's are exactly the same word but I ask myself, why not ? If Hokkien we speak today is actually a mixture of native tongues from different peoples in the past, they may have brought in many "local attitude" to it. Even for Mandarin, people across China and Taiwan speak very differently, not all the time, but sometimes. Again, my own observation after living in China for 8 years. Xiamen is no longer a Hokkien-speaking city, you hear Mandarin in every accent spoken everywhere. Outsiders from every province have outnumbered locals.
1. 我覺得這個東西很漂亮耶。(Often in Taiwan, not in North China)
2. 我覺得這個東西很漂亮。(Most common form, almost domination in Malaysia)
3. 我覺得這個東西特漂亮。(Often in North China, you hardly hear from any Southerners, or Taiwanese)
4. 我覺得這個東西挺漂亮的。(Often in China)
This is my input......
Last but not least:
我 ma 會曉 = I can do it-lah, you think I cannot-meh ? (Self-Defence)
我 ma suka 汝 = I also like you, I like you. (Confirmation)
我 ma 相信伊 = I also believe him. (Agreement)
汝 ma 是我个朋友。
If I may exaggerate it in a series of continual emotions:
You're also my friend. Don't you know that ? You don't even have to ask. Don't you know, that you ARE my friend ? You surely are.
That's how I think and use the word ma.
There are times linguistic attitude differs when a "similar" sentence is spoken in various languages, like Mandarin and Hokkien.
你不也是我的朋友 and 你也是我的朋友 have very tiny little variance.
你不也是我的朋友 = You're also my friend, don't you think so ?
你也是我的朋友 = You're also my friend, case closed.
I am not sure if you guys say 好快樂 and 好不快樂 - it's the same, it's not negation.
我今天終於去了動物園，玩得好不快樂 = Finally I have been to the zoo, it's fun.
But above sentence cannot be translated directly into Hokkien. Our linguistic attitude is just different.
I had a deep-dive discussion with a British friend who teaches English here in Xiamen. We almost can conclude that Americans and British put a question very differently, and in most cases, she thinks British tend to ask more than Americans. Of course, we're not saying it's 100%, it's just what she and I observe.
American: This is a good painting. What do you think ? (I like it, I hope you like it too)
British: This is a good painting. Don't you think ? (I like it, I assume you must like it too)
Another example is 以爲 in Mandarin. What do you guys understand about the word 以爲 ?
我以爲這是不可能的 = I thought this was not possible. (I am not sure, I believe it's impossible)
我以爲這是不可能的 = I think this is not possible. (Well, I believe it's impossible)
The 2nd phrase uses 以爲 as 認爲 which is common in China.
Same goes for the word ma in Hokkien. This is what I feel. It can be used in many aspects, actually. It can be a confirmation, it can be trigger of a self-defence, it can be an agreement, etc. Sure, I am not 100% sure if all these ma's are exactly the same word but I ask myself, why not ? If Hokkien we speak today is actually a mixture of native tongues from different peoples in the past, they may have brought in many "local attitude" to it. Even for Mandarin, people across China and Taiwan speak very differently, not all the time, but sometimes. Again, my own observation after living in China for 8 years. Xiamen is no longer a Hokkien-speaking city, you hear Mandarin in every accent spoken everywhere. Outsiders from every province have outnumbered locals.
1. 我覺得這個東西很漂亮耶。(Often in Taiwan, not in North China)
2. 我覺得這個東西很漂亮。(Most common form, almost domination in Malaysia)
3. 我覺得這個東西特漂亮。(Often in North China, you hardly hear from any Southerners, or Taiwanese)
4. 我覺得這個東西挺漂亮的。(Often in China)
This is my input......
Last but not least:
我 ma 會曉 = I can do it-lah, you think I cannot-meh ? (Self-Defence)
我 ma suka 汝 = I also like you, I like you. (Confirmation)
我 ma 相信伊 = I also believe him. (Agreement)
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Hi aokh,
Kudos to you for trying to pin down the different shades of meaning of "ma".
This is really very difficult, but - as many of us probably realise - is not restricted to "ma". I think the issue here is that "ma" belongs to the set of what are called "modal particles". Modal particles (or words) express attitudes that the speaker has to what is being said - adding nuance to the "purely factual" information being conveyed. They may express things like "I'm surprised that this is so", "I'm doubtful that this is so", "How many times do I have to tell you that this is so", etc - all shades of nuance on the assertion that "this is so".
Modal particles exist in many languages, to differing degrees; i.e. some languages have many more modal particles/words than others. Personally, I've always thought that tonal languages would have more modal particles than non-tonal languages, because non-tonal languages can use tone to express some of the shades of attitude. Which is not to say that non-tonal languages don't have modal particles, of course. [For example, German has the famous modal particle "doch" - expressing strong affirmation - which is often explained as 'untranslatable' in English.] Conversely, this is also not to say that tonal languages like Chinese don't use tone to express shades of attitude - I imagine subtle differences in the same basic tone contour can express impatience, doubt etc, without the use of modal particles. Nevertheless, I still think that the general pattern would be for tonal languages to have/need more modal particles/words than non-tonal languages.
One of the nicest ones in Hokkien is "mE2". It expresses strong surprise: "lu mai khi mE?" (= "Oh, don't you want to go, I was quite convinced that you would want to").
So that I don't get too off-topic, for the "ma", my usage matches some of the uses of aokh's.
Examples:
- "i si wa e ho peng-iu. i kong ci-le bo-iaN, so wa ma siang-sin i lo" (= "He's my good friend. He says this isn't true, so I believe him [, of course]").
Here the "ma1" is used in conjunction with "lo2". As aokh says, there can be a (very light) tone of defensiveness in it (= "why should you think / how dare you think that I wouldn't believe him, when he's such a good friend of mine"). Or it could express that something is self-evident: "He's such a good friend of mine, of course I believe him when he says it isn't true").
- "i co ka a-nE khan-khO, wa ma mai khi liau" (= "He's making things so difficult (so) that I don't want to go any more").
Here the "ma1" is used as a strengthening/confirmation of the refusal to go, and underlining the fact that it's his making things so difficult which is now causing my refusal to go. But here, the cause-and-effect nature of it is less strong/explicit than:
- "i co ka a-nE khan-khO, wa sua(h) mai khi liau" (= "Originally, I had every intention of going, even really wanted to go, but he's making things so difficult that I don't want to go any more").
As aokh says, it's never clear whether we're dealing with different words having the same pronunciation (especially in Sinitic languages), or whether these are just context-dependent variations in meaning of the same word (look at the incredible number of uses of "ka" in Penang Hokkien, some of them almost definitely "corruptions" of different particles). In the case of "ma", my gut feeling is that they *are* all just context-dependent variations in meaning of the same word.
Two final points:
- When the words used to express simple concepts like "how", "dishes to put on your rice", "cicada", etc vary so much between the different variants of Hokkien, it seems to me self-evident that subtle concepts like these modal particles will also vary quite a lot between the different variants. The only thing we can do is to try and "capture" the meanings in each variant, by putting additional explanations, and by contrasting them to the use without the modal particles, or with different modal particles (as I and aokh have done in this thread). Here (IMHO) it's sometimes helpful to transcribe the variant exactly as it's spoken - with elisions, etc, because it is only in precisely that dialect that (some of) the modal particles have that particular shade of meaning.
- (An only indirectly related point.) I don't like to be 'negative', but it often strikes me as so *futile* when I read about these desperate attempts to capture "dying languages" before the last 10 speakers are dead. I mean, sure, I applaud the effort, and it's a lot better than just letting them die unrecorded. But when I think about the complexity and subtlety of human language (for example, we could probably write 3-4 *pages* just on the nuances of each of "ma1" or "suah4" or "mE2"), I wonder *what* we are capturing, by having some team of (non-native speaking) linguists talk to one or two native-speakers for 5 years, and then publishing a grammar/dictionary. The full richness of each language can only be *experienced* - by growing up in it, by having people treat you unfairly in it, by experiencing immense beauty or fear in it, etc. I.e. by *living* in it.
Kudos to you for trying to pin down the different shades of meaning of "ma".
This is really very difficult, but - as many of us probably realise - is not restricted to "ma". I think the issue here is that "ma" belongs to the set of what are called "modal particles". Modal particles (or words) express attitudes that the speaker has to what is being said - adding nuance to the "purely factual" information being conveyed. They may express things like "I'm surprised that this is so", "I'm doubtful that this is so", "How many times do I have to tell you that this is so", etc - all shades of nuance on the assertion that "this is so".
Modal particles exist in many languages, to differing degrees; i.e. some languages have many more modal particles/words than others. Personally, I've always thought that tonal languages would have more modal particles than non-tonal languages, because non-tonal languages can use tone to express some of the shades of attitude. Which is not to say that non-tonal languages don't have modal particles, of course. [For example, German has the famous modal particle "doch" - expressing strong affirmation - which is often explained as 'untranslatable' in English.] Conversely, this is also not to say that tonal languages like Chinese don't use tone to express shades of attitude - I imagine subtle differences in the same basic tone contour can express impatience, doubt etc, without the use of modal particles. Nevertheless, I still think that the general pattern would be for tonal languages to have/need more modal particles/words than non-tonal languages.
One of the nicest ones in Hokkien is "mE2". It expresses strong surprise: "lu mai khi mE?" (= "Oh, don't you want to go, I was quite convinced that you would want to").
So that I don't get too off-topic, for the "ma", my usage matches some of the uses of aokh's.
Examples:
- "i si wa e ho peng-iu. i kong ci-le bo-iaN, so wa ma siang-sin i lo" (= "He's my good friend. He says this isn't true, so I believe him [, of course]").
Here the "ma1" is used in conjunction with "lo2". As aokh says, there can be a (very light) tone of defensiveness in it (= "why should you think / how dare you think that I wouldn't believe him, when he's such a good friend of mine"). Or it could express that something is self-evident: "He's such a good friend of mine, of course I believe him when he says it isn't true").
- "i co ka a-nE khan-khO, wa ma mai khi liau" (= "He's making things so difficult (so) that I don't want to go any more").
Here the "ma1" is used as a strengthening/confirmation of the refusal to go, and underlining the fact that it's his making things so difficult which is now causing my refusal to go. But here, the cause-and-effect nature of it is less strong/explicit than:
- "i co ka a-nE khan-khO, wa sua(h) mai khi liau" (= "Originally, I had every intention of going, even really wanted to go, but he's making things so difficult that I don't want to go any more").
As aokh says, it's never clear whether we're dealing with different words having the same pronunciation (especially in Sinitic languages), or whether these are just context-dependent variations in meaning of the same word (look at the incredible number of uses of "ka" in Penang Hokkien, some of them almost definitely "corruptions" of different particles). In the case of "ma", my gut feeling is that they *are* all just context-dependent variations in meaning of the same word.
Two final points:
- When the words used to express simple concepts like "how", "dishes to put on your rice", "cicada", etc vary so much between the different variants of Hokkien, it seems to me self-evident that subtle concepts like these modal particles will also vary quite a lot between the different variants. The only thing we can do is to try and "capture" the meanings in each variant, by putting additional explanations, and by contrasting them to the use without the modal particles, or with different modal particles (as I and aokh have done in this thread). Here (IMHO) it's sometimes helpful to transcribe the variant exactly as it's spoken - with elisions, etc, because it is only in precisely that dialect that (some of) the modal particles have that particular shade of meaning.
- (An only indirectly related point.) I don't like to be 'negative', but it often strikes me as so *futile* when I read about these desperate attempts to capture "dying languages" before the last 10 speakers are dead. I mean, sure, I applaud the effort, and it's a lot better than just letting them die unrecorded. But when I think about the complexity and subtlety of human language (for example, we could probably write 3-4 *pages* just on the nuances of each of "ma1" or "suah4" or "mE2"), I wonder *what* we are capturing, by having some team of (non-native speaking) linguists talk to one or two native-speakers for 5 years, and then publishing a grammar/dictionary. The full richness of each language can only be *experienced* - by growing up in it, by having people treat you unfairly in it, by experiencing immense beauty or fear in it, etc. I.e. by *living* in it.
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Oh, here's a sentence-final "ma1" that I've just thought of:
- wa ka i kong kui-na-pai/tau liau ma (= "I've told him several times already, you know")
Here it expresses a slight impatience, sort of "it's obvious he should know / he should do it, because I've said it a couple of times already".
- i toh m chiaN wa ma = ("for some obscure reason, he won't invite me")
Again, a sort of slight impatience, caused by a failure to understand the reasons for his refusal to invite me. Here, interacting with "toh", which is another modal particle of some subtlety.
A little difficult to know if this is the same "ma1" as the non-sentence-final one. The tone-sandhi rules fit, and semantically, there's a certain closeness too, perhaps, namely "obviousness".
- wa ka i kong kui-na-pai/tau liau ma (= "I've told him several times already, you know")
Here it expresses a slight impatience, sort of "it's obvious he should know / he should do it, because I've said it a couple of times already".
- i toh m chiaN wa ma = ("for some obscure reason, he won't invite me")
Again, a sort of slight impatience, caused by a failure to understand the reasons for his refusal to invite me. Here, interacting with "toh", which is another modal particle of some subtlety.
A little difficult to know if this is the same "ma1" as the non-sentence-final one. The tone-sandhi rules fit, and semantically, there's a certain closeness too, perhaps, namely "obviousness".
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
SimL:SimL wrote:I wonder *what* we are capturing, by having some team of (non-native speaking) linguists talk to one or two native-speakers for 5 years, and then publishing a grammar/dictionary. The full richness of each language can only be *experienced* - by growing up in it, by having people treat you unfairly in it, by experiencing immense beauty or fear in it, etc. I.e. by *living* in it.
I couldn't agree more. That's exactly what I am doing. I grew up speaking a going-to-die-soon language, Penang Hokkien and I realised when I tried to use some "profound" words, people often said: We don't say so in Penang. The most distinguished examples would be khai-si and tan-si. Younger Penangites, most likely up to those in their 40s say "start" and "tapi". What I want to do now are:
1. Record (voice) words spoken in daily life by older generation.
2. Document them with proper romanisation - to start educating younger generation.
3. Look up for the right or reasonable characters, may not be pun-ji.
Ultimate goal is to enable myself, first of all, to express feelings in Facebook, to right articles in blog, to publish books in written Penang Hokkien. There are Hong Kong comicians working in Cantonese today, but we know they use sound-borrowed characters all the time. That's what I want to do, with more proper characters.
I am quite annoyed by those mouth-radical characters like 嘛, 咧, 唔 unless it's *really* related to mouth, like eating, drinking or exclamation. I truly believe many characters can be presented in a more proper way.
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Hi aokh,
What a wonderful goal you are setting yourself! I congratulate you and wish you every success.
My goal has some parallels, namely, I want to try and get my Hokkien to a level where I can function comfortably in it - at least for basic conversation (which is not the case at the moment, mostly because of the huge number of words that I don't know).
But this is a longer term goal for me. For me, mastering basic Mandarin is more important, at the moment. [A statement which might get me banned from this Forum
.] But along the way, new characters I learn in Mandarin do throw light on Hokkien, so this contributes to that other goal as well.
All 3 of your points appeal to me a lot.
Do you know "the other Sim", who studies at SOAS in London? Andrew knows him too, and I think his goals (and dedication) are very similar to yours.
PS. Don't you people think that the current flood of spam here is really weird? It's not even advertising products, but appears to be incoherent fragments of English mixed with utter nonsense.
What a wonderful goal you are setting yourself! I congratulate you and wish you every success.
My goal has some parallels, namely, I want to try and get my Hokkien to a level where I can function comfortably in it - at least for basic conversation (which is not the case at the moment, mostly because of the huge number of words that I don't know).
But this is a longer term goal for me. For me, mastering basic Mandarin is more important, at the moment. [A statement which might get me banned from this Forum
.] But along the way, new characters I learn in Mandarin do throw light on Hokkien, so this contributes to that other goal as well.All 3 of your points appeal to me a lot.
I have done something slightly similar with my parents and uncles and aunts (all in their late 70's and early 80's nowadays), except that the emphasis in my "research" was less on the language itself, and more on the actual events and conditions of their lives, when they were young in the 1930's to 1960's. But in that process, the way they speak has also of course been recorded.1. Record (voice) words spoken in daily life by older generation.
This one particularly strikes a chord with me. As I've said a number of times on this Forum, I *cringe* when I see the "subtitling" under many Hokkien (karaoke) songs, where they use pinyin "b-" and "g-" for POJ "p-" and "k-". I really can't understand how the people who use this system don't see that if one does this, then there's no letter that can be used for the POJ "b-" and "g-"! That people from outside of Malaysia/Singapore might do this is to a certain extent understandable (they have few other models than pinyin), but that people in Malaysia/Singapore do it is (IMHO) totally unreasonable, when they have a perfectly adequate example of Malay/Indonesian, where the (POJ) letters "b-" and "g-", and "p-" and "k-" (and "t-" too) correspond very much to the Malay ones, and only the ""ph-", "th-", "kh-" need to be added for Hokkien.2. Document them with proper romanisation - to start educating younger generation.
I like the compromise position on this. I agree that one should strive to find and use pun-ji where possible, but in many cases, it's just too obscure to work out, and one can spend hours and hours arguing about which character to use, whereas it's much more important to just choose one and try and get everyone to use it.3. Look up for the right or reasonable characters, may not be pun-ji.
Do you know "the other Sim", who studies at SOAS in London? Andrew knows him too, and I think his goals (and dedication) are very similar to yours.
PS. Don't you people think that the current flood of spam here is really weird? It's not even advertising products, but appears to be incoherent fragments of English mixed with utter nonsense.
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
A quick post (stealing some office time!)...
The rhetorical connotation appears to hark back to Classical Chinese:
子曰: 學而時習之、不亦悅乎。 - 論語
Confucius said: Is it not a joy to regularly practise what [we] have learnt? - The Analects
Cantonese also uses the rhetorical ma with exactly the same tone - however, current usage tends to append the copula 係 after it, i.e. [嘛]係 ma-hai, often contracted as mai.
The Southern dialects of 粵, 閩 and 客家 all have negatives with m- initials, cf. the Central dialects, e.g. 吳 which have v- initials and the Northern dialects with p- initials (see Jerry Norman Chinese (1988) and S. Robert Ramsey The Languages of China (1989)). To digress, the extended argument from Edwin Pulleyblank is that even the negative 不 historically did not have a b- initial, but rather f-.
Anyway, my point is that the m- initial in Southern negatives appear to lend support to the "fusion of negative+copula => rhetorical question" theory.
The rhetorical connotation appears to hark back to Classical Chinese:
子曰: 學而時習之、不亦悅乎。 - 論語
Confucius said: Is it not a joy to regularly practise what [we] have learnt? - The Analects
Cantonese also uses the rhetorical ma with exactly the same tone - however, current usage tends to append the copula 係 after it, i.e. [嘛]係 ma-hai, often contracted as mai.
The Southern dialects of 粵, 閩 and 客家 all have negatives with m- initials, cf. the Central dialects, e.g. 吳 which have v- initials and the Northern dialects with p- initials (see Jerry Norman Chinese (1988) and S. Robert Ramsey The Languages of China (1989)). To digress, the extended argument from Edwin Pulleyblank is that even the negative 不 historically did not have a b- initial, but rather f-.
Anyway, my point is that the m- initial in Southern negatives appear to lend support to the "fusion of negative+copula => rhetorical question" theory.
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Hi Mark,
Re-assuring to know that you're still following the Forum..
Re-assuring to know that you're still following the Forum.
.Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Hi Mark Yong:
Your example is absolutely fabulous. That didn't cross my mind. The greatest example ever...... Thank you !
Hi SimL:
About the motivation to master Mandarin, you will not be banned from this forum. Come on, we're all trying to learn something together here. However your future comments may be ignored.
The other Sim is a good friend of mine. We have been working together on a revitalisation programme for Penang Hokkien.
Your example is absolutely fabulous. That didn't cross my mind. The greatest example ever...... Thank you !
Hi SimL:
About the motivation to master Mandarin, you will not be banned from this forum. Come on, we're all trying to learn something together here. However your future comments may be ignored.
The other Sim is a good friend of mine. We have been working together on a revitalisation programme for Penang Hokkien.
Re: Wa ma tsai ! (I also know...)
Ah, good. In that case, *I* - not he - am probably "the other Sim"aokh1979 wrote:The other Sim is a good friend of mine. We have been working together on a revitalisation programme for Penang Hokkien. :
.