Although, in this case, it would make sense that "Pasang" comes from the Malay word.Oops! Sorry for creating a misunderstanding. My mother isn't a native PgHk speaker. She was born in Seremban in the south of the peninsular, and she grew up speaking an Amoyish variety. She calls it pa5-sang1 in that variety. She only learnt to speak PgHk after she married my father (not that I expect Forum members to remember thisamhoanna wrote:Hmm, a low-rising tone on the "pa"? Are there a lot of Malay words where PgHK does that?
!). All the PgHk speakers I know would call it just "klEng2" (and mightn't even know the name pa-sang). Care to comment on this, Andrew...?You're welcome! Most of them seem to be *very* small places: a single beach, or a little village, so perhaps Bagansiapiapi is the most important Bagan in the worldit surprises me that there are so many places having "Bagan" as part of their names in Malaysia, thanks for the info!
.That's very interesting. My tone 1 is also [33], and I used to think that my tone 2 is [51] or [52], but Ah-bin has pointed out to me that it's very level - 55 or 54 or 44. This explained something which had puzzled me for a long time: I used to wonder what the difference between Amoy "ho2" (= "good") and a PgHk "ho2" was. They sounded different to me, and I couldn't work out the difference, because I thought of them both as "high-falling". Now, I think that Amoy is 52 or 42 or 41, whereas PgHk is 55 or 54 or 44, i.e. high(ish)-level or high(ish)-slightlyfalling (something like that).my Malaysian friends indeed always call it "klEng" or "kleng", sound to me like tone 1 [33]
May be, at least for me.SimL wrote:You're welcome! Most of them seem to be *very* small places: a single beach, or a little village, so perhaps Bagansiapiapi is the most important Bagan in the world
Many Indonesians was told in schools that Bagansiapiapi was the second largest fishing port in the world in term of quantity of fish caught, after Norway, before 1970s. I don't know how true, and think that is strange to compare a town with a country. 
Anyway, when I told my Indonesian friends that I was from Bagansiapiapi, many of them spontaneously said: "oh that fishing port?". I have never tried it, may be next time I should. Before that people needed to go to Dumai to take ferry to Malacca.That is interesting!... and I used to think that my tone 2 is [51] or [52], but Ah-bin has pointed out to me that it's very level - 55 or 54 or 44.
That should be the case. Btw I think I never realized the difference between [44] and [33], most probably I naturally mapped to the tones I was familiar with.If my tone 2 is indeed [44], then perhaps this is more similar to what your Malaysian friends say, when they pronounce Klang with tone 1 (= [33]).
Oh thank you for pointing this out, I wanted to post something about this but I forgot. I used to think of Standard Mandarin T4 = T8 in my Hokkien (BgHk) variant. Come to examine it more closely, I think Andrew is right. StMd T4 has the same countour as BgHk T8, but the former is or tends to be higher in pitch. Doesn't this make BgHk T8 = Amoy T2? I wonder how your PgHk T8 and Amoy T8 sound like...I seem to remember that Andrew once pointed out that the (standard) Mandarin tone 4 - which I tend to think of as "the same" as both Amoy and PgHk tone 2 - "starts higher, and falls more sharply than most Malaysian Mandarin speakers realise" (I put 'standard' in brackets, because of course Malaysian Mandarin speakers are also valid native speakers of Mandarin).]
Yes, it wouldn't surprise me if this is precisely as you say - because of different definitions of what the boundaries of Bagan are. I think Amsterdam has an "official" population of 700K but if one adds the surrounding "villages" (which in some cases might would be indistinguishable from Amsterdam itself, as it's all built up), then it becomes 1.5 million.niuc wrote:Btw I find its statistics confusing. In Indonesian Wikipedia, its population is around 30K. But another source I read says that the population is around 10K
I keep intending to have my friend measure my tones - I think he uses a package called "praat" - but there are so many other things which need doing... I feel very awkward making any statements about my tone contours without measuring them properly. Hence all that "55 or 54 or 44" and "52 or 42 or 41". They're all just gut-feeling guesses, and could be way off (as evidenced by the fact that for most of my life, I thought my tone2 was falling, and it was only after I met Ah-bin that I realised otherwise).niuc wrote:I wonder how your PgHk T8 and Amoy T8 sound like...
Seriously, though, there's this gap somewhere btw perception and actual pitch. It's like we have this built-in decoder that tells us how to perceive each pitch contour, and maybe the whole E/SE Asian sprachbund shares the same decoder. On the other hand, people who only spoke atonal languages growing up don't have this decoder. Maybe they can acquire it, but most never really do. They try to understand tones in terms of pure pitch and they end up having a hell of a time with tones. A Japanese friend of mine was telling me that there would be a huge market for a product that could help native-atonal language learners learn tone. What do you-all think? Am I on to something with this post?Love this! LOLamhoanna wrote:Falling tones actually rose, rising tones fell, and even tones rose and fell. Psychologically, I couldn't handle all this, so I suppressed the memory till now.
.Not sure how I feel about this. In my (beginners') Mandarin class, 4 years ago, in Amsterdam, about half the people were European, and the other half were Chinese of "dialect descent" (Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka) who had been born in the Netherlands. Most of this latter group probably spoke their native sinitic variety better than I do Hokkien, but all of them had quite bad mastery of Mandarin tones too. Not as bad as the Europeans, I have to admit, but still pretty awful. One of the reasons I stopped going to evening classes in Mandarin was that it was so discouraging to hear people who had been learning Mandarin for 3-4 years still completely murdering the tones. [These days I hang around with sinologists occasionally, and they generally have quite good (even VERY good) tones. The difference probably being that these people started Mandarin in their late teens; are probably gifted at languages (otherwise they wouldn't have done a university degree in Chinese); have spent 4 years full-time study working at the language; and have spent a minimum of 1-2 years in the PRC or Taiwan. In contrast, the people in evening classes are generally older than their mid-30's; are not particularly gifted at languages; only work on the language in their spare time, after work; and have spent a more limited time in the PRC or Taiwan.] So, even taking into account the fact that the latter group are working at a huge disadvantage, compared to the sinologists, it would appear that even the ones speaking a sinitic variety natively don't have that much benefit from it, when it comes to accurately acquiring Mandarin tones.amhoanna wrote:It's like we have this built-in decoder that tells us how to perceive each pitch contour, and maybe the whole E/SE Asian sprachbund shares the same decoder. On the other hand, people who only spoke atonal languages growing up don't have this decoder. Maybe they can acquire it, but most never really do. They try to understand tones in terms of pure pitch and they end up having a hell of a time with tones.
I think the difference between tone 2 and tone 1 is not just that tone 2 is slightly higher - eg 54/53 rather than 44/33. It is also that the time that is spent at the highest point (5) is very short, whereas tone 1 is distinctly level and sustained. As we have recently realised, some people in Penang pronounce it as 45/35 and some pronounce it as 54/53.SimL wrote:That's very interesting. My tone 1 is also [33], and I used to think that my tone 2 is [51] or [52], but Ah-bin has pointed out to me that it's very level - 55 or 54 or 44. This explained something which had puzzled me for a long time: I used to wonder what the difference between Amoy "ho2" (= "good") and a PgHk "ho2" was. They sounded different to me, and I couldn't work out the difference, because I thought of them both as "high-falling". Now, I think that Amoy is 52 or 42 or 41, whereas PgHk is 55 or 54 or 44, i.e. high(ish)-level or high(ish)-slightlyfalling (something like that).
If my tone 2 is indeed [44], then perhaps this is more similar to what your Malaysian friends say, when they pronounce Klang with tone 1 (= [33]).
I think I made another point, which was that the Mandarin tone 1 (55) is higher than the Mandarin tone 4 (42), whereas in Hokkien tone 2 (53) is distinctly higher than tone 1 (44).[BTW, as a related but side issue, I seem to remember that Andrew once pointed out that the (standard) Mandarin tone 4 - which I tend to think of as "the same" as both Amoy and PgHk tone 2 - "starts higher, and falls more sharply than most Malaysian Mandarin speakers realise" (I put 'standard' in brackets, because of course Malaysian Mandarin speakers are also valid native speakers of Mandarin).]
Ah, thanks. Slightly different from what I thought, though I see how what I thought could have been confused with what you said. Sorry - forgetful me!AndrewAndrew wrote:I think I made another point, which was that the Mandarin tone 1 (55) is higher than the Mandarin tone 4 (42), whereas in Hokkien tone 2 (53) is distinctly higher than tone 1 (44).
Ok, very interesting. Well, hopefully, when it is released as a dissertation, you can post a link to it here, and perhaps discuss it in more detail at that time.AndrewAndrew wrote:I have been forwarded a copy of the dissertation that looked into the Penang tone structures (in particular 35/53 variation in tone 2) using Praat, but it is fundamentally flawed, and I'm not sure I have permission to distribute it.