A site teaching Hokkien

[SimL]

How do you explain the taiwanese sayings such as 'phai sing tay' etc which are not used in MY/SG ?

Wait a minute, I rarely hear "phi khi" in Penang. It's always been "seng te" in my variant. Do most people say "phi khi" in your area ? Ask around Penang, it's at least 80% as "seng te", at least among everyone I know.

I agree with aokh. I'd never heard of "phi khi" (i.e. wasn't even aware it was used in other parts of Malaysia). In Penang we (i.e. my family) say only "seng te" - we have "khi seng te" (= "to get angry"), "ho seng te" (= "good tempered"), "phaiN seng te" (= "bad tempered"). I see that a number of other people familiar with Penang Hokkien - Mark and Ah-bin - have also confirmed that "seng te" is the common Penang phrase.

As I said (and Andrew also observed), his pronunciation of English is very Malaysian.

[SimL]

On that note, my observation is that in Penang, there is an almost-equal distribution of speakers who pronounce words like 電, 現 and 連 with the -ie- diphthong vs. those who merge it as a -æ- vowel. As to how I personally handle it, for Romanisation purposes I adopt the more conservative approach and retain the -ie- diphthong, but when I actually speak it (never really thought seriously about it until now), I find myself sitting somewhere in between both extremes, i.e. the words come out something like a 'weak' -eæ- diphthong!

Hi Mark,

Thanks for this. Indeed, I say (only) "tiEn" for 電, but either "hiEn-tioh" or "hεn-tioh" (= "saw", the past tense of "see"). Up to now, I thought that "hεn" was 见, but apparently, it's 现.

---

As to the "-iə-" (non-Penang) vs. "e" (Penang), I wonder to what extent "-iə-" really is Amoy, and "e" (only) Penang. The reason I wonder this, is that the Hokkien Bible (which I've always believed to more or less reflect standard Amoy) doesn't use "-iə-", and only uses "e" (not just for specific words, but uniformly throughout). For example, the title is "sin-ku-iok e seng-keng". My non-Penang maternal relatives always pronounced this "siəng-kiəng", and I've always wondered whether that was their non-Amoy influence (of the maternal relatives, only my maternal grandmother was really from Amoy, all the others were from - considerably - outside, namely, hui-uaN).

Can anyone give a definitive answer to this question, which I've wondered about for YEARS.

[SimL]

Here's another clip, from a different source.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dF-d7Ms98c&NR=1

The first time through, I couldn't understand most of it. The second time through, I understood that he was explaining the usage of "u" and "bo", but the subtleties of the distinctions escaped me (I mean the ones between slightly different tones of "u", between slightly different tones of "bo". But the little bit about 3/4 along the clip, about "ciah bo, phah-me u" was ok for me .

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Sim,

Based on my personal experience in Penang, I hear both -ie- and -æ- for words that end with -n, but for words that end with -ng (e.g. 聖經), the vowel component would invariably be just -e-, not (or, I should say, very rarely) -iə-. Once again, I would be inclined to attribute it to what I call the 'lazy tongue' phenomenon in dialect/creole evolution.

As to whether it is really a 廈門 A-Múiⁿ or 惠安 Hŭi-Uāⁿ characteristic: There is a good book (if a very dry read) by 李如龍 titled 閩語研究, which extensively tabulates the pronunciation patterns of the various 閩 sub-dialects (down to the respective towns). I do not have my copy of it on me at the moment, but once I do, I will dig out what I can find on your -e- vs. -iə- enquiry - unless someone else in the Forum also has a copy of it on-hand.

On the subject of hiEn-tioh / hεn-tioh: I recall reading a commentary in one of the Classical Chinese texts that 現 and 見 were interchangeable once upon a time, which therefore does not make your usage implausible.

Cheers,
Mark

[niuc]

性地 sing3-te7 is the native word in my variant too, although some also use 脾氣 phi3-khi3 due to Mandarin influence. 當代泉州音字彙 list 地 as te7 for certain "combinations" including 性地, and tue7 for others. In my variant 地 is usually tue7, but occasionally can be te7 such as 地址 tue7/te7-ci2. Interestingly it is always sing3-te7 for 性地, as in conversation I would always think of sing3-tue7 as 聖地.

Sim, it is interesting that Penangites use 現 in "hεn-tioh" to mean "saw" (-> see), sounds "classical"! So far I have never heard it in my variant, but only 看着 khua*3_tio0 or 見着 ki*3_tio0. We use hian7 to mean to appear.

About E-mng/Amoy, I have never been there but from those so called "Amoy programs" such as "Jesus Film in Amoy language" (http://www.jesusfilm.org/film-and-media/watch-the-film), I also hear the same pronunciation as described by Sim. Again, same as Sim, I also have wondered for years why POJ writes Amoy "-iəng" as "-eng" while Cantonese romanisation has "-ing" but pronounced as "-eng"!

[SimL]

Hi Mark and niuc,

Thanks a lot for these explanations and observations.

It is indeed "strange" than Penang Hokkien uses "hiEn" in this way: "wa ca-huiN kui jit bo hEn-tioh i" (= "I didn't see him all day yesterday") would be a quite normal sentence. That's why I had always thought that it was 見. Mark's explanation about 現 and 見 being interchangeable makes a lot of sense in this context. I also found the "te/tue" stuff in niuc's variant very interesting.

Guess both niuc and I look forward to more information on the "-e-" vs. "-iə-" question.

[xng]

I agree with aokh. I'd never heard of "phi khi"

Coincidentally, I watched 'Lau phik Oon' , a taiwanese serial on TV today and he did say 'Phi Khi' so it is not unique to southern Msia hokkien .

[Ah-bin]

Congratulations xng! Youve made a complete fool of yourself two threads running now!

First you wrote:

No, he's not Malaysian/Singaporean, he's either Taiwanese or Fujianese.

and then we found out his home was in Malaysia...

Then

How do you explain the taiwanese sayings such as 'phai sing tay' etc which are not used in MY/SG ?

then we found out that they are used in Malaysia (at least), just not used within your tiny sphere of knowledge...

and then the best one is:

Coincidentally, I watched 'Lau phik Oon' , a taiwanese serial on TV today and he did say 'Phi Khi' so it is not unique to southern Msia hokkien .

Doesn't that prove you wrong in the first place? I thought you said "phay sing tay" (sic.) was the Taiwanese way of saying it. Plus, what is the point of quoting Sim? Sim's quote continues on to say "(i.e. wasn't even aware it was used in other parts of Malaysia)" he wasn't even presuming to talk about Taiwan. Most forum members don't make strong assertions about things they know nothing about. You seem to do it on a regular basis.

[amhoanna]

I was taught (by myself ) to say /iə/. I didn't realize for a long time that some "real Hoklo speakers" in Taiwan use /i/ and /e/. If they do, there's a good chance other elements of their patois will be different from what I learned too, so I'll be so hard put to understand them that I won't have time to make note of their /e/ or /i/. As far as I can tell, all Coanciu- and Amoy-based areas use /iə/. The dominant dialect that's come up during the last few decades is a Coanciu+Ciangciu mix and seems to mostly use /iə/.

A lot of people under 40, esp women, speak Hoklo with a thick Mandarin accent. These people usually use /i/. But I think there's also people who use /i/ for "legitimate" reasons.

On my trip to Penang several years back, I was bowled over by the Penang /e/. Subjectively, it has a brash, extroverted feel. Someday I'll talk that way too.

In at least some dialects of Teochew, the equivalent sound is /ei/. Pretty cool, huh.

[amhoanna]

I've had the same confusion as Niuc about Cantonese. I think this goes to a literary/colloquial contrast in Cantonese. A lot of words are -ing in lit, but -eng in col. In spoken Cantonese the lit and col readings are interchangeable, although casual conversation seems to skew toward -eng (I'm not sure), and sometimes only the lit reading is allowed (proper names, etc.).

We always see -eng in "colloquial-only" words, though, such as "leng"...