Another Way Out

[xng]

Please read the entire article in its full and proper context, and not just paragraph #5 in isolation to support the claim. For your information, I have also read this article before.

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As I mentioned previously, it proposes a few origins, you read carefully this time.

'Undocumented' doesn't mean it is disproved and false. Is there any historical documentation as to the origin of 'gwai lou' or 'huan na' ? These are also undocumented cases, are there proof it originated from who and which year ? Sometimes, the origin is so simple that it need not be documentated.

Just like are there any documentation of origin of 'wah lau eh' ?

I have already cited a few reasons why kalinga couldn't be the possible origin but nobody wanted to listen ?

Another reason is this, why is kalinga not translated to ka ling ga ? why is the ga lost when the malays can pronounce it quite correctly.

Look at all these indian/sanskrit word borrowed into malay language ie. as ra ma (ma was not lost), sau da ra (ra is not lost, from sodara).

http://veda.wikidot.com/malay-words-sanskrit-origin

I don't want to keep arguing, I am already tired, let's agree to disagree. At least you don't act as uncivilised as Ah-bin.

Just like some people believe in buddhism, some people believe in christianity etc , we can argue till the end of time and yet there won't be an agreement between the two of us.

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
As I mentioned previously, it proposes a few origins, you read carefully this time.

You can rest assured that I have. Three times. My understanding of what the author intended stands.

xng wrote:
I have already cited a few reasons why kalinga couldn't be the possible origin but nobody wanted to listen ?

I don't want to keep arguing, let's agree to disagree.

And as to why nobody seems to want to listen to you, have you considered that it is simply because they have exercised their right to agree to disagree with you?

End note:
This is already going beyond the boundaries of Hokkien, and were it not because, like Ah-bin, I felt the need to put history in its proper perspective, not to mention rescue Mr. Yoga's well-intentioned article from gross public mis-representation, I would not bother quite as much. I think I have beaten the stuffings out of this topic enough already - from here, I will let the other Forum members read the articles, interpret them on their own terms and logic, and judge for themselves.

[amhoanna]

宜蘭 Gi7-lan5 Hokkien sounds like Penang, e.g. 門 is mui5 instead of mng5 (http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict/cuankho.jsp?no=154).

About the term "hoan-(n)a" or "huan-lang", we usually use it to refer to Indonesian's (including Malaysian) guan5-cu7-bin5 原住民 "native residents" (allow me to put the TLJ here, as Amhoanna may be on his way to SE Asia or further ). It seems not really applied to Thai, though we say they look like "huanlang". When we see Taiwanese aborigines on tv, we refer to them as "Alisan-lang", though we know Taiwanese Hokkiens used to call them "huanna". O yeah, we call Native Americans 'ang5-huan1'. Surely huan1 sounds offensive, except for Amhoanna! I had a Batak classmate in Bagansiapiapi who could speak Hokkien well as he grew up there, and he called Malays (and may be also Javanese) 'huan1-lang5' assuming the term applied only to them and not Bataks. He was partially true as we often referred to Bataks as 'ba5-ta8-lang5'.

U guys really call them "Alisan lang"? Wow!

I think Hoklo (and Sino languages in general) aren't really comfortable talking about ethnicity: what is "Tnglang"? Who is Tnglang? Etc. But the word "hoanna" and how it's used ... is a glimpse into what's really going on in people's heads. I think it's safe to say that, for whatever reason, Vietnamese people are also not considered hoanna by the Hoklosphere.

[amhoanna]

I thought I'd also mention that a lot of street signs in the county of Gîlân are romanized in Hoklo, and I don't think I've ever met anyone from Gîlân who wasn't comfortable talking in Hoklo. I heard someone say on TV the other day that just as Heungsaan / Chungsaan (Sun Yat-sen's hometown) is a 反地 in China (a cradle for revolution), Gîlân serves that role in Taiwan.

[niuc]

U guys really call them "Alisan lang"? Wow!

Yes!

I think Hoklo (and Sino languages in general) aren't really comfortable talking about ethnicity: what is "Tnglang"? Who is Tnglang? Etc. But the word "hoanna" and how it's used ... is a glimpse into what's really going on in people's heads.

Sorry, I don't quite get you. Care to elaborate?

I think it's safe to say that, for whatever reason, Vietnamese people are also not considered hoanna by the Hoklosphere.

You are right, at least in my variant.

O yeah, gi7-lan5 in my previous posting should be gi5-lan5, I realise this when reading your correct spelling, thanks!

[amhoanna]

I think Hoklo (and Sino languages in general) aren't really comfortable talking about ethnicity: what is "Tnglang"? Who is Tnglang? Etc. But the word "hoanna" and how it's used ... is a glimpse into what's really going on in people's heads.


Sorry, I don't quite get you. Care to elaborate?

What I mean is this: ask someone, "What's a Tnglang?" And they won't know. They might not understand the question unless U start using examples, e.g. "Is 阿妹 a Tnglang? Why / why not?" They might even think U're crazy.

The word Tnglang itself in Hoklo might even be a Cantonism. The word doesn't exist in Taiwan, and I remember blogger Lîm Kiànhui (from Hokkiàn) using the word "Thn̂g-lâng" in a way that suggested that it's not current in Hokkiàn either.

But ask someone what's a hoanná, and U'll get straight answers.

The word has been localized in Taiwan and the South Seas. I'm talking about "hoanná" in its original usage. I'm guessing people in Bânlâm still use the word in its original sense of non-Han. I remember reading that during Bêng era some men (some Bêngs ) from the Hokkiàn coast would sail down to points west of Macau, get with the non-Han, and over time start doing as the hoannás do. (Some might wanna refer to the thread talking about how much of that zone was all hoanná up till not too long ago, with a scholarly reference provided by Ah-bin.) The scribes definitely described the hoanná as 番, with 熟番 and 生番. Not sure if they said the magic word 入番 though.

In the epic Hoklo novel Hiongsú Pó͘kì 鄉史補記 by Tân Lûi 陳雷 (TWese writer, not to be confused with the singer), which I kind of assume is historically accurate, some characters (Taiwanese, 19th cen. and earlier) throw around terms like ângmo͘ hoan and Ji̍tpún hoan. But in the last hundred yrs, the word has "shrunk" in TW to mean only "Alísan lâng" , although--and I haven't "tested" this--U could probably refer to Javanese, Tagalogs, Ilokanos, etc. as hoanná too and them TWese cngkhalângs would catch your drift.

But I'm guessing that nobody has ever called a Vietnam Viet a "hoanná"

in Hoklo.

Consider the similarity in religion (Buddhism, Mácó͘, Koankong, etc.), language, appearance, customs, and the fact that "Annam" sinicized before Bânlâm.

Ask someone, "Oa̍tlâm lâng kám sī Tn̂glâng?" and U might get some funny looks. But ask them, "Oa̍tlâm lâng kám sī hoanná?" and if the other person is thoughtful, and is comfortable with the original meaning of the word, they might say, "You know what, they're not!"

This post is mostly conjecture.

p/s The name Gîlân actually comes from a non-tonal Austronesian language. It's possible that the tones in Hoklo seeped in from the written form. Take 花蓮, for instance. The gahmen and white collar types call it Hoaliân [when they bother to speak Hoklo], but a lot of cngkhalângs and blue-collar types call it Hoalian.

[Ah-bin]

Now you're getting into really interesting territory. I'd like to check through the records of the Chinese chamber of commerce in Batavia in the 19th century to test out which terms they are using, but I didn't think Tng-lâng was just a Cantonese thing as Tng-soaⁿ was used in older Taiwanese, and the Japanese were using Tōjin 唐人 even thought they had very little intercourse with the Cantonese (I believe Ningpo was the port through which they were permitted to trade). In written texts they used to just make a distinction between jîn 人 and barbarians (Bân or Î in the south as general terms, there were more specific terms). Hoan 番 was not used until after Tông 唐 times I think. I say "I think" because I usually only read Tông and pre-Tông texts in detail for these things, but there might be something from the late Tông I have missed. It certainly isn't a classical term (Classical meaning Chiu Dynasty).

I actually was very happy in Amoy to be referred to as Hoan-á!

When the kingdom of Đại Việt 大越 occupied only the north of modern Vietnam, Chinese texts such as 嶺外代答 Lêng-gòe-tāi-tap and 宋史 Sòng Sú refer to them as Kau-jîn 交人 from Kau-chí 交趾 (name applied to this area from the Han) or An-lâm-jîn 安南人 from An-lâm 安南 (Name from the Tông). The name Kau-chí 交趾 was so common it passed into Malay as Kuchi, then into Portuguese as Cochi, and ultimately Cochinchina, which the French used paradoxically as their name for the southern third of Vietnam.

The Việt now usually use the term Kinh 京 for themselves in opposition to all the other ethnic groups, though I don't know when they started using it. In a 19th century geography (I have it in my office, but I forget the name) they even used Han 漢 to refer to themselves, in opposition to the various 'barbarians'. In Vietnamese vernacular texts they even have their own word for "Southern Barbarian" which is Mọi written in Nôm as either (犭每) or (每蠻). The character 蠻 itself was used to write the name Màn (I think the tone is right, the Sino-Vietnamese reading of the character is Man) which referred specifically to peoples known variously as Yao or Mien. The traditional vernacular name for Chinese is T́́àu, which is homophonous with the word for "Boat" they also used to use 北 Bắc "northern" for things to do with China.

I have heard that In about a fortnight there will be two articles published in the online "Journal of Chinese Southern Diaspora Studies" specifically relating to the Chinese in Tonking in Tông times. But I'll keep you up-to-date on that.

[Mark Yong]

Ah-bin wrote:
The traditional vernacular name for Chinese is T́́àu, which is homophonous with the word for "Boat"...

I believe the character for that is 艚 (the boat, I mean).

Ah-bin wrote:
they also used to use 北 Bắc "northern" for things to do with China.

If I recall correctly from Lynn Pan's The Encyclopædia of the Chinese Overseas, the chapter on Vietnam mentions the term chu khac (叔客?) for the Chinese from China (to distinguish from the local Vietnamese Chinese).

[Ah-bin]

Thanks for adding that Mark,

I have always been a bit suspicious of its application to "Chinese" was it used as a homophone, or was the word for Chinese "Boat people"? Because Nôm orthography is notoriously unstable, it could have been either. I suppose most contact with the Chinese from the Ming onwards was by boat. But then some texts write it (華曹) or the other way around (曹華) and therefore distinguish it from "boat people".

Unfortunately I haven't read widely enough in early Nôm texts to find out when they first started using it. There are some dictionaries in the library that give quotes from texts, so I may go and have a look some time.

I think it may have been 北客 bắc khác in the novel 皇黎一統志. I can't remember seeing chu khac, I guess it is 主客 in the reversed order typical of Vietnamese, where the chu has lost the meaning of "master" just a respectful term, it retains this sense when it is read chúa, which was the older borrowing of the word from EMC. (BTW 叔 is read "thúc" in SV)

It's intereseting that the Chinese in Hai Phong were mainly Hokkien, at least that's what I was told by a Vietnamese who studied them.

[amhoanna]

I just came back at this thread from the beginning to try and figure out "How did we get HERE?" And it all started with a play about yams.

Australia / NZ, or S. America? (Or "just" 臺南 .)

Right now Siâmlô. But soon maybe Sùsúi/Sìrsúi and points east, and then beyond to places that don't have "old Hokkien" names.

guan5-cu7-bin5 原住民 "native residents"

Right! Actually a Han-centric term, like 蛮, 夷, 番 etc. Every group that lived on Taiwan "on the eve of" Han settlement c. 1600 is now regarded as "original residents", regardless of when they got there themselves, i.e. regardless of evidence that some "original resident" groups have been there longer than other "original residents". The Yami on Botel Tobago are the clearest example. They may've arrived on Botel Tobago from the Bataan Islands around the same time the Hoklos arrived on Phêⁿ'ô͘. But guess which group are "original residents".

Amhoanna, how could she call my grandfather (he was from Quemoy/Kim1-mng5) ou1-a2-han5-ci5!

Right, exactly!! Just the ROC doing what it does best, brainwashing its captive audience.

I've known a handful of people from Amoy and Quemoy via TW, though, and qualitatively there is a difference. The Amoy natives were businessmen and bureaucrats--educated KMT people. Their families tend to be Mandarin-speaking now. I know one family in Tâipak where the Amoy patriarch forbade the use of Hoklo under his roof. The Quemoy natives in TW seem to be mostly just "country folk in the big city" and identify with Hoklo culture and the language.