areca / betel / pinang / pinln̂g / punln̂g / 檳榔

[amhoanna]

I remember in 2003 there was some kind of international convention in Tâilâm and all the betel babes had to put clothes on. President's orders.

So much for building a national brand.

[amhoanna]

http://www.takaoclub.com/binlang/index.htm

And by the way wouldn't Kńgciu be Kúiⁿciu in PgHK?

[niuc]

Ah-bin, Sim & Amhoanna

Thanks for all the interesting info! It's quite an eye opener for me to learn that betel nut chewing was there in Southern China, and the word 檳榔 was already there in 12th century! I used to assume that it were borrowed from Malay "pinang" more recently... Was it from Malay or another Austronesian or what language, if that early?

According to www.zdic.net, 檳 refers to a kind of apple, so it seems to confirm that 檳榔 is a loan word (as mentioned in Chinese wikipedia). At http://www.zdic.net/cd/ci/14/ZdicE6Zdic ... 287124.htm (the right tab), it is also mentioned in 《红楼梦》第六四回：“妹妹有檳榔赏我一口吃。” The interesting point is that the novel "Dream of the Red Chamber" was written in mid 18th century and its author though born in Nanjing, grew up and spent most of his time in Beijing, far from Southern China. Or may be it was a "custom" in Nanjing also?

Yes, láu-hióh is "sirih" and I guess that pàng in this context should be "menghantar"/"mengantar". However, I have never heard of "menghantar sirih" (due to my ignorance, it seems!). And it totally escaped me (and many Indonesians, I guess) that "pinang" as a verb (in "meminang"/"dipinang", and noun "pinangan" -> marriage proposal) is from "pinang" areca nut! Surely we know both meaning, but I doubt how many would have noticed the correlation!

[Ah-bin]

Forgive me going into so much detail but I spent weeks back in 2007 obsessed with finding out as much as I could about the history of betel chewing in China. It's nice to spill the beans finally to people who are interested in it.

Ah yes, thanks for the Red Chamber reference Niuc, I had forgotten about that. Not that I had read it myself, but someone had told me it was mentioned in 紅樓夢 (wonder how to say that in Hokkien? There is a choice between literary Hông-lô•-bōng or vernacular Âng-lâu-bāng, I think I prefer the second!). I think it was my teacher, and that she said they exported dried betel up the coast. The fresh stuff goes off very quickly.

Thanks for all the interesting info! It's quite an eye opener for me to learn that betel nut chewing was there in Southern China, and the word 檳榔 was already there in 12th century! I used to assume that it were borrowed from Malay "pinang" more recently... Was it from Malay or another Austronesian or what language, if that early?

Actually the word was there even earlier than the twelfth century! The fourth century Lâm-hong chó-bók chōng 南方草木狀 noted it as a product of Lîm-íp 林邑 (Champa, or modern central Vietnam) and the Chams spoke an Austronesian language similar to Malay, so it could be from that language....unfortunately I can't track down the Cham word at the moment. Lâm-hong chó-bók chōng says it was also known as 賓門. A Chìn work Kóng-chiu-kì 廣州記 (don't know the date) notes another name for betel nuts in addition to 檳榔 for those that grow in the mountains which is 蒳子.

The betel vine was referred to as 扶留 pronounced pu-liu or something like that in Early Middle Chinese......and in Thai it's still "phluu". Hokkien dropped the first syllable and that is where the 荖 comes from!

and......

The Sino-Vietnamese reading of 檳榔 is tân lang, but the native word for chewing the nut is ăn trầu "to eat trầu" (also derived from 扶留, see they got the leaf and the nut mixed up too). They have a nice legend about the origin of betel, in which there are two characters (princes I think)....one called Tân and one called Lang!

[niuc]

Marvelous! Thank you, Ah-bin, please write more!

紅樓夢 is Âng-lâu-bāng in 台文-華文線頂辭典. In Bagansiapiapi it is Âng-lô-bāng, according to my mom, although 樓 is usually lâu (in my variant its literary reading is lô/lo5 instead of lô•/lor5).

[Ah-bin]

Looks like they weren't princes, but here is the story:

http://maisnow02.blogspot.com/2008/12/s ... a-nut.html

It was first recorded in the sixteenth century. The interesting thing is that by that time they seem to have forgotten that tân-lang was originally one word!

[amhoanna]

Way to go, Ah-bin! U keep writin' 'em, we'll keep readin' 'em. Did your findings and analyses ever find a place on the web?

On a related note, do U guys think the Hoklo spoken in some places (esp. TW, and the Straits in the past) has been affected by people constantly chewing betel? I used to say it as a joke, but it really seems that a lot of guys in TW always sound like they have a quid in their mouth when they're speaking Hoklo, even when they don't.

[SimL]

From the look of the silver betel boxes, the Babas and Nyonyas borrowed their chewing culture from the malays, rather than maintaining the Chinese tradition.

I think so too. When I was speaking with my parents on the weekend, I checked with my Dad the details of what I had written previously; and indeed I had remembered what he told me accurately. He added that he too thought that the practice was learnt from the Malays, because (he says) the bridegroom at a traditional Malay wedding ceremony ("bersanding") would chew betel nut for the (sometimes long) periods that he'd be sitting in the "ceremonial position". He also described to me in more detail about the "household item" which was commonly used in connection with betel-nut chewing (it sounds like the "silver betel boxes" you referred to) - namely, a sort of multi-compartment thingey, made of metal, with separate drawers for the betel-nut, the leaves, and the lime-paste. The drawer at the bottom (in the models he was familiar with) was for the "ka1-cek8" – a sort of guillotine / shaver / knife, which was used to cut thin slivers from the (apparently very hard) nut. He also added that his other great-aunts (i.e. the ones other than the "famous one who chewed betel-nut") did not - as a matter of *habit* - do it, but, occasionally at parties, they would, and that at major parties (particularly weddings) there would always be betel-nut offered to the guests who wanted it. This (he felt) was probably the reason for the curious term "pang-lau-hioh" for the wedding invitations.

My mother then chipped in with another story which I remembered well (as she has told it to me many times). When her father as a young man in his late teens or early twenties was "straight off the boat" from Hui-UaN, he was shocked to see "Indians spitting blood". He thought they were all dying of a very serious disease, but when he watched them closely, they continued to behave and function normally – doing heavy physical work and everything – so he was totally mystified!

I often wonder why the custom died out in China.

Perhaps because the red globs of spit everywhere were "slightly unaesthetic" ... ? [Of course, I'm willing to acknowledge that what is aesthetic or unaesthetic is very much a matter of cultural convention, but still...]

In TW, guys of any age will chew, but only women over a certain age will, and then only out in the country.

I think in VN it's mostly old women that chew.

In Vietnam now it is usually older women in rural areas who chew betel, but most people used to chew it in the past.

Curious, how in some of the societies where it’s practiced, it’s restricted to older women. My impression was that this was the case with the generation born around 1875 of my father’s great-aunts too, but this is one specific aspect which I unfortunately forgot to check with my Dad about.

Ah-bin: thanks for finding and posting all the references from Douglas, and the one from Barclay. Indeed, the Douglas entries conclusively prove that betel-nut chewing was quite common in Hokkien society in the second half of the 19th century. And, of course, your quotes from a work from 1180(!) support the case even more. Fantastic!

And it totally escaped me (and many Indonesians, I guess) that "pinang" as a verb (in "meminang"/"dipinang", and noun "pinangan" -> marriage proposal) is from "pinang" areca nut! Surely we know both meaning, but I doubt how many would have noticed the correlation!

I can well imagine this - as most native English speakers don’t realise that "parochial" comes from "parish", and "vicarious" from "vicar" .

Ah-bin: 紅樓夢 was Âng-lâu-bāng in the Penang of my youth as well.

On a related note, do U guys think the Hoklo spoken in some places (esp. TW, and the Straits in the past) has been affected by people constantly chewing betel? I used to say it as a joke, but it really seems that a lot of guys in TW always sound like they have a quid in their mouth when they're speaking Hoklo, even when they don't.

My vote is for "No, I don’t think this is likely". But thanks for bringing up this fascinating topic!

PS: Ah-bin, do you have any internet links to pictures of the "silver betel boxes", and if so, could you post them here? I'd like to check with my Dad how similar they are to the objects of his youth.

[Ah-bin]

Here is a beautiful silver betel set

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amsk/3137091917/

and a gold one too

http://www.flickr.com/photos/amsk/3137919954/

Lots of exquisite Baba treasures on this person's photostream!

What is "lime" in Hokkien? The oldest sources I have call it 古賁 or 吉賁.

[SimL]

"Canton is the most extreme, whether rich or poor, old or young, man or woman, from dawn until dusk [the people] are obsessed with chewing betel than eating meals. Rich people make silver plates to place them in, and the poor make them out of tin"

"Ka-ná Kn'g-chiu tē-it lī-hài, bô kóng sī hó-giáh ah-bô, lāu ah-sī siau-liân, ta-po a-sī cha-bó•, chêng chá-khí kàu kā àm-mê•, bô su-kah chiáh pūiⁿ, ka-ná giān chiáh pin-nn^g niā. Hó-giáh-lâng iōng gīn chò pi-léng lâi hē• pin-nn^g, bô-lui ê lâng iōng siah ê pi-léng."

Hi Ah-bin,

I am absolutely bowled over by the standard of your Hokkien! There are constructs you use which I wouldn't have ever thought of using - they make total sense to me, and sound like "good Penang Hokkien", but I myself would have been at a loss to produce them. And 95% of it sounds like *excellent* Penang Hokkien to me. So, thanks for this rendition!

Nevertheless..., a few adjustments I would make:

#) "Ka-ná Kn'g-chiu tē-it lī-hài". I would leave out "ka-ná". For me, with the "ka-ná", it says "Only Canton is the most extreme". And if the sense required "only", then I would say "ka-nā" rather than "ka-ná" (the latter suggest to me 橄欖, called in the Darwin of my youth "football plums" ***.
#) "bô kóng sī hó-giáh ah-bô". I would be tempted to say "bô kúan" (= literally "don't pay attention to" = "no matter"). I feel that the "sī" is also optional. Not wrong, just equally as good without.
#) "ta-po a-sī cha-bó•" should be "ta-po• a-sī cha-bó•".
#) "chêng chá-khí kàu kā àm-mê•". I would leave out the "chêng", but in this case, it's not a correction to your usage, but just a comment on my own: I don't know how to say "*from*" in Hokkien, in this temporal sense, so I just leave it out.
#) "ka-ná giān chiáh". I think this has to be "giàn", because of me, in non-final position, it alters its tone to tone1. So, I would pronounce the combination "giàn-chiáh" with tone1 on the first syllable (and hence making it tone3 in citation tone).
#) "iōng gīn chò pi-léng". I would just say "puâN" instead of "pi-léng", as "pi-leng" is a "saucer" rather than a "plate". Also, the tone of the second syllable is "pi-leng" (i.e. tone1) rather than "pi-léng" (though of course, as you undoubtedly know, it's a borrowed word from Malay "piring" anyway).

***: For the benefit of readers less familiar with Australia, this is because an Aussie Rules football is oval-shaped like a 橄欖. I found this so fascinating, because - before I got to Australia - I knew that "rugby" was 橄欖球 - "ka-ná-kiû" in Hokkien. So, obviously, the Hokkiens called the unfamiliar sport of "rugby" after something they were familiar with in their world, namely the 橄欖, whereas, conversely, the Darwinites called the unfamiliar sweet confection 橄欖 after something which they were familiar with in their world, namely, an Aussie Rules football. This parallelism really tickled my fancy at the age of 14. (And I rather suspect I've written about this here on the Forum years ago!)