areca / betel / pinang / pinln̂g / punln̂g / 檳榔

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

Thanks for the photos. The silver one doesn't look anything like my image of what my father described to me (a sort of miniature chest-of-drawers, with the different compartments for the different things needed in betel-nut chewing). The gold one, although labelled as betel-nut related, looks like just a tea-set to me...

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

No idea, sorry. My father told me all of this in English, as the custom had all died out long before I was born. I'll try and remember to ask him though.

PS. Completely UNrelated to Hokkien, but I found this rather strange ASCII-art "icon/smiley" somewhere on the net: (๏̯͡๏).

[Ah-bin]

Many thanks for your praise Sim. I've only just noticed the post above your last one (I do that sometimes, missing bits and pieces in the middle). I'm actually going to take one of the comments and start a new thread with it. It's a pity we can't re-name threads sometimes. This one seems to have stuck to its topic, but "Another Way Out" has been all over the place!

[SimL]

>> "iōng gīn chò pi-léng".

One more on this one. I think this should be "gîn".

Often, I check my stuff on the etymology home page (which gives Hokkien readings for many characters), but today I got:

http://www.chineseetymology.org

has been hacked and distroyed.

It will be down until I figure out how to protect myself

richardsears2002@yahoo.com

Horrible! I deplore this act (and dread the thought that that might ever happen to the Minnan Forum). Why one earth would someone do that to such an uncontroversial site!