Some "missing" expressions in Penang Hokkien

[Ah-bin]

Sim very kindly wrote some comments on the translation I did from Classical Chinese into Hokkien, and brought up two expressions I have noticed often go missing from the speech of the listeners to the Penang Hokkien Podcast.

#)"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.

#) "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.

I have noticed that both of these expressions tend to get replaced with English "no matter" and "from". The chêng is interesting in any case, having only half of the semantic range of the related Mandarin 從, in that it seems only to be used for expressions dealing with times, not those about places, which use tòa (or tī in other types of Hokkien) to indicate "from" a place. Interesting also that "from" seems to be used only to replace this chêng and not to replace tòa.

The other one I noticed is "that's why....." I hear things like "That's why i bô lâi". I have no idea what the natural Penang Hokkien expression for this is, I would guess "In-ùi á-né-khóan...." four syllables versus two, perhaps that's why "that's why" wins out.

The other one I have commented on before was "before" which is not just lexical borrowings but also syntactic, as the Hokkien idiom elsewhere requires that its equivalent "í-chêng" is placed at the end of the clause. I am suspicious that "í-chêng" is in fact a Mandarinism, as (as far as I am aware) Penang Hokkien tends to prefer "not yet" or "about to" constructions using á-bōe + verb (maybe similar to Malay "belum" constructions?) or beh + verb + ê-sî.

Before wá khòaⁿ tióh i "Before I saw her" Before wá chhut khì ê-sî "Before I went out"

When you get all of these together in one phrase with other lexical borrowings the result ends up being more English than Hokkien:

"That's why before wá ū internet ê-sî...." but it isn't like that all the time.

[amhoanna]

Other words used in TW:

cū 自 (time only)
ùi (place and time; might need a native speaker to confirm that it can be used for time)
tùi (place only; poss. time as well; often written as 對/对)
àn/ān (place only)
cêng 从 (time only)
cūciông 自从 (time only; literary)

Ùi and àn can also be used to be mean "to; toward".

ān: poss. cognate to Cantonese wan (sounds like 運)?

***

Not sure if ícêng is a Mandarism per se, but for sure people who favor Mandarin also use ícêng way more often than others.

A more native/colloq. word would be cìncêng. In some contexts, khahcá and ícá would work. TW Hoklo uses khahcá heavily.

"Khahcá hò͘ⁿ, hiàngsî goán ahboē ū oānglú/bānglō͘..."

Another interesting word is coâⁿ'á, a contraction of "cū ánne", meaning "hence/thence".

And lastly the "m̄ ciah" construction. "In lāubú teh bô êng bô beh chap i, i m̄ ciah lâi kā goá sainai." Not 100% sure about the use of kā here.

[Ah-bin]

Thanks for these Amhoanna!

I don't even know how to say "Luckily I saw him before he saw me." In pure Hokkien!

The best I can manage is "Hó-kha-chài wá khoàⁿ tióh i before i khoàⁿ tióh wá" 好佳哉我看著伊伊看著我

[amhoanna]

I might say:

Kacài sī goá seng khoàⁿ tio̍h i, m̄ sī i seng khoàⁿ tio̍h goá.

OR

Kacài i ahboē khoàⁿ tio̍h goá, goá tō seng khoàⁿ tio̍h i.

How would U-all native speakers say it?

I wonder if this would work:

"Kacài sī goá khoàⁿ tio̍h i tāiseng." I like the sound of that but I'm not sure if it's right, esp. up north in Hokkiàn/TW.

[AndrewAndrew]

I might say:

Kacài sī goá seng khoàⁿ tio̍h i, m̄ sī i seng khoàⁿ tio̍h goá.

OR

Kacài i ahboē khoàⁿ tio̍h goá, goá tō seng khoàⁿ tio̍h i.

How would U-all native speakers say it?

I wonder if this would work:

"Kacài sī goá khoàⁿ tio̍h i tāiseng." I like the sound of that but I'm not sure if it's right, esp. up north in Hokkiàn/TW.

Somewhat like Amhoanna, I would guess 'Ho-ka-cai goa khoan--tioh i e-si, i koh ah-boe khoann--tioh goa' or 'Ho-ka-cai goa khoann--tioh i thau-seng.'

[SimL]

Somewhat like Amhoanna, I would guess 'Ho-ka-cai goa khoan--tioh i e-si, i koh ah-boe khoann--tioh goa' or 'Ho-ka-cai goa khoann--tioh i thau-seng.'

I concur totally with Andrew's 2 formulations. Again, I would not have been able to arrive at them myself, but seeing them, they strike me as exactly how this would/should be said in Penang Hokkien.

From Andrew's response, I infer (as in the case of my own usage), that Penang Hokkien requires the "ho" in "ho-ka-cai". With little knowledge of characters, I can only add that I have never pronounced the middle syllable as "ka", always as "kai" (could be unetymological, and purely the influence of the diphthong in "cai").

"That's why before wá ū internet ê-sî...."

ROTFL! But ("sadly" - I suppose - if one is a purist), this is *indeed* how members of my family would say it... But, true or not, even Sim the non-prescriptivist linguist would have to acknowledge that this "isn't really Hokkien anymore...".

[AndrewAndrew]

Re the "That's why" construct - I suspect proper Hokkien would require repetition of the preceding sentence, e.g. "Hoo lang mee liau, i tu mai khi lo!", or perhaps "An-ne khoan, i tu mai khi lo!"

[Ah-bin]

Thanks very much for the answers. It's easy to see how exposure to English can start to deeply affect Hokkien syntax!

[SimL]

This is not strictly on topic (actually, it's the diametric opposite of the topic***), but I'll put it here anyway.

Ah-bin and I were talking about the fact that the expression "ma1-nia2-ku2" (= "a short time") exists in Penang Hokkien. Do other variants have it? Anyone (Mark?) care to take a guess at what the TLJ for it might be (the last syllable is obviously "久", I mean the first two). Maybe it's not even Sinitic.

***: this topic is supposedly for expressions which are missing from Penang Hokkien, but my question is about a Penang Hokkien expression (possibly) missing from other forms of Hokkien .

[amhoanna]

In TW there's a word ba̍knih'ákú (bak8-nih4-a2-ku2) that means a short time, like the English "(in) the blink of an eye".