Nā…nā 若…若 and Jû...Jû... 愈...愈....

[Ah-bin]

Hello everybody....here I am again to presume on native speakers to tell me whether these sentences are natural northern Malaysian Hokkien. They use the Nā A nā B 若A若B construction the more A, the more B.

I'm also aware that people use Jû A Jû B 愈 A 愈 B as well, as far as the podcast goes, I've heard people use both, so I have no idea which one is more common. Actually I think this has been discussed before a few years back, so I'll go and look for that.

i lim nā chē i nā ài-khùn 伊啉若儕伊若愛睏 the more he drank the sleepier he became;

chhù nā tōa wá nā su-káh 厝若大我若思合 the bigger the house, the more I like it;

míh-kiàⁿ nā tiⁿ wá nā mài chiáh 物件若甜我若(勿愛)食 the sweeter things are the less I want to eat them

Nā-lâi nā-… 若來…若 – more and more (a different construction)

chhe•h nā-lâi nā-kùi liáu 冊若來若貴了 books have been getting more and more expensive

If there is something unnatural here, I'd like to know, as I would like to have the most natural-sounding examples for the dictionary (106 pages long now, or 120 if on A6 paper and smaller font!). I've put liáu in the last clause as well. My feeling is that liáu can't be used in the Nā A nā B 若A若B construction, but can be used at the end of a nā-lâi nā-… 若來…若 sentence.

By the way, does anyone like my characters for su-káh 思合? They fit the sound perfectly and as for the meanings they are "thoughts" and "suit"...it suits my way of thinking = I like it. (just edited this because I realised actually the tone of 合 is actually im-jíp 陰入 not iâuⁿ-jíp 陽入, so not a perfect fit after all!)

[aokh1979]

愈 A 愈 B
若 A 若 B

They both mean the same and they both wide equally widely used in Penang. I myself am a 愈 A 愈 B person. I use 若 A 若 B naturally too but less often.

liáu can of course be used in both syntax, eg:

物件愈用愈了 ＝ The more one uses it, the lesser it lasts

And "suka" is not su-kàh, it's su-kah.

I use [`] for iôⁿ-jìp because there are 3 types of jìp-siaⁿ in Penang Hokkien.

國 kok
國家 kòk-ka (where o follows similar tone from lòo to loo)
國家 kók-ka (where o sounds higher, like in lóo)

[Ah-bin]

Thanks very much Aokh

物件愈用愈了 ＝ The more one uses it, the lesser it lasts

Actually this one is a different meaning of 了, a verb meaning "to use up", I should have explained I was meaning the final particle 了 that indicates a new situation has occurred 無去了 (has gone missing), and the 了 suffixed to a verb that indicates completion 食了物件 (has eaten it up)

I use [`] for iôⁿ-jìp because there are 3 types of jìp-siaⁿ in Penang Hokkien.

This means I am going to have to relearn everything...and rewrite everything too I often wondered why you wrote the tone like that, I thought it was just preference for the grave accent.

國 kok
國家 kòk-ka (where o follows similar tone from lòo to loo)
國家 kók-ka (where o sounds higher, like in lóo)

I don't understand this explanation, though - is the same word 國家 pronounced two different ways? What are the contours? for 國 kok I would say 2, in 國家 kok-ka I would say it sandhis to 5. I don't know about the middle one at all. I thought the two jip tones only sandhied to each other in initial positions.

Is that
國 kok = 2
國家 kòk-ka 國= 3家 =33
and
國家 kók-ka 國 = 5 家=33?
Thanks very much in advance
Ah-bin

[aokh1979]

國 = kok, this one we all know, we have no issues
國家 = kòk-ka, like what spelt in normal Tailo, a straight-standing stick which I find it hard to type
國家 = kók-ka, like what I use, is a special case due to influence of Teochew and Cantonese

Most people may think we have the first 2 types of entering tones. I found the 3rd one.

You can benchmark with Teochew, it helps you understand more easily.

國家 is not pronounced the same in Hokkien and Teochew, listen carefully to the first character. The tone in Teochew is obviously higher.

kok, where o sounds similar to ō
kòk, where o sounds similar to o (same tone sandhi from ò to o)
kók, where o sounds similar to ó

You may think it's due to the emphasis, when one raises his voice to pronounce it. But the truth is, it exists in our daily conversation. It just trips off our tongue easily and that's why it's not as easy to mimic native speaker of Penang Hokkien.

There are words we pronounce solely with the higher tone, for instance, a word we use with children which many of us may have forgotten. When a baby falls down on the floor, or refuses to wake up from bed, parents usually carry their hands and say "út-tshāng" or "ít-tshāng" as they help the little one stand up.

I have a few more examples but they're not with me at the moment.

[Ah-bin]

Thanks very much......you do realise you'll have to go through the dictionary and help me out with these? Haha....only if you feel like it.

國家 = kòk-ka, like what spelt in normal Tailo, a straight-standing stick which I find it hard to type

唔是汝一个儂爾！ Unless you have Taigi Unicode font you can't type it at all, and then no-one can read it when it's posted online!

Not having a native Teochew speaker beside me I have to rely on a few PRC books (潮州話一月通, the Cambodian Teochew article, and I'll have a look in the materials I have in my office) These ones say that 陰入 is 1 and 陽入is 5, which would be exactly the same as Amoy Hokkien. Of course, Penang Teochew is probably not the same as Swatow Teochew, just as PGHK differs from any kind of Hokkien spoken in China or Taiwan.

Thanks for the clearer explanation.

kok, where o sounds similar to ō = 21/1
kòk, where o sounds similar to o (same tone sandhi from ò to o) = 3
kók, where o sounds similar to ó = 5

So there are only a limited number of these very high tones, and they are confined to words that are spoken and not written? I am not even sure if they can be classified with the traditional tone system, kinf of like the mee high flat 55 tone you have mentioned before that is borrowed directly from Cantonese unmodified.

I'm going to listen extra carefully now to things, 國家 or words with a similar tone pattern should sound completely flat as 33+3. Actually, I think I've been saying it that way all along and just thinking I was saying 55+3. Just like I thought I was saying 25 for my second tone in Mandarin, when I was actually saying 323 - a dipping tone!

The way kòk sandhis to kok is quite ingenious....it also means I don't have to relearn everything!

[aokh1979]

Actually you have plenty of words to start with. In most cases, 陰入 can be tone-sandhied to 陽入 or the one I mention, let's call it 中入 for now.

You dun need a Teochew to verify, I remember you speak Cantonese. Cantonese has 3 入聲 anyway.

陰入 = 七 (sounds like the 中入 I mention)
中入 (derived from 陰入) = 八 (sounds like Hokkien 陽入)
陽入 = 六 (sounds like Hokkien 陰入)

Of course I am more than happy to help out with whatever dictionary you work on. In fact, I need your help on mine too. ^^

[niuc]

My variant also uses jû...jû... 愈...愈.... (lû/dû...lû/dû...), but the other one is ná...ná... (ST2). So it is nā (ST7) in Penang variant?

[amhoanna]

In TW, there's lú ... lú ..., jú ... jú ..., and ná ... ná ... ... and I think that's in order of most to least frequently heard.

I'm surprised that the tones of these things differ across dialects of Hoklo.

I think there are three jip tones in TW Hoklo too ... b/c there are glottal-stop-final imjip syllables w/ falling (high to low) RT, and other glottal-stop-final imjip syllables with high-level, clipped RT.

Aokh's explanation has me kind of confused. Would love to hear more.

國家 = kòk-ka, like what spelt in normal Tailo, a straight-standing stick which I find it hard to type

唔是汝一个儂爾！ Unless you have Taigi Unicode font you can't type it at all, and then no-one can read it when it's posted online!

I use a Mozilla extension called Transliterator (formerly ToCyrillic) to type POJ. All U gotta do is hit "8" and the stick shows up.

So U guys must see a lot of loānbé in my POJ?

[AndrewAndrew]

Aokh - can you give concrete examples?

Also, are you describing a phonemic difference, or just a difference in how different people pronounce the same words? I.e., some people in Penang pronounce 上 tone with a high rising tone |45| and some with a high falling tone |54|, but it makes no difference to the meaning.

As has been pointed out, there are two standard sandhi patterns for the 入 tones in standard Amoy:

-p/t/k:

|2| -> |5|
|5| -> |2|

-h:

|2| -> |53|
|5| -> |21|

So what you are describing could be e.g. 鴨 ah2 becomes ah53-puiN22

[Ah-bin]

As has been pointed out, there are two standard sandhi patterns for the 入 tones in standard Amoy:

-p/t/k:

|2| -> |5|
|5| -> |2|

-h:

|2| -> |53|
|5| -> |21|

I have always been under the impression that this -h tone change doesn't occur in Penang Hokkien and has been simplified into the same scheme as the -p-t-k tones, i.e. the Khe∙h in 客話 and 客儂 and the bah in 肉粽 do not alter to Khé∙ and bá (53) ike they do in Taiwan and Amoy.

The tiong-jíp 中入 in Cantonese is a variation of the im-jíp 陰入 that seems to occur only in words with back vowels like 國 kwok and 百 paak. I wonder if the distinction between high and middle entering tons goes something like that. It seems from Aokh's descriptions that it exists only in sandhied form.