SimL wrote:
Exactly the same with me. Actually, nowadays, whenever I start to feel irritated with the people who write (for example) "sni" (I start to feel irritated because this strategy doesn't work for syllables with no initial consonant), I console myself that the people who are doing it at least actually detect the difference between 詩 and 生
I agree with you. The subscript 'n' looks nice but I find it hard to type (usually just copy & paste); while 'sni' is worse than sinn, though I don't prefer the later either. If I remember correctly, some double the vowel (sii) to indicate nasal (or tone 5??). Your usage, e.g. siN or kuaN, is quite clear, but if due to some reasons all text are converted to small or all caps, the distinction will be gone.
BTW, niuc: How did you write the difference between 詩 and 生 when you first 'tried to spell Hokkien words in Indonesian version of Latin alphabets' ?
If I used 'nn', IMHO most Indonesian would think that it was still 'n' but pronounced longer. In handwriting, I used small circle (borrowing maru/handakuten in Japanese kana & temperature degree circle sign), but it is hard to type. So I used * (asteriks) as it looked a bit similar and a common sign on keyboard. So for the time being I still prefer to spell it as 'si*'. Btw, 'si~' looks nice too but the sign ~ looks more like tone indicator to me.
What I think is unique to the Chinese script (and related 'character' scripts) is that one forgets how to write even words which are "medium common" (just not very common), for which one fully knows their pronunciation, meaning, and usage. There are numerous anecdotes about this, like how, in a group of 3 (Chinese, Mandarin native-speaker) PhD students from Beijing University, all 3 were unable to remember how to write the 噴 of 噴嚏. Or how a Taiwanese university graduate couldn't remember how to write 雞.
Bingo! It is much easier to read 漢字 than to write. I didn't remember how to write
嚏 also, and many more! Recently I forgot how to write
屜, although it is quite simple. But I always remember how to write
鬱 (simplified to
郁), because I found it interesting and practised many many times. May be when we keep writing any character for certain times, we will remember it for a much longer time even if we hardly use it anymore.
Thanks. I felt a bit embarrassed at having asked this, as I checked up in Douglas on the weekend, and "sO" is quite clearly given there (and indeed, as 素). I should at least check in Douglas/Barclay before asking here on the Forum, but still, nice to have it confirmed, because even Douglas isn't 100% infallible (or at least some claims for characters might be subject to doubt or discussion).
No problem for me, as I often asked a question without checking further too, especially if the dictionary (hardcopy) or other sources are not readily near to me, including sometimes I am lazy to check online resources!
In Italian, "sentire" means any of "feel", "hear", "sense", "taste" (i.e. covers a whole range of perceptions/senses), and one has to work out which one is meant from context!
Ah, thanks, that's even broader than "rasa"! I can
sense "sentire" in sentiment & sentimental (sentimen & sentimental in Bahasa Indonesia).
The other way around, no native speaker of English, when hearing another native speaker of English say "That woman is my aunt", wonders whether the latter meant his "a i5" or his "a kO1". The obscurity/unclarity only exists from a Chinese speaker's point of view.]
Yes, so true!
Niuc: would you put "bok-ni" under "che" or "khiu" (if you hadn't heard your mother's opinion)?
I think I would incline towards khiu7, as nowadays most 木耳 (bok8-ni2 literally means
wood's ear 
) I ate are not very 脆 cher3, though some really are obviously crunchy.
Excellent, thanks. I had forgotten this word (we pronounce it "lun7", which is one of the alternatives you give). I use it indeed for "rubbery" (where there is absolutely no "crunchy" component). Exactly overcooked squid is "lun"!
Interesting! I thought Penang variant would have it as jun7. In my variant it is d/lun7 too.
And I think I'd be tempted to describe (overly tough) tough/rubbery/leathery bah-kuaN as "lun" rather than "khiu" (precisely because, for me, it lacks the crunchy aspect).
In my variant tough/rubbery ba4-kua*1 is also lun7 instead of khiu7. To me tough jellyfish also fits lun7 better than khiu7, but crunchy jellyfish is cher3. So it seems that khiu7 in my variant refers to food with too much flour.
