Hoklo in Canto Land, reports from the field

[SimL]

It would be 領鐳 niaⁿ-lui for me.

Great to know. Thanks!

And I do make a very conscious effort to make the distinction between 跋到 poat-toh (topple/tumble over) and 【?】落 ka-laoh (fall/drop from higher level).

I too try, because of my mother's influence, but I often forget.

Do you use "théh" for the "taking of photographs"? AFAIK, the most common way to say "take a photo" in colloquial Penang Hokkien is "théh fò-tó", rather than "hip sÒ-éng"...

Another set of examples are I can think of are the different ways of saying 'hot' (as in the temperature). I use as many as three regularly:
1. 熱 joak33 - for ambient temperature
2. 燒 sio33 - for hot matter (solids/liquids)
3. 烘 hang33 - this one I use in special circumstances, e.g. nowadays when I turn up the thermostat in my car during the current (unusually) cold autumn months. I would tell my friend "與伊烘烘一下" "hO i hang-hang jit-ae" (there is tone sandhi - the first hang is hang11). If I had to pick a direct translation into English, it would be "toasty" or "balmy" - which, in my humble opinion, carries a subtly different meaning from just saying "hot". I guess the above are examples of my way of keeping Penang Hokkien's vocabulary as rich and diverse as possible!

Great distinctions.

My usage doesn't have "sio" for the temperature of anything at all - temperature is always "juáh". In my usage "sio" just means "to burn": "cit tiauN cua cin-nia khan-khO sio" (= "this sheet of paper burns with great difficulty"); "tong-kim i ti sio pa(t)-lang e chu" (= "at the moment, he's burning other people's houses").

I do use "hang" but not as hang33 (high-ish/mid, level?); instead, I have "hāng" (low-ish, level) - same tone contour as "hang" meaning "thing"; e.g. "saN hang (mih)" (= "three things"). In connection with heat, it means "a glowing feeling from heat": "lu na khia ua-ua ci(t)-le hue, lu-e kui bin e hang" (= "if you stand close to this fire, your whole face will get a warm glow"); "wa na ciah gu-lai, wa-e chui nO-saN tiam-ceng hang" (= "whenever I eat curry, my mouth glows from the heat for the next 2-3 hours"). I give it a tone-7 (rather than tone-3) purely because I think that it's the same "hang" as in "hang3_lO5" (a sort of traditional stove). I don't know if this is the same "hang" as yours. I don't think so, as you give yours the same tone as "sio", which for me is tone-1.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Sim,

Bearing in mind that I am not a native Penang Hokkien speaker, please do not take my tones for 烘 hang as correct - it may very well be that yours is correct, and I am using the wrong tone register for hang. I just happen to use it based on how I have generally heard it. And actually, yes - it is the same 烘 hang as for baking and toasting, so that further supports the likelihood that your tones are correct.

Actually, "taking a photograph" has always been 翕相影 hip siOⁿ-eng. I have to admit, I have never heard "théh fò-tó" in Penang before.

[SimL]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the response.

Actually, "taking a photograph" has always been 翕相影 hip siOⁿ-eng. I have to admit, I have never heard "théh fò-tó" in Penang before.

Haha, it's probably only us barbarous, anglicised Penang Baba Hokkiens !

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
...thanks for your time-lines for where you lived and when, and whether you saw shrews there / then. Indeed, they seem to have got less and less common with the passage of time and/or increasing urbanization.

On that note, I think you will also be disappointed to know that with the heavy industrialisation of Bayan Lepas, the number of snakes at the Snake Temple has dwindled to the point where you will be lucky to even see more than two or three (and that includes the one that is deliberately handled by the caretaker in the back room for the tourists to see). Nowadays, if it is wild life you want to see on the island, your best bet are the monkeys at the Botanical Gardens.

[AndrewAndrew]

So much to reply to!

I've always had lots of rats in my bins, but I've never checked if any are actually shrews.

Yes, taking photos is always hip siauN-eng

I use joȧh and kún for hot and scalding respectively. Sio sounds very TW/Sg. Strangely, while we use 寒, we don't seem to ever use 署.

Poat-tó and kā-laúh to me are clearly different, though I have heard someone say poat-tó instead of kā-laúh once.

I would say giâ/thėh lui - I don't really distinguish between thėh and giâ.

Yeleixingfeng - I have Douglas/Barclay on my computer, but it's 1GB, so you'll have to wait till the next time I'm in Penang.

[Mark Yong]

In Penang Hokkien, there is a bit of a grey area in the use of thėh, the character of which I have so far assumed to be 提:

1. The normal/default meaning is simply 'to take', in the specific context of retrieving something (to distinguish it from 'gia').
2. The extended meaning is 'to steal', e.g. thėh lang e lui 提儂【之】鐳. It is actually a contraction of thau-thėh 偷提.

[SimL]

So much to reply to!

Indeed! I think Yeleixingfeng is partially responsible, because he stimulates us with his ideas as a new member.

I've always had lots of rats in my bins, but I've never checked if any are actually shrews.

Yeah, hard to really tell, as one has to have a close look at the nose.

Yes, taking photos is always hip siauN-eng

I'm beginning to suspect that "theh foto" might be restricted to my family! As discussed in an earlier thread, I pronounce(d) it "sO1_eng2", and used to wonder what that "sO" was. Other Forum members (Ah-bin?) - and my newly improved knowledge of Mandarin - made me realise that it's "image". [I don't pronounce the "sO" with any nasalization, so without knowing the equivalent Mandarin characters, I would never have been able to even begin to guess.]

I use joȧh and kún for hot and scalding respectively. Sio sounds very TW/Sg.

Yes, used as an adjective, it has a very non-Penang feel about it. But quite normal as a verb, of course: "i cu-ciah e si tioh sio" (= "(s)he got burnt while cooking").

Poat-tó and kā-laúh to me are clearly different, though I have heard someone say poat-tó instead of kā-laúh once.

Both you and Mark have said "poat", whereas I've always thought of it as "poah". Perhaps that's contamination for "poah-kiau" (= "gambling"), where it really is a "-h". The etymology site seems to think that both the falling one and the gambling one are the same character though. [Though of course there's nothing to stop it being pronounced "poah" in the gambling sense (which it undoubtedly is), and "poat" in the falling sense, so you and Mark could still be right.]

I would say giâ/thėh lui - I don't really distinguish between thėh and giâ.

That's exactly what I thought of my own usage too, until Mark pointed out his nice little subtlety about "stealing". Indeed, "e! lu-e mah bo kah lu kong be-sai cin-chai theh pa(t)-lang e mih-kiaN" (= "hey! didn't your mother tell you that you can't just take other people's things?") is fine, whereas I would not be inclined to say *"e! lu-e mah bo kah lu kong be-sai cin-chai gia pa(t)-lang e mih-kiaN". Other than that, in "normal" uses of taking (i.e. just picking up some object and moving it somewhere else), I too use "theh" and "gia" interchangeably.

Yeleixingfeng - I have Douglas/Barclay on my computer, but it's 1GB, so you'll have to wait till the next time I'm in Penang.

I'm planning on asking the very friendly owner of the Chinese bookshop (here in Chinatown, Amsterdam) if he knows a book binder in Amsterdam who will print and bind from pdf files. If so, I intend to get my with-hanzi Douglas printed and bound. I'm fed up of failing to look up some interesting Hokkien word, just because I haven't got the PC booted. Also, I think that with a physical copy, I'll be more inclined to browse through it in my spare time, and in this way learn a lot more about Hokkien. Of course, I browse the non-hanzi version, which I have at home, but the characters in Douglas are the big bonus in the pdf version. [Yeleixingfeng: you may not like one aspect of the characters in Douglas (and Barclay as well), namely some of them are "borrowed for meaning, based (probably) on normal usage of the time", rather than 本字.]

[niuc]

What I meant to type was 乳罩.

Oh, this one, yes I ever heard, but much rarer than 胸罩.

It means "to accept bribes", right? As in: "hi(t) (l)e ma1_ta5 ciah lui e" (= "that policeman accepts bribes").

Yes, it does.

**: I say "approximately" / "borrowed into Hokkien" because otherwise it would be "ko(u)" rather than "kO"... (or maybe the difference is just part of the pun, as puns don't have to be exact homonyms...)

From what I heard in Taiwanese tv, some (who usually speak Taiwanese Hokkien) pronounce Mandarin "kou" as "kO".

LOL! Love of coarse humour, a trait of the Hokkiens ??? .

Great jokes! I believe most like coarse humours that actually are about misunderstanding (like all the jokes cited in this forum), rather than those of another type which sound polite but actually perverted.

Beside ka-laùh & puàh-tó, do you guys use chia-tó (usually used for fluid)?

[SimL]

What I meant to type was 乳罩.

Oh, this one, yes I ever heard, but much rarer than 胸罩.

Ah, thanks. How much confusion I caused, by getting it wrong in the first place. [BTW, I think my mistake is one consequence of Chinese characters less reflecting the pronunciation: if English had been a foreign language to me, and I had just learnt the word "robot" in English, I would never make the mistake of typing it as "botro" and not notice for so long! I knew - and was saying in my head - "ru3zhao4"; I wasn't misremembering and saying "zhao4ru3".]

Beside ka-laùh & puàh-tó, do you guys use chia-tó (usually used for fluid)?

Yes, definitely. For me, it's the equivalent of English "spill" (but for cups of coffee or buckets of water, not for an "oil spill" from a tanker). [Though the use of the word "spill" in the latter context is also a bit 'stretched' from its core meaning in English. In a pure physical sense, these events are more "leaks" than "spills" (though perhaps "leaks" de-emphasizes the amount and how serious it is, and hence "spill" is used.]

Example sentences with "chia-to" (because I know Ah-bin likes example sentences ):

1. "i an-nE se-han nia - bo kau lat - be taN an-nE tua thang e cui, sua(h) chia-to ka liau khi" (= "He's only so small and weak, trying to carry such large buckets of water, he spilled it all"). 伊 an-nE 小漢 nia - 無夠力 - be 擔 an-nE 大桶的水, sua(h) chia-倒到了去. (If anyone feels called to supply more TLJ for this sentence, please do!)

2. "i bo a-gak / la-sa i-e ko-pi e an-nE juah. i lim e si, thng-tioh i-e chui, i tioh chEN-kiaN ka sua(h) chia-to khi" (= "he didn't realise his coffee would be so hot; when he drank it, he scalded his mouth and got such a fright that he spilled it").

Notes:

1. In sentence 1, the "be" is bueh4" = "to want to", not "be7" (= "to not be able to"). Notice how "be" in this sense can be used to indicate "to try to", which is something Ah-bin has been looking for ways of expressing in (Penang) Hokkien.

2. In sentence 2, "a3_gah4" and "la3_sa2" are from Malay "agak" (= "estimate"), and "rasa" (= "feel", "sense", "taste"). The latter borrowed and changed in meaning to become "figure, reckon, realise, think", and used very largely in the negative "bo3/7_la3_sa2" (= "didn't realise, didn't reckon", etc).

[amhoanna]

In TW, sio is for liquids and solids, joa̍h is for a general state, like, "It's hot." Sometimes in small restaurants, U hear the staff in the kitchen going "Sio, sio, sio" all the time. It means, "Watch out because I'm crossing this tiny kitchen with hot soup, girls."

Hang (T1) or hanghang is used for WARM, but I'm not sure how broad the usage is, esp. whether or not it applies to the general state context. One word I learned in print was siolō, but nobody ever understood me when I used it except maybe really old people with massive passive vocab.

In TW the general word for TO BURN is hiâⁿ. Plenty of Mandophones use sio instead, or use sio and then correct themselves. In fact one Hoklo writer, I think it was Lokkangsian, said he realized he had to learn POJ and save the Hoklo tongue when he heard one of his kids at home saying "sio cúi" for TO BOIL WATER. But I think the correct verb for TO BURN PAPER OFFERINGS is sio.

Poa̍htó should be correct, pan-Hoklo. In TW, glottal stop endings tend to disappear in "running/sandhi position", so from the TWese pronunciation of poa̍htó (same as if it were "poātó"), it's pretty clear that poa̍htó and not poa̍ttó is the underlying set-up.