Hokkien alternative names for Technology Stuff

[Yeleixingfeng]

Amhoanna,

WOW! YOU THINK EXACTLY LIKE ME!!!!!!!! And for the last few years I thought I was the only extremist trying to revert all the phonosemantics to ideographs!

LOL, I have created plenty of words to substitute for the phonosemantics, like 彳气 for 風, and 冫火 for 温 etc. But they all end in vain, since no one besides me use it. >.< That counters your point:

I don't believe in using something that's neither efficient (like hangưḷ) nor cool (like ideographs) just b/c we've been using it.

(I realise you might mistake my previous few sentences to be sarcastic, I AM NOT!!)
The fact, that I had so reluctantly acknowledge, is that - who would indeed want to learn a new set of Hanji just because the old system 'wasn't good enough'? I mean, the whole community has been using for a thousand plus years now, no one is complaining; why change now? (That is why I envy the PRC when they had the guts to change the Hanji system and established it so firmly within its grounds. If only they had more brains....)

Now, "rad-hangưl" characters, that would be something else altogether.

Actually, I have something else in mind. Since different dialects read Hanji differently, it would be very biased to adhere to the pronunciation of one and ignore the rest. I propose a full substitution of phonosemantics with ideographs, and create new characters for new-emerging technologies.
Like for example, I have been so frustrated that, electricity is already a daily thing and yet there is no radical for electric yet!! Think of all the possibilities once an electric radical is introduced - (Electric)(See) would mean television, (Electric)(Brain) would be computer. Yeah, I know, that would make no difference to 電腦, but imagine, every daily appliances are organised under their corresponding category, and their self-explanatory visual form makes it easier for people to familiarise with and to accept.

I'm under the impression that 艸 is more "original" than 草.

I faced this problem too when trying to reinvent phonosemantics to its former ideograph form. Indeed, 艸 is the original.
But then again, if reverting back to the originals is what you intend (obviously it is what I want also), 衣 would need to become, and 裘 would be a furry version of, the upper part of 卒. 舞 would become a 大 holding 冄 - dancing. I delved into the world of etymology for years now, and the more I discover the more I get disappointed. The list goes on infinitely, and the whole of the Hanji system would be altered so much that it wouldn't bear much resemblance with the original version. Who, would want to learn? Hanji has evolved for three thousand years already, how do we return it to its older self-explanatory form without conducting something so revolutionary that no one would be interested to learn - not even the scholars.

And, the fact is, 舟 is the original and 船 is the later one. Nonetheless, 舟 have been abandoned in favour of 船 ever since Han Dynasty (I think) - every known dialect uses 船 now. This includes 曰(謂-Classic)(講-contemporary), 目(眼), 首(頭) too. Some even lost its original meaning, and the extended meaning is so far that it could might as well be unrelated - 录(濾), 吕(膂), 文(紋), 冃(帽), 又(手), ...
The list goes on forever! 艸 is a more 'popularised' original form that more people know of. You need to explore in the world of Oracle Bone for at least a few years to just grasp the basic 1000 words in your daily vocabulary... The task is too exhausting. And that is why, despite how frustrated I am, I have to accept that this is the fact. The is the route Hanji took ever since that Son of a B*** Qinshihuang took in the idea of a mere prisoner desperate to be freed to revolutionise Hanji, ignoring the basic logic in it and caused this discontinue.

LOL, I sound mad.

By the way, I propose too that Hangul be used widely, in translating foreign names. Like Raymond, Michael etc. Get what I mean? And also country names that are less exposed to Chinese, like Madagascar. Of course,
it is okay to assign a character to represent a certain country, but, at least add a 邑(right 阝) to the character! Even better, capture the most representing element of the country, and use it as the other semantic part of the character! - this is hard though, I admit. >.<

It kind of makes me cringe too to see written Cantonese with 口口口 characters all over the page. But wouldn't 口 be the perfect radical for a hanji that means TO SUCK?

Like you said, I hate 口s. They just make me sick. FYI, 口 specifically meant a mouth, and metaphorically an opening. (Sorry, I don't recall any examples for the latter, yet. >.<) And, 欠 is used instead to denote anything related to the mouth. I gave a few examples in my previous post. 欠 initially depicts a man yawning - 哈欠. Don't know how, don't know why, but somehow Mandarin managed to retain this ancient meaning of 欠. That and 東西, since both 東 and 西 were initially bags of THINGS. 東 tied at both ends, and 西 tied on the upper end. Coincidence, I think. Purely coincidence. >.<
Anyway, that is why I always prefer 欠 over 口 when both variants exist.

I hope you get what I mean, 'cause recently I realise I don't really present my point as clearly as how you all do! But, you think so alike as me that I think we would have so much to discuss!

[amhoanna]

Cán!

[AndrewAndrew]

And, the fact is, 舟 is the original and 船 is the later one. Nonetheless, 舟 have been abandoned in favour of 船 ever since Han Dynasty (I think) - every known dialect uses 船 now. This includes 曰(謂-Classic)(講-contemporary), 目(眼), 首(頭) too. Some even lost its original meaning, and the extended meaning is so far that it could might as well be unrelated - 录(濾), 吕(膂), 文(紋), 冃(帽), 又(手), ...

I don't think anyone is suggesting using older words, as opposed to older characters. To bring it back to Hokkien, no-one is suggesting we write chûn as 舟 (zhōu) rather than 船 (chuán), or káu as 犬 (quán) rather than 狗 (gǒu), or kóng as 言 (yán)／語 (yǔ)／曰 (yuē) rather than 講 (jiǎng). Certainly the Japanese do, but theirs is a non-Sinitic language, so they can pick whichever they like.

However, where there are two historic characters for the same word, it makes sense to use the simpler and more ideographic: e.g. 草／艸, 網／网, 疆／畺, 蟲／虫, 眾／众, etc.

[niuc]

Penang Hokkien for STRAW is sohcháu 嗍艸? Interesting -- the word I know (TWese) is suhkóng.

Oh, mine is combination of both i.e. chaú-kóng!

[amhoanna]

I don't think anyone is suggesting using older words, as opposed to older characters. To bring it back to Hokkien, no-one is suggesting we write chûn as 舟 (zhōu) rather than 船 (chuán), or káu as 犬 (quán) rather than 狗 (gǒu), or kóng as 言 (yán)／語 (yǔ)／曰 (yuē) rather than 講 (jiǎng). Certainly the Japanese do, but theirs is a non-Sinitic language, so they can pick whichever they like.

It sure wouldn't seem appealing for cûn to be 舟 and káu to be 犬, etc. Yet I can only describe my feelings as a "prejudice". We have the Hoklo language on one hand, and hanji on the other. At this point we're not making good use of hanji for Hoklo. We're caught up in considerations of outside factors such as Classical Chinese, compatibility with written Mandarin, etc. Just a thought.

Replacing non-ideographic hanji with phonetic, but hanji-compatible, script, seems more doable. This could be done w/o discouraging the use of the replaced hanji. People would be able to decide their own usage, just as some Japanese words can be written correctly in either hanji or hiragana. Ever-present software will mediate between styles. Sure would be a boon for millions of future hoanná struggling to learn their first 900 hanji.

[Yeleixingfeng]

I don't think anyone is suggesting using older words, as opposed to older characters. To bring it back to Hokkien, no-one is suggesting we write chûn as 舟 (zhōu) rather than 船 (chuán), or káu as 犬 (quán) rather than 狗 (gǒu), or kóng as 言 (yán)／語 (yǔ)／曰 (yuē) rather than 講 (jiǎng). Certainly the Japanese do, but theirs is a non-Sinitic language, so they can pick whichever they like.

However, where there are two historic characters for the same word, it makes sense to use the simpler and more ideographic: e.g. 草／艸, 網／网, 疆／畺, 蟲／虫, 眾／众, etc.

The thing is, there are many historic characters, for the same word. For example, 舁 is the older form of 擧; 囗 is the older form of 圍. I think they fall under the same group as yours - the former is completely obsolete and the latter is the evolved and *not-necessarily* more complex form. And, my knowledge of etymology limits me here, but I am sure there are more examples.

My point is simply - unless we are completely sure of what we are doing, as in why and how we select the character for punji, we should just adhere to the officially recognised character. My raising of '舟犬言謂曰' is just an elaboration as to how messed up Hanji is, and that it is either following the conventional or inventing a new accurate ideograph system.

And, sorry, please allow me to elaborate a little on the punji issue. >.< You might disagree.
I personally think, that the searching of punji is exhaustingly unfruitful, and completely redundant. Many punjis are mere simple phonosemantics, that we can create any time. Excluding 册, 飮, 食 and a few others that actually return the words to their ideographic selves, the others like 睏, 暗暝, 目睭, 喙, 濟, there are actually no need to quote Classical Chinese for validation. They are just another set of phonosemantics. We can pretty much create two 女-radical words with their phonetic sounding cha and bO and they would be no difference than the proven correct 睏喙濟 ones. And, there would be no problem at all to create new phonosemantics for gao, gong, siao or any other characters that we have found the 'correct' punji but just unavailable on Unicode, or are simply too complicated to write.
And, the reason we don't do all that, is, I think, out of respect to the long-abided norm for Hanji, thus out of hope that the correct hanji is out there. That is why, I am merely asking, why would 艸 be an exception to this subconscious effort to stick to our Sinitic roots, especially when we know so clearly that 草 is the preferred variant for at least a thousand years?
Obviously I am not talking about 艸 only - who would want to waste time over a straw? LOL - but about the general attitude that we should have while attempting to write Hokkien in Hanji. It should be an either-or choice. Whether if we adhere to the conventional rules, or we sit down and professionally, seriously think about how to write Hokkien in Hanji. And, since we are not doa-liap enough to do the latter, we have no choice but to adhere.

Replacing non-ideographic hanji with phonetic, but hanji-compatible, script, seems more doable. This could be done w/o discouraging the use of the replaced hanji. People would be able to decide their own usage, just as some Japanese words can be written correctly in either hanji or hiragana. Ever-present software will mediate between styles. Sure would be a boon for millions of future hoanná struggling to learn their first 900 hanji.

I don't quite understand... What does 'replaced hanji' refers to?

[amhoanna]

I partly agree with U, in spirit.

By replaced hanji, I meant rad+phon hanji that would be replaced by streamlined phonetic script elements (e.g. hangưl) in the scenario I described.

[AndrewAndrew]

I don't think anyone is suggesting using older words, as opposed to older characters. To bring it back to Hokkien, no-one is suggesting we write chûn as 舟 (zhōu) rather than 船 (chuán), or káu as 犬 (quán) rather than 狗 (gǒu), or kóng as 言 (yán)／語 (yǔ)／曰 (yuē) rather than 講 (jiǎng). Certainly the Japanese do, but theirs is a non-Sinitic language, so they can pick whichever they like.

However, where there are two historic characters for the same word, it makes sense to use the simpler and more ideographic: e.g. 草／艸, 網／网, 疆／畺, 蟲／虫, 眾／众, etc.

The thing is, there are many historic characters, for the same word. For example, 舁 is the older form of 擧; 囗 is the older form of 圍. I think they fall under the same group as yours - the former is completely obsolete and the latter is the evolved and *not-necessarily* more complex form. And, my knowledge of etymology limits me here, but I am sure there are more examples.

My point is simply - unless we are completely sure of what we are doing, as in why and how we select the character for punji, we should just adhere to the officially recognised character. My raising of '舟犬言謂曰' is just an elaboration as to how messed up Hanji is, and that it is either following the conventional or inventing a new accurate ideograph system.

And, sorry, please allow me to elaborate a little on the punji issue. >.< You might disagree.
I personally think, that the searching of punji is exhaustingly unfruitful, and completely redundant. Many punjis are mere simple phonosemantics, that we can create any time. Excluding 册, 飮, 食 and a few others that actually return the words to their ideographic selves, the others like 睏, 暗暝, 目睭, 喙, 濟, there are actually no need to quote Classical Chinese for validation. They are just another set of phonosemantics. We can pretty much create two 女-radical words with their phonetic sounding cha and bO and they would be no difference than the proven correct 睏喙濟 ones. And, there would be no problem at all to create new phonosemantics for gao, gong, siao or any other characters that we have found the 'correct' punji but just unavailable on Unicode, or are simply too complicated to write.
And, the reason we don't do all that, is, I think, out of respect to the long-abided norm for Hanji, thus out of hope that the correct hanji is out there. That is why, I am merely asking, why would 艸 be an exception to this subconscious effort to stick to our Sinitic roots, especially when we know so clearly that 草 is the preferred variant for at least a thousand years?
Obviously I am not talking about 艸 only - who would want to waste time over a straw? LOL - but about the general attitude that we should have while attempting to write Hokkien in Hanji. It should be an either-or choice. Whether if we adhere to the conventional rules, or we sit down and professionally, seriously think about how to write Hokkien in Hanji. And, since we are not doa-liap enough to do the latter, we have no choice but to adhere.

You are getting two topics mixed up. One is character simplification, the other is Hokkien punji. Clearly if we are talking about character simplification, then we have already decided to abandon the 正字. If we are talking about the second topic, then I agree with you that we should keep as close as possible to standard written Chinese.

Obviously there are many 字 with multiple 異體字. There is even an 異體字字典 online which you can look at. But you will see from it that 船 chuan is not an 異體字 of 舟 zhou. That would be like saying that 'hound' is an archaic or variant spelling of 'dog'. 'Dogge' is an archaic spelling of 'dog'. 'Hound' is a completely different word that just happens to have the same meaning.

[Mark Yong]

AndrewAndrew wrote:
If we are talking about the second topic, then I agree with you that we should keep as close as possible to standard written Chinese.

Not sure if you are referring to Modern Standard Chinese (read: Mandarin/baihuanwen) or bona-fide Chinese characters (i.e. sans the 俗字, 假借字 and the plethora of horrid 口-radical characters that have no etymological basis, so prevalent in Hong Kong Cantonese writing). Anyway, here is my personal stand:

I agree that we should the avoid non-etymological characters that are created ad-hoc to accommodate dialect-unique words where the actual character (if, at all, there was ever one) has been obscured over time.

However, what I would dispute is the borrowing of Modern Standard Chinese characters to represent Hokkien words, if the actual characters are known to exist, and the meanings are well-established and documented. To cite some examples:

1. 曬 to represent phâk, when the character 曝 exists (and especially given that it is used in the Mandarin compound 曝曬).

2. 眼 for bâk, when the character 目 exists (even though it survives as an independent morpheme in Classical Chinese).

3. 晚 for mǽ, when the character 暝 exists (even though its current usage for 'night' is unique to 閩 Min and 客家 Kejia - the latter being part of the compound 暗暝時頭 am-mi-si-thiu).

(Notice that I have endeavoured to provide three distinct scenarios.)

What I do concede are the cases where the 本字 punji of the words are genuinely questionable (i.e. whether they exist at all, or whether the choice is indeed correct). A classic example of the former would be the possessive ê. My current convention for such words is to use the Classical Chinese equivalent (in this case, 之), and enclose it within square parenthesis 【】, i.e. 【之】。 But that's just me.

I understand and appreciate the angle you are coming from, in that the use of non-standard and overly-obscured characters will lead to confusion among readers who may not be as in-tune with etymology and rare characters, which is perfectly valid. But at the same time, my concern is that nodding too much in the direction of Modern Standard Chinese (if that was your original intent) as the guide for writing Hokkien words in 漢字 hanji will inevitably lead to a gradual Mandarin-isation of the dialect. As it is now, too many of the younger generation have this misconception that the only way to write in Chinese is via the baihuawen standard, and that Hokkien categorically cannot be written.

Yeleixingfeng wrote:
And, there would be no problem at all to create new phonosemantics for gao, gong, siao or any other characters that we have found the 'correct' punji but just unavailable on Unicode...

In some of the examples you have listed, the characters are already established, and can be found in the current Unihan standard:
1. gáu - 𠢕 (Andrew posted this before at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6965&p=26459&hilit=+gau+#p26459)
2. gông - 戆

I truncated the part where you ended the sentence with "...or are simply too complicated to write." because, as Andrew mentioned, a Hokkien character does not necessarily have to be 'more complicated to write' (by that, I assume you measure difficulty by stroke count) than a baihuawen character. We either know the character or we don't.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Really, thanks for both of your detailed replies.

You are getting two topics mixed up. One is character simplification, the other is Hokkien punji. Clearly if we are talking about character simplification, then we have already decided to abandon the 正字. If we are talking about the second topic, then I agree with you that we should keep as close as possible to standard written Chinese.

I don’t think I mixed the topics together. I think I am seriously being misunderstood. (Hehe, 去唐儂學堂著是安呢款仒啦，紅毛寫徦無明無白. >.<) Quoting myself earlier,

I faced this problem too when trying to reinvent phonosemantics to its former ideograph form. Indeed, 艸 is the original.
But then again, if reverting back to the originals is what you intend (obviously it is what I want also), 衣 would need to become, and 裘 would be a furry version of, the upper part of 卒. 舞 would become a 大 holding 冄 - dancing. I delved into the world of etymology for years now, and the more I discover the more I get disappointed. The list goes on infinitely, and the whole of the Hanji system would be altered so much that it wouldn't bear much resemblance with the original version. Who, would want to learn? Hanji has evolved for three thousand years already, how do we return it to its older self-explanatory form without conducting something so revolutionary that no one would be interested to learn - not even the scholars?

And, the fact is, 舟 is the original and 船 is the later one. Nonetheless, 舟 have been abandoned in favour of 船 ever since Han Dynasty (I think) - every known dialect uses 船 now. This includes 曰(謂-Classic)(講-contemporary), 目(眼), 首(頭) too. Some even lost its original meaning, and the extended meaning is so far that it could might as well be unrelated - 录(濾), 呂(膂), 文(紋), 冃(帽), 又(手), ...
The list goes on forever! 艸 is a more 'popularised' original form that more people know of. You need to explore in the world of Oracle Bone for at least a few years to just grasp the basic 1000 words in your daily vocabulary... The task is too exhausting. And that is why, despite how frustrated I am, I have to accept that this is the fact. This is the route Hanji took ever since that Son of a B*** Qinshihuang took in the idea of a mere prisoner desperate to be freed to revolutionise Hanji, ignoring the basic logic in it and caused this discontinue.

舟犬曰謂言 were raised as elaborations to the 艸 or 草 issue; I wasn’t – then – talking about punji yet. I was talking about the writing of Hanji itself (thus including TLJ), as a reply to amhoanna’s:

I'm under the impression that 艸 is more "original" than 草.

My point then, was to prove that Hanji is already a messed up script, and if we were to pursue originality, not just 艸 needs to be changed, all of 舟犬曰首目 needs to reclaim their original meanings. And since that is practically impossible and illogical – as you have pointed out 舟 and 船 are totally established and different characters, and since 艸 belongs to the 舟犬曰首目 archaic set of characters, why would we need to discourage the usage of 草? This is where PRC failed when they were creating the new set of SC (Simplified Chinese) – they were inconsistent, even when it comes to their priority objective. (Which is simpler? 強 or 强?)
Just to further illustrate my point, 呂 is a very simplified picture of our vertebra column, where two vertebrae articulate in the centre. 呂 was later borrowed for other meanings, and the new character 膂 took its place. – This I cannot argue, as this falls into the 舟曰 category.
录, originally 彔, was a cloth filter where purer water flows out from the bottom, now written as 濾. Despite SC influences, 彔 is an obsolete character. (The TC counterpart for SC 录 is 錄.) So, should there be a Hokkien expression involving the character 濾, which character? Surely those who did not know beforehand would choose 濾 undoubtedly. Yet, according to Amhoanna’s (and I suppose not only him, since I don’t mean to specifically be against him) originality stand, if a Hokkien Hanji system were to be invented, we would stick to the self-explanatory character – if the current character and the semantically more relevant character shares the same meaning and pronunciation. This rule applies to 艸, then what about 彔? (Sorry, don’t mean to stress my point too much. Just hoping that I get my point across as clear as possible. ^^)

Come to think of it, I have never been talking about simplification. >.< It was during my second long post that I talked about punji, and relating it to my above mentioned point. That is why I made the distinction between the two points:

And, sorry, please allow me to elaborate a little on the punji issue. >.< You might disagree.

Quoting my previous post,

I personally think, that the searching of punji is exhaustingly unfruitful, and completely redundant. Many punjis are mere simple phonosemantics, that we can create any time. Excluding 册, 飮, 食 and a few others that actually return the words to their ideographic selves, the others like 睏, 暗暝, 目睭, 喙, 濟, there are actually no need to quote Classical Chinese for validation. They are just anotherset of phonosemantics. We can pretty much create two 女-radical words with their phonetic sounding cha and bO and they would be no difference than the proven correct 睏喙濟 ones. And, there would be no problem at all to create new phonosemantics for gao, gong, siao or any other characters that we have found the 'correct' punji but just unavailable on Unicode, or are simply too complicated to write.
And, the reason we don't do all that, is, I think, out of respect to the long-abided norm for Hanji, thus out of hope that the correct hanji is out there. That is why, I am merely asking, why would 艸 be an exception to this subconscious effort to stick to our Sinitic roots, especially when we know so clearly that 草 is the preferred variant for at least a thousand years?
Obviously I am not talking about 艸 only - who would want to waste time over a straw? LOL - but about the general attitude that we should have while attempting to write Hokkien in Hanji. It should be an either-or choice. Whether if we adhere to the conventional rules, or we sit down and professionally, seriously think about how to write Hokkien in Hanji. And, since we are not doa-liap enough to do the latter, we have no choice but to adhere.

Creating new characters for gao, gong and siao were sarcasm, suggested by “And, the reason we don't do all that, is, I think, out of respect to the long-abided norm for Hanji, thus out of hope that the correct hanji is out there.”

[/quote]
Obviously there are many 字 with multiple 異體字. There is even an 異體字字典 online which you can look at. But you will see from it that 船 chuan is not an 異體字 of 舟 zhou. That would be like saying that 'hound' is an archaic or variant spelling of 'dog'. 'Dogge' is an archaic spelling of 'dog'. 'Hound' is a completely different word that just happens to have the same meaning.[/quote]
Thanks for the info. The only archaic variant I know is rime vs rhyme. ^^ Wonder why they changed the spelling..?
As mentioned above, I did not say 舟 is a 異體字 to 船; I was merely saying that 舟 was the “word” (as opposed to character) for the idea ‘boat’ for a thousand year before Han. After Han, the preferred word gradually shifted to 船. (This is still a hypothesis though; I still need some time to work it out – the right part of 船 seems to refer to the estuary of a river. Hence, 沿 too. Maybe 鉛 can only be found at the estuary. Just sharing my guess. Haha.)