Hokkien alternative names for Technology Stuff

[Ah-bin]

I know both of them, and unless mistaken the punji for siao is either 犭肖 or 痟 – suggested by xng in another forum. As I said earlier, the whole part was meant to be read with sarcasm. >.< By the way, how do you type 𠢕? It is not available on my input system…

It should be one of the choices in the in the Taigi input system. You can type it into a document or a website, if it is blank in the document, make sure the font is set to Mingliu HKSCS ext B, then it will appear just fine. I'm glad I've finally worked it out, it's helped me enter a whole load of characters that were once just squares. but there are still a few missing characters from unicode like （足白）and those nice single characters for siâng 相同　and māng　莫用 that are impossible to type in. I wonder if they are in extension c...I just checked and it appears not.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Okay, I will be more precise in my terminology, and say "today's Modern Standard Chinese or 白話文 baihuawen", modelled upon (but is not necessarily identical to) the vocabulary and grammar of the Northern dialect of Beijing.

The term predates "Mandarin" (which achieved its final stable form in the 16th century) by at least a millennium and a half.

You contradicted your definition for Mandarin. 矛盾 is a Modern Standard Chinese term, despite its existence predating the formation of Mandarin itself. If ‘Mandarin’ denotes the official language of Modern China, then obviously its history is irrelevant. (My raising of 矛盾 as an example was prior to your definition of Mandarin. Hence, I am sorry but 矛盾 is no longer applicable.) That which distinguishes borrowing or not is fundamentally what we consider Mandarin and what isn’t.

Take 警察 vs 捕快. Should a Sinitic term be agreed upon to substitute the Malay-borrow ‘mata’, which to choose? 警察 is a Modern Standard Chinese word, while 捕快 originated from 捕役 and 快手 and the term refers to, during Ming/Qing Dynasty, police-like officials. Both terms are sinitically coined; plus, 警察 is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Other examples include, 失陪 vs 再見; 示下 vs 敎我(lol); 笑納 vs 收下 etc.

Should Hokkien deliberately avoid Mandarin-associated terms and choose the other way? (I was hoping for the latter – since I hate 學s anyway. >.< By the way, I agree with you on the 矛盾 thing being both Hokkien’s and Mandarin’s, since they were coined before the formation of both languages.

In the case of Sim's mother reading 科學 as khO hak, or any Modern Standard Chinese terminology coined only after 4 May 1919 (to put a date to things) in general, then yes, I would classify it as borrowing.

科學 is a Modern Standard Chinese terminology coined by the Japanese during the Meiji Era, along with the other Western concepts like 社會, 政治, 主義 etc. Rather than being Chinese, 科學 is shared in the larger pool called the Sinitic languages. (矛盾 belongs there too.)
矛盾
Viet: Mâu thuẫn
Korean: 모순mo sun
Japanese: 矛盾 (mu jun)

科學
Viet: Khoa học
Korean: 과학 (kwa hag)
Japanese: 科學 (ka gaku)

If Hokkien’s usage of khO hak is borrowing, then on the international scale, who borrowed whose in the first place? (Obviously, it was the Japanese, but…) Such clarification would involve complicated racism, thus no one bothered attempt. Using 科學 is therefore not borrowing from Modern Standard Chinese.

It is not a question of advantage.

I like Amhoanna’s reply to this.

Aside from two strokes meaning POWER / TENAGA, the rest of it is just an overblown phonetic. Why NOT replace it with phonetic elements in daily use? Or keep the 力 semantic, but dump the 敖 phonetic for a leaner, meaner phonetic?

I mixed two things up unconsciously; sorry. Really. T_T I do mean to mix them up, I just forgot to say so.
My comparing of gao and 聰明 stems from my wish to create a writing system for Hokkien that is better than the current Baihuawen. But I have never ever suggested for 聰明 to replace gao! *Misunderstandings…* I was just proving that 戇 is no where advantageous than 笨; (In this particular instance 笨 undoubtedly defeats 戆 by stroke count.) I was not asking for 笨 to replace 戇. Zzz… I must have looked like idiot supporting to write khun as 睡. Zzzz…
The case of 戇 corroborates Amhoanna’s urge for the phonetic to be simplified, or even a simple겅
(kOng)would suffice. Nonetheless, I suggest that we replace the whole character with an ideograph capable of relaying the exact same message while requiring less stroke count; the new Hanji would thus be pronounced gOng. The same applies to 爿目 – to be read as khun.

If we want to talk about absolute synonyms, then let us consider the three words occurring in Mandarin for 'sleep' - 睡，眠 and 寢.

In my fanatical scheme to revolutionise the Hokkien written system, those three characters would still retain their Hokkien pronunciations – only the most frequently used khun is affected.

even if it was created a couple of millennia ago as one of the 90% of Chinese characters falling under the phono-semantic class (the figure is quoted from Weiger's Chinese Characters)

Nonsense. Phonosemantics are the newest emerging category, flooding Hanji in overabundance only during Seal Scripts – Qin Dynasty, 2200 years ago. The characters prior were 90% pictographs or ideographs, and the remaining 10% represents the minority where no interpretation by any professor was widely accepted, like 室, 姬, 鳯. Even during Qin, I daresay only a maximum of 60% was reformed to phonosemantics. (Stupid 李斯.) Many of the phonosemantics seen now either had not exist then (握, 魅) or had phonetics components added later (聽,壬; 圍,韋).

I know what you are referring to specifically, i.e. those characters that really fall under the 'made up' category.

(FYI - I avoid the above four words like a plague when writing, and normally resort to 此, 彼, 何處 and 何爲, respectively.)

I always thought 跟 was an extended meaning from heels, to follow. The rest, I am very aware, and avoid them too – until my teacher circled 莫(别) and gave me a B for being too archaic. >.<

I agree with you that we should not adopt a self-fulfilling stance by creating a character out of nothing for the sake of mapping it to a word, and then making a historical case for it after the fact.

I wasn’t suggesting that… 囧. Though I think you would have understood that now. But, to be honest, I would rather a self-created character than Latin alphabets or 口s.

By the way, I apologise if I sound a bit fiery above. It's nothing personal. The older Forumers can tell you that I am quite passionate when it comes to being etymologically-correct when writing Hokkien using 漢字 hanji.

What I would like to do is say that even up to now, I think everyone has been very considerate and careful in expressing their opinions. What some people consider (of themselves) as being "harsh" or "blunt" language (and for which they "apologise" before launching into it), would - on other internet forums - hardly be considered to be so at all! It's a measure of how much respect and concern we have for one another's feelings, opinions, and ideas, even when they are very different from our own. The degree of difference in opinion in this area would have led to flame wars within 2 hours on any other forum, IMHO.

Oh, we are one big loving family. We all know that. ^^

[aokh1979]

I have been away from the forum even since I moved to KL - and I hate it. Just my 2 cents in 無像 because that's how I write today.

無像 is pronounced bô-siāng. I suppose many people thought the pronunciation was bô-siâng but in actual fact, I grew up hearing bô-siāng and only when one tries to emphasise, one will say bô-siâng.

兩个人兮面無像 nōo-lê lâng e bīn bô-siāng / bô-siâng
伊个面像*佮*豆沙餅 i e bīn siāng-ka / siâng-ka tāu-sa-piáⁿ

When it's tone-sandhid, you basically cannot tell. When it's used separately, both siāng and siâng work. I hear siāng all the time.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Since it's so rare for any man to convince any other.

I am actually very easily convinced. As long as you get your facts straight, and you refute my points without misunderstanding it, I would consider. ^^

Seriously, though, let's ride this logic to the bitter end. What does the preference for hiragana tell us about hanji? And which hanji tend to get the cold shoulder? The 指示, 象形, and 會意 ones, or the phono-semantic ones?

Replacing of kanji with Hiragana/Katakana is just a trend among youngsters. Formal writings like essays and newspapers use the proper Kanji, except for koto(事) and you (様). Kanji read in kun’yomi (訓読み)tends to be written in hiragana too. But, almost a rule with 様 excluded, on’yomi　(音読み)Kanji are written in Kanji. Besides, most of the Japanese I meet prefer Kanji, and handwrites kanji despite its complicated structure. This is because kanji are symbolic, such that a glance would be enough to understand the main idea. The following was the exact example raised by a Japanese friend.
暖かい vs あたたかい. A simple glance at 暖 suffice for comprehension, while the string of hiragana atatakai requires one to read syllable by syllable to get the same meaning.

Korean is facing an even awkward problem. Hanja education is still necessary, especially for SCIENCE students. Think about it, considering the so many homonyms in all Sinitic languages, and yet the Koreans dropped the tones when they were importing Hanja, how do they resolve misunderstandings – besides relying on the context, since sometimes a few possibilities could fit seamlessly? And, to cope with science, many new terms were coined with Hanja. For example, 多糖 is the term for polysaccharide in Chinese, Japanese and Korean. (Not sure about Vietnamese.) Japanese writes it as 多糖 – no confusion there. But, 다당? Get what I mean?
Though I admit, polysaccharide is a rather weak example, since the homonyms of다당 are not that many.

What if ê 仒 is non-Sino? Come on, acknowledge this possibility. Come over to the dark side.

How could 的,嘅,仒 be coincidently all non-Sino? Nonetheless, such a particle occurred never as frequently in Classical Chinese – they did not repeat 之 all over the place.

I've been avoiding replying to this thread for a while, because I too once had strong feelings of what "ought to be" and "should be" in my native language, and now I just accept what "is". I spent hours in the university library looking through English dialect dictionaries trying to construct a purely Germanic version of English. It was fun to do, and I still have my notebooks for it. But no-one (except for one equally eccentric friend) ever listened to my opinions, so the language was born and died within the confines of my own mind. It was fun, but ultimately pointless. People still continue to say "science" instead of "loreseech", and "pronunciation" instead of "outspeech"....sigh. Had the internet existed at that time, I would have put my Wordbook of outcleaned English on a speechmootboard for all to see, but I bet everyone else in the world would have kept on calling a speechmootboard a forum, no matter how much I argued.

LOL. Thanks for the advice. I was kinda going to do the same thing as you – transform Hanji completely into ideographs. Haha.

I am now going to commit the cardinal sin and admit that I don't even have a problem with written Cantonese and its 口 characters either, I think they're especially good for writing Malay loan words.

Despising 口, I think, is just me being egotistical.

And finally, saying "Hanji" annoys the pants off me. It is a Mandarinism pure and simple. All types of Southeast Asian Hokkien have a perfectly good word for it: 唐儂字, so why not use it?

[/quote]
Both Hanji and TLJ are Sinitic, not Mandarin. Hanji refers to the characters of Han Dynasty, or the characters of Han as a ethnic. Writings of Han Dynasty is true also, since the basis for the contemporary 楷書 emerged then – I think. Anyway, Han as an ethnic is already enough for me to accept that Hanji is not Mandarin. Besides, all Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean use 漢字. Why not Hokkien?
漢字 and 唐儂字 coexist, like how Influenza and Flu coexist. One is the colloquial variant; the other is used on a more professional scale. Right?

Please look at http://140.111.1.40/yitib/frb/frb03776.htm

We are really comparing apples and oranges.

I wrote this in my previous post:

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. ^^)

[Ah-bin]

LOL. Thanks for the advice. I was kinda going to do the same thing as you – transform Hanji completely into ideographs. Haha.

I wouldn't advise you against it! No matter how crazy it seems you'll have a lot of fun doing it, and you'll learn a lot more about the structure of Chinese than any of you Chinese teachers do (I'm sure you do already), that sort of knowledge will also come in handy some time in the future when you need to learn something else that you thought wasn't related to it. I think inventing all those words based on compounds helped me later to guess and retain the meanings of many Chinese compound words.

How could 的,嘅,仒 be coincidently all non-Sino? Nonetheless, such a particle occurred never as frequently in Classical Chinese – they did not repeat 之 all over the place.

I think he was suggesting that 嘅 and仒 might be non-Sinitic. However, the 介 seems a very likely explanation for the Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew and Hainanese ke/ke/e/kai/kai (the Hokkien one WAS ke too in the Sixteenth century according to the Manila romanised books).

Both Hanji and TLJ are Sinitic, not Mandarin. Hanji refers to the characters of Han Dynasty, or the characters of Han as a ethnic. Writings of Han Dynasty is true also, since the basis for the contemporary 楷書 emerged then – I think.

I think the word 漢字 is actually a Japanese borrowing into Chinese, and a fairly recent one at that (perhaps post 1900? I am just guessing - actually see below where I have done a bit of research). The 漢 just stands for "China" in Japanese usage, not any particular dynasty (the Han/Kan way of reading the characters is actually from T'ang times). Back before China just became one country among many (rather than believing it was the only centre of the civilised world) there were just 字, later on there were 中國字 (the pre-1950 Mandarin textbooks teach this, they don't teach 漢字).* I'll check in the 四庫全書 whether any of the books contain the word 漢字 (just checked, it appears 644 times, but some of the entries are the end of one owrd and the beginning of another, 唐字 appears 157 times, same problem). The reason why I don't like saying Hanji in a Southeast Asian context is because it is using some other language's standard, when Southeast Asian Hokkien has a perfectly good name for it already. I don't mind if Taiwanese use the word, or Japanese use the word kanji etc., but I think sometimes that Southeast Hokkien speakers should be satisfied with having their own words for things that are different from Taiwan and China. The word Hanji is not authentic Southeast Asian Hokkien, I have never heard anyone use it except Taiwanese and Chinese. It's like saying 羅馬字 instead of 紅毛字 for the Roman alphabet, maybe it is historically more accurate, but it isn't really Southeast Asian Hokkien.


*Just checked MacGillivray (1921) A Mandarin Romanised Dictionary.....no 漢字 only 漢文 meaning "Chinese literature" Mateer "A Course of Mandarin Lessons based on Idiom (1906) no 漢字 Douglas (1899) does have the word however. MacGowan gives only 唐人字 as his definition for Chinese characters, which suggests the word Hanji was not in common use. In Cantonese 中國字 and 唐子 are the usual forms found in books published before the 70's.

I'm not surprised it isn't in ordinary Penang Hokkien....

P.S. so I see it did exist, but I still think its modern popularity is based on Japanese usage and a reborrowing through writing rather than the survival of an old word in Hokkien speech.

[amhoanna]

I've been avoiding replying to this thread for a while, because I too once had strong feelings of what "ought to be" and "should be" in my native language, and now I just accept what "is".

Here comes the cooler head. Here ye the voice of reason.

I've felt the same urge at times to discover or use a "purer" kind of English, and to learn me some other Germanic languages. I've shied away from this for "social reasons". Anyway, it's been great talking about loreseech on this here mootboard...

And finally, saying "Hanji" annoys the pants off me. It is a Mandarinism pure and simple. All types of Southeast Asian Hokkien have a perfectly good word for it: 唐儂字, so why not use it?

Objection. I'm working off the Nippo-Saxon word KANJI. I Hokkienized it to avoid annoying the pants off, well, most of U.

In a Straits of Formosa context, I think hanji were called 孔子字 Khóngcújī before they were called hànjī, and before that they were just "jī".

the Taiwanese standard is now to use 的 for possessive and 個 for classifier

Actually, in TW I usually see either ㄟ or A, as in "係金Ａ！" (=sī cin--ê!)

And, up theirs with 的 and 個!

I hear you, and I fully agree that in the first place, Chinese characters are far from being an ideal writing system. ... Writing Hokkien with only Chinese characters is not, and will never be, a perfect system (Ah-bin has also pointed that out, and I fully agree). It is just an ideal that I personally strive towards (and not everyone has to agree with me.

我無話通講아。

If I had to draw a parallel today with the above, my best example would be lyrics and subtitles in Hong Kong Cantonese entertainment. Lyrics are almost always written and sung ad verbatim in Modern Standard Chinese vocabulary and grammar, not colloquial Cantonese (the possible exception being 許冠傑 Samuel Hui's 1970's/80's songs).

I know U're just using this as an example to explain something else. But yeah, I don't get how they could do that to themselves. "Ta dik samlơưi"（他的心裡） and so on. Where's the icon for throwing up?

1. Writing in Peh-Oe-Ji would be a nightmare to read, given all the homonyms. I have flipped through a copy of a Peh-Oe-Ji Bible before, and quite frankly, I may as well have been attempting to read Greek.

Mandarin and Japanese are "homonym city", but is Hoklo really that bad? For people who read the tone marks? ... That said, I know lots of people won't touch tone marks with a ten-foot pole. Educating the educated is a tricky business. And it would take an act of God to get 20 million TWese Hoklo speakers to write Hoklo using romaji.

In the spirit of Ah-bin's post, I'll say that whatever works, works. I'll bet Hong Kong screenplays come with the dialog written out in all its colloquial, 口-ing glory, but Hoklo-TWese telenovela screenplays probably come in Mandarin. The first works, despite all the 假借s and tacky phono-semantics and phono-non-semantics. The second doesn't work. Hanji or POJ, I hope they work it out.

無像 is pronounced bô-siāng. I suppose many people thought the pronunciation was bô-siâng but in actual fact, I grew up hearing bô-siāng and only when one tries to emphasise, one will say bô-siâng.

兩个人兮面無像 nōo-lê lâng e bīn bô-siāng / bô-siâng
伊个面像*佮*豆沙餅 i e bīn siāng-ka / siâng-ka tāu-sa-piáⁿ

Siāng and 像 do fit by meaning and sound, but register (colloq/lit) is off and all the evidence points elsewhere. It reminds me of most TWese Hoklo activists using 你 to write lí/lú/lứ, and if U disagree, then U're a dumb-ass. (I realize 汝 is a "phono-non-semantic". ) Check it out. In TW I hear bô kâng, bô kāng, and bô siâng. The 台日大 also has bô siāng. It also has bô sâng and bô sāng. Bringing "sio-kâng" and "sio-siâng" into the fold, the "sum of the evidence" seems to back up "siāng" coming from "sio-kāng", "sâng" coming from "saⁿ-kâng", and so on. Sio-siâng, which I use outside of TW, is "etymologically redundant", like a "chai tea latte".

How could 的,嘅,仒 be coincidently all non-Sino?

In one sense, that's got nothing to do with anything. 仒 is non-Sino and non-Tai and non-whatever until proven otherwise, even if it's the same etymon as what they use in Canto and Hakka. Same with "m̄" / NOT. But U're on to something. Just as it's possible for an etymon to be non-Sino and have a hanji (e.g. 囝), it's probably possible for an etymon to be Sino and not have one. Latin had Vulgar Latin. Why wouldn't Classical Chinese have vulgar versions, scattered through space and time and infested with characterless syllables?

[aokh1979]

sio-siâng / sio-siāng is used in Taiwan, but maybe Mandarin...... 相像～

[Ah-bin]

Thank you for the comments on siâng Aokh. I have to say that I have never heard siāng myself, but I have a very small pool of people (probably less than ten) who I hear speaking Penang-slyte Hokkien on a regular basis. I'll put it in as a variant of siâng. I suspect from the number of people on the podcast who say siâng, that siāng is on its way out.

The sandhied siâng in siâng-kà will sound exactly like siāng-kà.

I notice also Mr. Cheah's vocabulary has chhin-chhiāuⁿ 親像 (chhin-chhiūⁿ in Taiwanese) which seems to have been replaced for the most part in the Penang colloquial with siâng-kà, perhaps through the influence of Malay constructions with "macam sama".

Just as an announcement - to make sure I get off my kha-chuiⁿ and actually do it, I have borrowed a couple of Taiwanese 本字 books from the library, and intend to scan them when I'm on the night watch next week so everyone can enjoy them. The only problem is that the university scanners tend to break things up into 30-page segments, which is rather annoying.

[amhoanna]

Kāngkhoán / bô-kâng / sio-kâng are "first-line" vocab in TW as far as I can make out. Chinchiūⁿ 親像 is common but seems to be heard less b/c it's a narrower usage. Another common word is sêng. The only one of these that shows up in music is 親像 chinchiūⁿ. I can't help thinking it has something to do with it having "a hanji pedigree". Also, I'm under the impression that "heavily Mandophone" speakers tend to "over-use" chinchiūⁿ, rearranging their sentences to use it instead of sio-kâng, etc. (Not sure if this ties into Aokh's comment.) On visits to KL, Melaka and Sabah, I've noticed that people there don't understand "kāng/kâng" -- that's why I switch to siâng.

I wanted to bring up this kind of t-/k- mix-up that seems to happen in Hoklo. Could it be that kâng comes from tâng 同? I've noticed that in TW some people pronounce the̍h TO TAKE as khe̍h. Also Aokh mentioned that in PgHK, thâikang = TO CHITCHAT, whereas in TW it's khaikáng. And over in Canto Land, 頭先 becomes "求先".

[Ah-bin]

Yes, I think there certainly is a t/k mix up in various types of Hokkien.

Kì-sî and tī-sî for "when" (the tone fits when explained in this way, if it is from kúi-sî　幾時 the tone would be different, as Andrew pointed out to me a few years ago.

Kún/tún for "also" (I've commented on this, read it but never heard it)

and now Tâng/kâng

I wonder if there are any more.

Oh yes, Ka-kī/ka-tī 家己