Penang Hokkien Vocabulary Questions

[amhoanna]

Kiáu is 九?

[Ah-bin]

I doubt it, but lots of dictionaries give it as such.

[SimL]

Kiáu is 九?

Perhaps they mean the "kiau2" as in "puah8-kiau2"?

[Ah-bin]

I'm almost sure it is from the word puah-kiau, yes.

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
What is your normal word (or words!) for "brown" in Hokkien?

** UPDATE **

Just checked with my wife - 'brown' is thO11-sek. Not sure if it is 土，塗 or 涂.

[SimL]

Thanks Mark.

What a lovely position to be in - to have a partner who is a native speaker of a language one is interested in. Even handier than having friends on a Forum .

[niuc]

You'll notice that somewhere further up this thread I intentionally put some "Niuc bait" in by mentioning Bagansiapiapi

Hahaha, thank you for putting the bait!

I always like to hear about what is used there too. It is a pity you arent writing a dictionary of Bagansiapiapi Hokkien, to compare with the Penang one!

Due to my busyness at work, it's hard for me to find enough time to do so. May be I should try to document down those in Bâ-gán-uē that are different from other variants, as I think most are same or very similar to Amoy/TW. Since many Bâ-gán-lâng now are in Jakarta or other places, their children mostly either do not speak or only speak basic Hokkien. Only those several thousands remaining in Bagansiapiapi still speak it as their first language. So frankly speaking the future is not so bright for Bâ-gán-uē. If Penang, with much more people and economic advantages, can preserve its Hokkien, that will be great!

[Ah-bin]

I decided to write the middle character as 雯 bûn, since it means "the colouring on the clouds" so:

Lâm-mn^-á 藍雯仔 – purple

As for mi-sue/bisul, I notice that in the Malay version of Mr. Tan's Penang Hokkien book this word is included as a definition of bisul!

[amhoanna]

Exotic. I didn't find any look-alikes in Sanskrit or Tamil, but the Siamese word for PURPLE is [mwang], w/ the short, schwa-like /a/. Penang Hokkien may've been more in contact with Pak Tai (S. Thai) than Siamese, but the two are real close.

ม่วง muaangF adjective violet; purple
(www.thai-language.com/dict)

Is the last syllable of lâm-mn^-á really 囝/仔/á? Most likely, but it could also be something else, a former -ta or -la or -na that assimilated the second syllable from -ng final to -n final...

[SimL]

I decided to write the middle character as 雯 bûn, since it means "the colouring on the clouds" so:

Lâm-mn^-á 藍雯仔 – purple

Personally, I like it, but out of consideration for the people who believe in punji, will you be marking such characters with either brackets or some different typeface or colour?

If I may be allowed to venture an opinion, I think people should be made aware (in your dictionary, I mean) which of the characters are:

- 1. Genuine, undisputed punji, or

- 2. (If that is going to be your choice also) "commonly accepted characters", even if they are definitely known not to be punji, or

- 3. Characters which you've chosen, which seem very appropriate to you, but might not be in general use.

[I realise that the line between category "1" and "2" (or even between "2" and "3") can be grey.]

I'm actually in favour of all 3 categories. IMHO, the more Hokkien can be written in TLJ, the better, and perhaps, as a result of your dictionary, (some) characters in category "3" can actually become category "2" characters, in the course of time...

PS.

Like some other people on the Forum, I find the mix of characters and POJ (or any other romanization) "unaesthetic" (which is why I'm in favour of all 3 categories given above).

This is purely a personal / emotional reaction, I don't claim any "rational" basis for it. Indeed, as I consider characters to be basically awkward and frighteningly difficult to learn, the attitude of wanting as much as possible to be written in characters is actually contradictory to my attitude to characters in general. Perhaps, on this point, I support Amhoanna's approach (at least, I think it was Amhoanna who mentioned this earlier - I can't find the reference***) of having a hangul-like script for the non-character parts of Hokkien - just because it fits in aesthetically / visually so much better. On the other hand, introducing yet another script - especially one which would probably be totally unknown - might raise resistence to the resultant system of written Hokkien among its future potential users. [So, when push comes to shove, I'm not in favour of a hangul-like script for the "more exotic" words in Hokkien at all, and only wish to say that I find it aesthetically more appealing than a mix of TLJ and romanization.]

***: I found the reference. Amhoanna only said that he preferred TLJ to hangul to roman letters, and advocated (probably jokingly) a combination of radical-plus-hangul.