Penang Hokkien Vocabulary Questions

[Ah-bin]

Actually at the beginning I was intending to have a little section on such things in the foreword. Which basically states how I have chosen them. I'll be quite clear that I am offering characters merely as suggestions for use, but I'm not going to use colours or brackets. Most people are going to be annoyed with some choices somewhere along the line (e.g. 目珠 might be the original character, but most literature uses 目睭 now, so I use that), but my main aim is to record Penang Hokkien as it is spoken with all the "mistakes" that make it different from other types of Hokkien.

Then I'll be clear that there are words that have no original character, the combined words, the non-Sinitic words, the colloquial words of obscure origin etc. Any word with (Malay) next to it is written with invented characters, usually a combination of a mouth radical and the character closest in sound to each syllable, but in the very fortunate situation where I can get sound and meaning combined, like 雷射 leishe for "laser" in Mandarin, then I'll do it. One example is 阜間 for Pokan (town). In some places I give alternatives for Malay words so that people can use it to look up how to say a few things in other varieties of Hokkien.

In the last week I've been looking through a lot of original character literature, and have found that most of the well-done research in Taiwan has actually found its way into Taiwanese teaching materials and literature over the last twenty years. If you compare the character choices in MacGowan and Douglas-with-characters to recently-published Hokkien books, Hokkien-specific characters (some original etc.) are used much more often than they once were. 囝,　粿, and　趖 for kiáⁿ, kóe, and sô are so common now, but fifty years ago people were still writing 子 for kiáⁿ.

Up until last week the draft was full of squares where I thought I couldn't enter some characters, but now I have filled up a lot of the blank spaces now with 𠢕　and 𣍐 and so on.

In another thread I pondered over whether I should deliberately choose my dictionary characters badly in order to get people to shift from arguing about things how things should be on internet forums to writing and publishing their own work, and shifting the debate from what "should be" to what "is". 'Tis an evil thought, to be sure, but probably it would just stop at making people complain, rather than spurring them to action.

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

Ok. I understand where you're coming from. BTW, I assume your dictionary is going to have POJ glosses for everything, so that people who don't read ANY characters at all (sort of like me or worse, for most of my life) will also be able gain from your hard work, and will be able to use it to improve their Hokkien?

Up until last week the draft was full of squares where I thought I couldn't enter some characters, but now I have filled up a lot of the blank spaces now with 𠢕　and 𣍐 and so on.

Actually, I'm still seeing two little squares in the quote above... Do I have the wrong font set in my Internet Explorer or something...?

[amhoanna]

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

Forgot to reply to this. Actually I think that'd be awesome! Not necessarily hangul, but just some kind of pure phonetic writing, with radicals, to go together with punji. Best of all worlds.

[SimL]

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

Forgot to reply to this. Actually I think that'd be awesome! Not necessarily hangul, but just some kind of pure phonetic writing, with radicals, to go together with punji. Best of all worlds.

Hehe! I'm cool with this, as long as they're "stroke-based", so that they have the same "look" as TLJ...

[Ah-bin]

These two characters are in the MIngliu HKSCS extension B, I think any version of windows from Vista onwards has these already installed. In Windows 2000 and XP one has to buy and install the fonts.

the two characters were those for gâu ( 敖 on top and 力 on the bottom) and　bē （勿會）

Absolutely everything is written in POJ first, characters second, followed by an English explanation or translation. The aim is to provide a reference both for people who want to learn to speak and understand Hokkien, but not necessarily want to know how to write Chinese. For people who do want a reference back to written Chinese, I'm also writing an index of characters used arranged by Pinyin with their POJ readings after it. Nowadays there are so many internet sites and books teaching stroke order of characters that in most cases people will be able to find out the stroke order from these fairly easily, and with a little knowledge of Chinese characters (from Korean, Japanese, or any kind of Chinese) people will conceivably be able to use it to learn to write Hokkien.

I have another few projects I was thinking of, one is "1000 basic Hokkien Characters" a workbook for people learning to write Chinese according to Hokkien idiom. It would allow me to include various different types of pronunciation as well.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Ah-bin,
Not to 尋事, I think trying to learn Hokkien without the Hanji is like trying to learn Japanese with romaji. And considering how linguists discourage so, I don't see how Hokkien should be any different. I think, it is the least respect you could pay to the language you are learning.
I hope you don't mind, Ah-Bin, but I am really trying to "correct" your dictionary with charaters I think that are more suitable. >.
By the way, can you send me a renewed version of your dictionary?? Please.. Haha, 'cause I noticed a few words, like Gambling being absent. If it not in the renewed version too, then maybe I would add it myself. ^^ Really, hope you don't mind.

[amhoanna]

I have another few projects I was thinking of, one is "1000 basic Hokkien Characters" a workbook for people learning to write Chinese according to Hokkien idiom. It would allow me to include various different types of pronunciation as well.

Interesting. I bet it would be a hit in M'sia and the Phils. U could throw in Teochew and broaden the appeal to the neighbors.

Re: your dictionary and TLJ, I'll add my opinion which is that any spoken language can be learned w/o writing it, and v.v. I see no disrespect in presenting Hoklo w/o the TLJ, even if U were to do that. On the other hand I do find some disrespect in knowingly forcing unrelated or incorrect or (worst of all) Mandarin-school hanji on unsuspecting Hoklo words...

Hehe! I'm cool with this, as long as they're "stroke-based", so that they have the same "look" as TLJ...

Agreed, Sim. Hanji and hiragana sure do look pretty together. Yet hangul doesn't seem to look that bad with hanji either, even wit its circles and whatnot.

[siamiwako]

Apologies for not reading this thread from top to bottom as I find it a bit overwhelming.
What accent does Penang Hokkien have? Is it close to Taiwanese min-nan/Taiyu or QuanZhou?
有一天 = wu ji kang/wu ji dit
同樣 = kang k'uan/sang k'uan
抓 = diu/dia
窮人 = san-ch'ia lang/kieng lang

It Taiwanese min-nan/Taiyu considered closer to ZhangZhou accent?

[niuc]

Ah-bin, let me know if you want to include Bâ-gán pronunciation in your "1000 basic Hokkien Characters"!

Siamiwako, is the second part of your examples Quanzhou/Cuanciu pronunciation? If so, my variant is the same as Cuanciu except 4th (we use both, with some others). However our tones are closer to E-mng than to Cuanciu (i.e. I understand E-mng or Taigi more easily than Cuanciu e.g. on youtube).

Sim, Amhoanna, et al, I don't mind having any system, including hybrid, to write Hokkien. Hopefully more will be interested to talk in Hokkien, then to write and so on.

[siamiwako]

Siamiwako, is the second part of your examples Quanzhou/Cuanciu pronunciation? If so, my variant is the same as Cuanciu except 4th (we use both, with some others). However our tones are closer to E-mng than to Cuanciu (i.e. I understand E-mng or Taigi more easily than Cuanciu e.g. on youtube).

My accent is very close to these 2 guests, but I tend to open my back palate for bo (無) and lower it for shek (色):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpAHYG43zcM