HO̍KLÓ, HO̍HLÓ, HŌLÓ

[amhoanna]

Assuming they share the same meaning in Hokkien and Mandarin.

I think this is only true for 其実. Sim's question was a Mandarin question anyway. But I think Hoklo 実在 is different from Mandarin 実在 in how it's used. In particular I think about Hoklo Jesus always saying, "Goá si̍tcāi kā lí kóng, ..." = IN TRUTH, I TELL YOU,... In the Ângphoe translation, at least.

[Mark Yong]

amhoanna wrote:
...其実...

If you don't mind me asking, what character input system are you using? Interesting that you use the Japanese variant for 實. Not that I am complaining; to me, it still looks better than 实! I have that habit of using the Japanese variant in some of my handwritten characters, too, e.g. 関 for 關. It's a habit I inherited from my late grand-aunt.

[amhoanna]

I've been using Chongkiat 倉頡 for about five yrs. Did your grand-aunt know Japanese? I like the look of the Japanese TLJ, e.g. 実 vs 實, but I've got to admit I'm pretty ignorant about the "pedigree" of these and other characters.

[Mark Yong]

No, I don't think she did. But her late-teen years coincided with the Japanese occupation of Malaya, so I guess that would have had some impact on her exposure to, and use of Chinese characters. She learnt to read and write under the old school system, and (in addition to English) knew only Hakka and Cantonese, virtually zero Mandarin. She used the term 笑納 in one of her correspondences, a term which I gather is no longer common in Chinese, but is still used in Japanese (read as shona?).

[AndrewAndrew]

The Shinjitai were only promulgated in 1946 - AFAIK before that Japanese used pretty much the same full-form and short-hand characters that the Chinese used.

[amhoanna]

For the record: a link to a paper about "Amoy" and "Hoklo" coolies in Hawai'i, citing 1850s sources. The term "Hoklo" is used to refer to Teochews at first, but later on the paper refers to both "Amoy men" and "Swatow men" together as Hoklo. The authors (or sources?) note that Hokkiens and Teochews kind of gelled as a group in Hawai'i, whereas the Hokkiens were only able to communicate with the "Canton men" using Pidgin Hawai'ian. The sources note that the dudes from Lungtou 隆都 were aware that they were Hokkienese by descent, but identified as Hoklo. CORRECTION: ... but DID NOT identify as Hoklo.

http://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/b ... sequence=1

[Mark Yong]

amhoanna wrote:
I've been using Chongkiat 倉頡 for about five yrs.

May I ask where and how you learnt your 倉頡 Chong Kiat? I have been dying to learn it for years, and rid myself of dreaded pinyin. I even bought a separate USB Chinese keyboard with the 倉頡 Chong Kiat shapes printed on the keys. But to date, even with three instructional books and code lists at my disposal, I have not been successful. Or maybe I am just not getting the rules right where it starts getting intuitive. If you could be so kind as to put me out of my misery...

[Mark Yong]

AndrewAndrew wrote:
The Shinjitai were only promulgated in 1946 - AFAIK before that Japanese used pretty much the same full-form and short-hand characters that the Chinese used.

I am not sure if it was a knock-on effect from the 新字體 Shinjitai, which I understand to be Japan's own version of simplified characters.

As another example, she used to write 回 as 囬, which technically is not a simplification, but rather a 異體字 variant character, right? Another one is 曾 as 曽 - not so much the inversion of the two upper strokes (which is commonplace when writing the character by hand, anyway), but the simplification of the centre component into 田.

I realise this, and the above post, is veering off-topic from the thread's original intent.

[amhoanna]

May I ask where and how you learnt your 倉頡 Chong Kiat? I have been dying to learn it for years, and rid myself of dreaded pinyin.

Cool. Agreed, I had the same dread of all phonetic input methods. Where's the sticking point for U right now, as best U can make it out? Are U comfortable with the alternate stroke forms of each element? Are U comfortable with character breakdown?

I learned Chongkiat by reading a little handbook (with some codes) on the bus in L.A. traffic. Later I started working my way through longer and longer passages of what I wanted to type. For years, I held on to 注音, Pinyin/Jyutping systems, and esp. 速成 as back-up methods in case I couldn't come up with the Chongkiat code. There were some hanji that I had to remember just as an abstract code, e.g. TIMS for 藏, YONK for 夜, etc. The natural and best set of "training wheels" is 速成. It's like a baby Chongkiat where U only have to put in the first and last stroke, then pick your hanji out of a menu. Some people, mostly in HK, use just 速成. Sometimes, if U can't come up with the Chongkiat, it helps to type it in 速成 first, then see if U can't reverse engineer it once it's there in front of U.

Let me know where your sticking point is. I might wanna write an article on this.

[Mark Yong]

amhoanna wrote:
Where's the sticking point for U right now, as best U can make it out? Are U comfortable with the alternate stroke forms of each element? Are U comfortable with character breakdown?

Given that I left 倉頡 Chong Kiat behind for quite a few months now, and my keyboard is back in KL (which means I will have to create a 倉頡 Chong Kiat overlay for my laptop if I am to resurrect this exercise), I won't be able to pinpoint specific roadblocks right this moment. But from memory based on the last series of attempts, they were:

1. Firstly, getting it out of my head that the 倉頡 Chong Kiat components are not necessarily (and in most cases, are not) the 康熙 traditional radicals themselves.

2. Applying the rule of maximum inclusion, i.e. identifying as large a chunk within the character as possible.

3. When the character starts getting complicated, when I can apply the skipping rule, i.e. identify the key first couple of blocks, and then jump to the last one (in order to stay within the constraint of maximum 5 alphabets per character code).

4. In general, being creative with breaking the characters down and 'seeing' the blocks.

To be honest, I probably didn't try hard enough before I gave up, conveniently relying on a combination of the IME Writing Pad and the online Unihan Database for characters that I could not generate via Hanyu Pinyin or Cantonese Jyutping.

This is probably going way outside the realms of the this thread, as well as the interest of the other members. Drop me a personal message with your e-mail address, and we'll take this offline. Unless you want to start a new thread in the Chinese language sub-forum. I'm easy both ways.