Penang Hokkien Vocabulary Questions

[Mark Yong]

amhoanna wrote:
Haven't U been to the market and heard the vendors spitting rhythmic, rhyming verse on the virtues of their product? If there's none left in Penang,...

Oh, yes, it's very much alive.

Any long-time resident who has not noticed the annual Chinese opera stage performances all over inner Georgetown during 九王爺 kāu ông iáh should really get out of his tempurung and explore more. Two spots that I know of where it is held every year are (1) outside the 瓊州會館 Hailam Clan Association along Muntri Street and (2) near the 五條路 McCallum Street flats. I have strained hard to listen to the dialogue, and it is unmistakably Hokkien.

Even if you don't watch the stage performances, if you go to 來來 Lai Lai or Sunshine Square shopping centres often enough, you would be able to see the makeshift booths selling various products from dishwashers to vacuum cleaners, and the vendors going on-and-on through the microphone in the smoothest and most rhythmic of colloquial Hokkien. Okay, it's not exactly ‘poetry’ in the strictest sense of the word, but it sure as Hell sounds close enough to impromptu prose, if you ask me.

Finally (if a little inauspicious), there are the traditional Chinese funerals, where the 師公 sâi-kŌng does the rites and reads out the relatives' names all in Hokkien. Actually, if I didn't know any better (and before anyone cuffs my ear for a morbid sense of humour, I am actually being quite serious here), I would recommend that anyone who wants to learn how to read and recite Chinese texts in Penang-style Hokkien should take some lessons from a 師公 sâi-kŌng.

[niuc]

Usage of those words & alternatives in my variant is very close to what Amhoanna described.

I am working on translating lyrics, and it appears that besides 吼 we don't have any other commonly known words for 'cry' - 哭, 泣.

What about khàu?

In Bâ-gán-uē, I always use 哭 khàu; there háu 吼 means to roar (彼隻獅咧吼) or to make noise (這个風扇否啊啦, 吹落直吼聲). Is háu used in Penang instead of khàu? How about Taiwan & other variants?

九王爺 kāu ông iáh

It's always interesting to see the different usage of colloquial & literary readings in Hokkien/Minnan variants. In my variant, we say kiú-ông-iâ.

About 師公, do they read the prayers/scriptures in wholly literary Hokkien? From what I ever heard (only few occasions, from a distance, and many years back), the reading was very different from "real life" Hokkien (and also Mandarin). I noticed that tâng-ki 童乩 had interpretor, so what language is used by tâng-ki?

[niuc]

手電 chiu-tien

Does it mean torch in Penang also?

電筒 tian-thong is in.

What is 電筒, torch?

[Ah-bin]

I guessed that 手電 was short for 手个電話 chhiú ê tiān-ōa - a handphone.

I'm also guessing that 電筒 is a torch

Mark Yong wrote:九王爺 kāu ông iáh


It's always interesting to see the different usage of colloquial & literary readings in Hokkien/Minnan variants. In my variant, we say kiú-ông-iâ.

Someone in Penang told me it was also kiú-ông-iâ as well as Káu-ông-iâ

About 師公, do they read the prayers/scriptures in wholly literary Hokkien? From what I ever heard (only few occasions, from a distance, and many years back), the reading was very different from "real life" Hokkien (and also Mandarin). I noticed that tâng-ki 童乩 had interpretor, so what language is used by tâng-ki?

I read somewhere (in an academic paper) that the Taiwanese tâng-ki would often speak things out in Mandarin grammar but according to the 讀冊音. I can't remember where I saw it now.

amhoanna wrote:
Haven't U been to the market and heard the vendors spitting rhythmic, rhyming verse on the virtues of their product? If there's none left in Penang,...


Oh, yes, it's very much alive.

I'll just post the video of the the world's cutest Hokkien rapping auntie here again in this thread, for everyone's enjoyment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyLf7c22 ... re=related

Sorry, I mean for ALMOST everyone's enjoyment! Amhoanna you have to wait until you are back out of bandit-controlled territory before you are allowed to watch it.

[Mark Yong]

Oh, my choice of Romanising it as kāu ông iáh instead of kiú ông iáh for 九王爺 was purely arbitrary. I have heard both forms used in Penang.

Yes, 電筒 tian-thong refers to an electric torchlight. Though, I have only heard it used once, by a then 60-year-old (this was in 2002) gentleman hiking up Bukit Jambul. He was referring to the need to carry a torchlight when descending the hill after dark. A very fit gentleman, he would regularly lift weights in the makeshift gym at the top of the hill. I saw him regularly, but only knew him as 老張 Lau Tioⁿ, and that he was a 鐘靈中學 Chung Ling High School alumnus.

Apologies for the confusion, niuc. Yes, Ah-bin is correct, 手電 is the contracted form for 手(个)電話.

[amhoanna]

I'll have to keep these in mind. In TW, 手電 chiútiān = FLASHLIGHT (ELECTRIC TORCH?)... 手機囝 chiúki'á = HANDPHONE.

[siamiwako]

It now gives me a sense of relief that auxiliary words are used regularly in speech in some Hokkien-speaking communities. Judging from your Romanisation, di for 而 and tsua for 泉 suggest to me that you speak the 泉州 Cuan-Ciu sub-dialect - would that be correct?

Yes, I speak a subvariant of QuanZhou min-nan.

Going back to my previous post, I must've assumed a non-colloquial/official translation of the word 肯. I believe I hardly even say k'eng in my entire life! I'd probably end up by saying "be" 要 or kam 甘(願). In addition, with the word 泉, I is usually say it as tsuan (e.g. tsuan chiu) but I've heard older people say k'ong tsua tsui as oppose to k'ong tsuan tsui.

[siamiwako]

九王爺[/size] kāu ông iáh should really...

Interesting to see that 九 is said as kau as oppose to kiu especially with proper nouns or official texts. I would have said kiu-ong-ia, but it's always good to know how it's used in different variations.The phrase that came to mind straight away related to kau/kiu is 九品蓮花為父母 - "kiu p'in dian hua ui hu bio".

[Yeleixingfeng]

Hi!! I am back! (lol)

Reply to all,
Honestly, I haven't seen anyone rap like that aunty. >.< Though, that version was quite unclear - but maybe that's just my speaker.

Sorry, considering how limited my access is to the various different dialects of Hokkien - linguistically, I believe they are all dialects of Hokkien, right? - I was referring to Penang Hokkien. Throughout replying in this forum I have learnt that modern Taiwanese Hokkien preserves more Hokkien terms than Penang Hokkien, as of 2011. I apologise for forgetting.

The fact is, Penang lost a lot of vocabulary, and often needs to borrow from foreign languages. Besides, often for one idea, Penang has only one word for it, as shown in the 吼 example. This makes it difficult for pure-Hokkien rhyming, with 'Hokkien' defined as words of Sinitic roots. By the way, I asked around - no one knows about 哭 khau, (the younger generation at least). The minorities who do know, replies that khau is Taiwanese Hokkien, not Penang.

And, for all my life wandering through all the pasar and pasar malam my parents brought me to, I have never heard of anything close to poetry in selling products. Phrases yelled in Hokkien that I have collected, are 一項十块, 來看來看. cit hang cap khO, lai khua lai khua; and 買tilam, 買報紙. be tilam, be po chua.
It doesn't rhyme, at all. As for your cited examples, I will look into it further. But, bear in mind, they are not Penang Hokkien.

Lastly, I apologise again for the ambiguity in neglecting to state my points as being relevant only to Penang Hokkien.

[niuc]

Oh, I didn't know (or expect) that 手電 in my variant has the same meaning as in TW! We call handphone 手電話, though occasionally some say 手機 due to TW influence.