Penang Hokkien Vocabulary Questions

[SimL]

I'm familiar with all 3 forms given by Mark. They were certainly commonly used in my youth, though I would be very hard put to explain any differences in nuance between them. Here's a stab, FWIW, but not said with any confidence at all.

bo huat tO: "there's no alternative"
bo pan huat: "I don't see a way of achieving this"
bo huat: "it can't be helped", "we have to put up with this"

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
...is the "ma2" of grandmother really 媽? Douglas and Barclay say it is. If so, then it's almost definitely the Hokkien meaning which has shifted, right? Now that I think about it, it's quite strange!

I normally write mă ‘grandmother’ as 嬤, which is what Cantonese also uses.

Having browsed through Barclay's Supplement with Chinese characters, I note that the characters used are the ‘standard’ ones, i.e. no dialect-unique characters were used (probably in deference to Literary Chinese as the standard at the time), e.g. he uses 尋 for chôe ‘to search’. So, Barclay might have either not have access to the print-block for, or deliberately avoided using 嬤 - given the date of the dictionary, I am inclined to think it is the former.

But having said that:

嬤：《字彙》忙果切、音麼。俗呼母爲嬤嬤。
媽：廣韻》莫補切《集韻》滿補切、𠀤音姥。《博雅》母也。一曰牝馬。　又俗讀若馬平聲。稱母曰媽。

So, it looks like both 嬤 and 媽 were historically ‘mother’.

Also, ‘mother’ (3rd person reference) in Penang Hokkien comes out more like mâq, i.e. with a weak glottal stop.

[Yeleixingfeng]

SimL wrote:
Also, ‘mother’ (3rd person reference) in Penang Hokkien comes out more like mâq, i.e. with a weak glottal stop.

Isn't it from Malay - 'Mak'?

[amhoanna]

What do U guys think about the name Mácó͘ ? A sea goddess named GRANDMOTHER-GREAT-GRANDMOTHER? The whole cult gives me a feeling of matrilineal "semi-Chineseness", as if it sprang up before "Chinese times", but later was given a "Chinese twist" when believers became "Tn̂glâng". Not far-fetched at all. Just look at the paukinná 包巾囝 complex of customs in eastern Hūi'oaⁿ 惠安.

Just another piece of the puzzle casting doubt on the fantasy that the Hoklo are somehow a fossil of some archaic, Yellow River society.

Má cognate to VNese bà? Doesn't seem to work.

Some time in the last ten years, TWese society started writing amá as 阿嬤 instead of 阿媽. 媽 soldiers on though in the name 媽祖, and in place names it's usually 馬.

[Mark Yong]

Is the Mandarin a1 mo2, which presumably is 阿嬤, unique to Taiwan, then? I recall hearing it in TV commercials dating back to the late 1980's / early-1990's.

It's always 奶奶 in Mainland China. But in Cantonese, 奶奶 means ‘mother-in-law’ (specifically the husband's mother).

That's why I like the literary version: 祖母. Nice and elegant.

[SimL]

SimL wrote:
Also, ‘mother’ (3rd person reference) in Penang Hokkien comes out more like mâq, i.e. with a weak glottal stop.

Isn't it from Malay - 'Mak'?

I've always believed this to be the case, where "mak" is the shortened form of "emak". If I understand correctly, what is written as Malay "-k" is in fact a glottal stop anyway, not an unaspirated and unreleased "-k"***. If that is the case, then the Malay "mak" and the Penang Hokkien "mah" for "mother" are the same syllable (except for the tone on the latter, of course).

This caused a lot of indecision on my part, when I was doing my family history project, because the "popular orthography" in Malaysia writes "grandmother" as "mah" and "mother" as "mak", while a POJ-based orthography would use "ma" and "mah" (i.e. no post-vocalic consonant and post-vocalic "-h") respectively. So a casual reader reading my transcriptions would be very confused as to whether the speaker was saying "mother" or "grandmother".

***The reason I say "if I understand correctly" above is that I once had a conversation with a Malay guy who was quite well informed about linguistics, and he claimed that pronouncing Malay (othographic) "-k" as a post-vocalic glottal stop was a "characteristic mistake of Chinese speakers of Malay in Malaysia", and that it is in fact really an unaspirated and unreleased "-k" when spoken by native speakers of Malay. Can anyone here speak authoritatively on this question?

Mark: BTW, was your "^" diacritic on "mah" deliberate? I pronounce it "mah4" not "mah5", as ru-tones are only lowish or highish, never rising.

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
BTW, was your "^" diacritic on "mah" deliberate? I pronounce it "mah4" not "mah5", as ru-tones are only lowish or highish, never rising.

Okay, Mark... New Year's resolution: Get your tone conventions right!

Sorry, Sim. What I marked as a rising tone for maq (mother) should really have been a low-level tone, i.e. same as for 五，做，讀，册。.

[niuc]

niuc: yes, "hau2" is the word for "cry" (as in "weeping", with tears etc) in Penang Hokkien. The normal word for "shout", "scream", "shriek" is "jiang2".

Thanks, Sim. 嚷 "jiang2" in my variant is pronounced dióng, meaning to shout at someone (usually disapprovingly). To scream/shriek (high pitch) in Bâ-gán-uē is "ki" 吱.

There is also the verb "huah4" which means to call out loudly, shout. I use it in the phrase "luan-luan huah" (= (literally) "yell out things at random", but also (metaphorically) "talk rubbish", "say the first thing that comes into someone's mind"). As in "miEn chai i, i ha-mi to(h) m-chai e, luan-luan huan nia" (= "just ignore him, he doesn't know anything, just talks rubbish / says any old thing").

Same usage in Bâ-gán-uē.

[Mark Yong]

niuc wrote:
嚷 "jiang2" in my variant is pronounced dióng...

Thank you, niuc. You have no idea how long I have been mulling over the 本字 punji for this one. I even read somewhere that it was 唱, which I found totally unacceptable. The j-/d- relationship between Penang vs. Ba-Gan-Ue Hokkien does reinforce it.

[niuc]

I only have some memory of it from attending a close friend's maternal grandfather's funeral back in 2000 (which means that at that time, I would have been acquainted with Hokkien for a little under 3 years). But you are right, the Hokkien used was quite literary. For one thing, virtually all the pronunciations of words used were 讀册音. But that said, ‘literary’ did not mean ‘mapped directly from Mandarin’.

Thanks, Mark.

To be fair, it's the same thing with the Malay language today - kanser, kolej, geografi, matematik, dokumentari, aktiviti, etc... what happened to wholesome words like barah, maktab, ilmu alam, ilmu hisab, rencana, kegiatan, etc. that my cikgu used to rap into my head when I was in school?

And at least maktab & hisab are of Arabic origin. And I have never heard both words in Indonesia.