North of Hokkien, reports from the field

[niuc]

Btw, in Singapore, sometimes I hear some of my friends say tiang-sî instead of tī-sî (when, what time). Any of you use or hear this? Which variant is it?

[amhoanna]

More encounters of the Hoklo kind. Went to a KTV parlor. One native Hoklo speaker in the bunch. Another local guy -- native 甌話 / Wenzhou speaker -- who is actively learning Hoklo, and already well on his way. One non-native speaker (myself) and a semi-native heritage speaker from Taiwan. I noted that the parlor had about 1/6 as many Hoklo songs on tap as Mandarin songs, and about half as many Hoklo songs as Canto songs. Not bad, in fact probably better than the chain parlors in Taipak. I ordered songs that I haven't been able to order in Taipak any time in the last few yrs. Someone pointed out that this could be more b/c of loose copyright laws than anything else...

Notes:

1) Coânciu-type tone system. T4 is low-level (running) and high-falling (citation). T8 is always low. Either T6 or T7 is high-falling in citation too, the one that includes the word 內. T5 is low-falling (running) or high-rising (citation). Citation T3 is low-falling like in TW/Amoy. Running T3 seems to be a high-level or high-rising. "Hokkiàn'oē" is low-level, high-level/rising (?), and low-falling (not 100% sure). Will update this if and when I know more. Coânciu T6 has always mystified me, I wouldn't know it if it slapped me in the face. In this post, it's my turn to behave badly and analyze a possibly eight-toneme dialect using my own seven.

2) -m finals merged to -ng, same as with a speaker from central Ciatkang that I met once in Amoy; possibly -n finals too.

3) -p/-t/-k finals merged into a glottal stop.

4) Endless Northernized vocabulary. Híhoaⁿ instead of kah'ì / sukah. Khoài instead of kín; kín preserved in some set phrases. M̄ tóng = DON'T UNDERSTAND. Khui chia 開車 but not sái chia 駛車 (sounds to them like 屎車 囧; hoāⁿ chia is completely off their radar).

5) tờ (same vowel as in the song that goes "Jînseng tớtớ...") instead of kho͘ for UNIT OF MONEY; 10 CENTS is kơ with a mid-level citation tone.

6) Simplified system of negatives. Bē/boē not heard at all so far, replaced by m̄. Bô partly replaced by m̄, such as preceding "adjectives". (Does Hoklo have adj.?)

7) Lứ is lứ. Khừ is khừ. ...

前 is cûiⁿ.

9) I 伊 HE/SHE, emphasized, had a high-falling tone. Not sure if this was b/c of the emphasis. Strange to me.

10) Classifier BOTTLE = pân, vs koàn in TW.

11) Mand. 被 is khơh 乞 or something like that.

12) Hiáng is a "suffix" that intensifies. E.g. sóng hiáng (sóng in running tone) = VERY sóng 爽.

13) Sentence-final lơ instead of PgHK liáu or TWese a.

14) 鶏 and 街 are koe; 尾 is bớ.

Overall, the Hoklo here seems to be "converged" with two other local languages, 甌語 Wenzhou and Mayo 蛮話. One of the local people actually said this himself yesterday. The three languages share most of their vocabulary and grammar and possibly sentence-final particles as well, differing only in the pronunciation of each syllable and sandhi rules, etc. This is probably why our advanced learner has been able to get so advanced so fast. It seems that he only started actively learning Hoklo when he moved to a Hoklo-speaking town, four months ago! In all likelihood he also had a huge passive knowledge of Hoklo. Everybody here seems to passively know much about (but necessarily understand) all three of the main local languages.

Place names:

龍港 Lêngkáng
城內 Siâⁿlāi (officially 金鄉 Kenghiuⁿ)
宜山 Ngîsoaⁿ
靈渓 Lêngkhoe (formerly 龍渓, which makes a lot more sense, esp. from a Hoklo POV; this is a full-on Hoklo-speaking area)
前庫 Cûiⁿkhò͘ (officially 錢庫; another interesting situation; this is a Mayo-speaking area, and home to the prestige dialect of Mayo; the Mayo name for the place is Saiko or something like that, with "sai" meaning money, but not clear if it's the reading for 錢 as well, etc.)

That's all for now.

[amhoanna]

Sinaboi (Ciáⁿ-cuí-káng 汫水港)

The water in their harbor is less salty, or something like that? Man, I love this name. They made the place theirs -- they gave it a name in their own language. They even used a poss. non-Sino (?) colloquial word. Is 汫水港 how it's written locally?

Btw, in Singapore, sometimes I hear some of my friends say tiang-sî instead of tī-sî (when, what time). Any of you use or hear this? Which variant is it?

Mainstream TWese has tangsî. Tīsî is fringe TWese, but probably more widely used in the past, poss. in the Old Taipak "Amoy" dialect -- b/c I think older songs use this. A friend of mine from a kampung north of Kagī believes that tīsî is incorrect Hoklo, invented by post-1949 immigrants in their efforts to learn Hoklo. I've heard tiangsî too, probably in TW. Possible story: tītangsî > tiângsî > tangsî.

And thanks for the oló and kó͘lē! I'll see what I can do!

[amhoanna]

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[amhoanna]

Dialed up a "black-market cab" for my ride to the train station today. My friends rode with him once before. Dude asks (in Mand), "So U guys speak Banlamese, right?" (...是不是講閩南語的). Now, people in Chonglâm always pop this question when they first meet. But I don't know if he knows or thinks we might be Formosan. That's what he might be getting at. So I say, "Yeah, we speak Banlamese."

Ah hoānsè i íkeng kekiám cai, ahsī i khoàⁿ goá tō cai, koè bô joā kú i khaksi̍t mūi goá sī tólo̍h ê lâng. Goá sī kámkah he cênghêng cin chùbī niā'ā--lah. In that situation, his question was so versatile.

I get on my bullet train. A couple stops into Hokkiàn, the sun comes out. Now there's banana trees. We're at Coânciu in a flash. The mercury is at 33.2º, 2º hotter than Hokciu. I finish the Japanese comic book in Malay I've been bóng hian and decide to leave it on the train to save weight. I figure if it's gonna find a real reader anywhere in China, the bullet train between Amoy and Hokciu sudahlah tempat paling mungkin.

Saⁿ tiámceng āu, Ēmûi. Bluest skies from Hue to Qingdao. 35.2º. 35.2? No way. It's just the thermostat got heatstroke riding in all this sun...

[niuc]

Sinaboi (Ciáⁿ-cuí-káng 汫水港)

The water in their harbor is less salty, or something like that? Man, I love this name. They made the place theirs -- they gave it a name in their own language. They even used a poss. non-Sino (?) colloquial word. Is 汫水港 how it's written locally?

Amhoanna, sorry for this late reply, I missed out this thread too. Yes, 汫水港 is located at an estuary of a brown-coloured small river (probably due to falling leaves) and therefore the water is less salty. On my way to Dumai (1991), our ship transitted there, and I could see that the "brown water" went quite far into the sea. I don't know the meaning of Sinaboi, but I believe Ciáⁿ-cuí-káng is a Chinese name. Yes, locally it is written as 汫水港 in Chinese, Sinaboi in Bahasa Indonesia.

Mainstream TWese has tangsî. Tīsî is fringe TWese, but probably more widely used in the past, poss. in the Old Taipak "Amoy" dialect -- b/c I think older songs use this. A friend of mine from a kampung north of Kagī believes that tīsî is incorrect Hoklo, invented by post-1949 immigrants in their efforts to learn Hoklo. I've heard tiangsî too, probably in TW. Possible story: tītangsî > tiângsî > tangsî.

Ah, no wonder I felt that it's familiar. Tīsî definitely is native in my variant.

A pleasure to read about your journey, as usual! Wah komiknya ikut jalan2 ke Tiongkok nih ye... Btw where is Hue? Qingdao, not in Shandong? 35.2º? Duàh_sï_ä!

[niuc]

Btw, many Baganese (at least I) tend to call a stream or river káng (港?) rather than 溪 or 江 or 河. Anyone else do this too? Does 港 purely mean a harbour, even without a river / estuary? We also use káng as an adjective, to measure the flow of water/fluid -> tuā-káng: big flow. What is the 唐人字?

[SimL]

Hi niuc,

I can confirm this for Penang Hokkien. "kang2" is the ONLY word I ever heard used for a river, big or small. My father's personal name happens to be 江 - pronounced "kang1" in Hokkien, as you would know (but he spells it "Kung", because of the silly "English vowel" convention). That's actually the only reason I knew of the Hokkien word "kang1", and knew that it also means "river". But I never heard anyone actually use it (or any of the others listed), only "kang2".

Similarly, in Penang Hokkien, "tua7-kang2" and "se3-kang2" are the normal words for a "large flow" and "small flow", e.g. from a tap being turned on very fully / very slightly.

[amhoanna]

To káng, I say "pung". Khioh lâi iōng. Toākáng, sèkáng. I'll suggest this could be non-Sino, but the hanji 港 fits in any case, if we want to be philosophical about it.

This solves the mystery of my old neighborhood in Outer Taipak, called Kánggáchùi, usually written as 江子翠, including in the subway system, but historically also 港仔嘴. The metro calls the station Kánggáchùi in Hoklo, but Jiang1-zi-3-cui4 in Mandarin. It's possible there was some river port activity in the neighborhood at some pt in time, but I kind of doubt it came to much, and why would the neighborhood be called PORT'S MOUTH anyway? It sits in a wide triangle between the rivers Tāihàn and Sintiàm as they angle into each other to become the Tāmcúi River...

There we go! RIVERS' MOUTH.

The Hoklo-Hoklo edition of 台日大 confirms this usage in TW as well:
(1)靠船ê所在。 (2)大川。 (3)孔縫抑是管(kóng)出來ê風或水。

Interesting b/c Kánggáchùi is also one of the windiest spots in Taipak, if not THE windiest.

Yeah, Qingdao is the one in Shandong. Hue (Huế) is in Middle Vietnam.

Kîsi̍t bô kà 35 tō·--lah! The next day the paper even said it only got up to 31º that day. The on-board thermostat was blissed out from too much sun.

[niuc]

Thank you so much, Sim, Amhoanna! I used to wonder if we used it wrongly. So in fact "káng" is native Hokkien!