Penang Hokkien Vocabulary Questions (Part 2)

[Ah-bin]

For some reason the same thing posted twice....

[SimL]

Hi Mark and Ah-bin,

Indeed, I knew "cEN2" from both the "chim1-cEN2" (= "air well", in Malaysian English) of the old shop-houses, and from the plain old "cEN2" (= "well") of the rural setting. The latter possibly because one of the old matriarchal shop-houses that my extended family lived in even had one of those in the back of the house, inside the house, next to the kitchen and washing area. It was already disused (as all the houses had had piped water for years), and had a wooden cover, but as kids, we would always ask to have the cover removed so that we could look down, whenever we visited.

The other place you might have come across it in Penang is "cui2-cEN2" (literally "water well"), which was one of the terms for the large cement receptacle filled with water, in the bathroom, from which one scooped water to "bathe". This topic was covered in detail some time back, but perhaps the term for the object wasn't mentioned. I don't know if it's the proper term, or just "borrowed usage" - what did your family call it, niuc?

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
The other place you might have come across it in Penang is "cui2-cEN2" (literally "water well"), which was one of the terms for the large cement receptacle filled with water, in the bathroom, from which one scooped water to "bathe".

I have one of those at my parental home! It was given to us by my late paternal grandmother back in the 1980’s (she had one too many at her house). Yes, we used to call it 井, too (pronounced ciāng in my dialect). I know it is also associated with the Malay word ‘cebok’, but I am not sure whether that word refers to the 水井 cui2 cεⁿ2 itself, the large wooden ladle with which you scooped the water, or the method of bathing as a whole.

[Ah-bin]

Niuc wrote:

Thanks, Sim, for sharing your knowledge about linguistics. I also don't think that sandhis are there to be more elegant, because if that's so, why the sandhi itself usually is another citation tone. In fact I don't understand why Wu & Min languages have sandhis but not Yue, Hakka or Mandarin. Anyone know how sandhi tones developed? And how the early speakers applied those sandhis during the "implementation" period? Actually, I also would like to understand how English etc got the inflections?

I've been thinking over this for a while. Actually Mandarin does have tone sandhi, and I think you might have forgotten the rule you learnt when starting Mandarin and learning Nǐ hǎo! This becomes ní hǎo two third tones become a second and a third. The third tone in front of a second also loses its rising contour becoming 21 from 213. Both of these are examples of mandarin tone sandhi.

The two types of Hakka I am familiar with (namely Hoi-liuk 海陸 and Si-yen 四縣, both spoken in Taiwan) also have tone sandhi, Hoi-liuk sandhi is almost as complex as Hokkien sandhi.

Some of the varietes of Yue spoken in western 廣東 and eastern 廣西 have tone sandhi rules as complex as some Min languages.

The difference between Wu and Min sandhi is that it Min sandhi works from the last syllable backwards, and Wu moves from the first syllable in forwards. That was what an expert in Wu tone sandhi told me, anyway.

Where the tone sandhi comes from is a much more difficult question, I'll have a look and see if I can find some readable articles on the subject. I have seen many very difficult ones!

[Mark Yong]

niuc wrote:
In fact I don't understand why Wu & Min languages have sandhis but not Yue, Hakka or Mandarin.

Ah-bin wrote:
Some of the varietes of Yue spoken in western 廣東 and eastern 廣西 have tone sandhi rules as complex as some Min languages.

Some time back, I mentioned to aokh1979 that I identified one possible rare case of tone sandhi in Cantonese: 知道. Try saying 道 by itself. Low-level tone. Now, try saying 知道. Yup, it just became a mid-level tone.

Unless, unless... it is not 知道, but 知到. Not an impossibility, since Hokkien has its own 知影 cai-iaⁿ.

There is another example I can think of, though I am not sure if it qualifies as tone sandhi: 人 yan. It can either be a low tone when referring to persons in general, or a rising tone when specifying gender.

[SimL]

I have one of those at my parental home! It was given to us by my late paternal grandmother back in the 1980’s (she had one too many at her house). Yes, we used to call it 井, too (pronounced ciāng in my dialect). I know it is also associated with the Malay word ‘cebok’, but I am not sure whether that word refers to the 水井 cui2 cεⁿ2 itself, the large wooden ladle with which you scooped the water, or the method of bathing as a whole.

In our household, the scoop itself wasn't called the "cEN2". It was the large cement "object" (actually, less an "object", and more just part of the structure of the bathroom - usually built into the wall) which was the "cEN2" (because of it's resemblance to and functioning as a "well"). I have no memory of what the scoop was called, because we never had one, and never bathed in this way. Our "cui-cEN" was where we kept my pet tortoise . (Actually, it was a terrapin, but most people mightn't know what that is, and mightn't find the distinction important).

PS. 'cebok' on google image search produces a lot of hits, many of them relating to toilets and bathrooms, but none looking distinctly like a "scoop" (and some looking rather distasteful!). I tried "cebuk' (in case this was one of the things in the spelling reform of the 1970's/80's), but this produced even less related material.

[Ah-bin]

Some time back, I mentioned to aokh1979 that I identified one possible rare case of tone sandhi in Cantonese: 知道. Try saying 道 by itself. Low-level tone. Now, try saying 知道. Yup, it just became a mid-level tone.

Unless, unless... it is not 知道, but 知到. Not an impossibility, since Hokkien has its own 知影 cai-iaⁿ.

It is actually 知到 according to many of my Cantonese dictionaries and teaching materials, and even if it were 道 it still wouldn't qualify as sandhi, as it is unrelated to the tone class of the syllable, and dependent on meaning. As for the 人 yan you have mentioned becoming a rising tone, the distinction is based on its meaning, not its position in a phrase. There are many more of these in Cantonese, 話 wa22 referring to speech in general but wa35 when referring to local dialects. To qualify as sandhi it should have a phonological change that applies to all the syllables in the same tone class, and it should be unrelated to the meaning of the morpheme, otherwise all the 破音字 with different tones in Mandarin would be counted as sandhi as well.

[amhoanna]

My variant uses both -aiⁿ & -ing above except for hîng & tīng (may be for 讀冊音 but on daily life we only say hâiⁿ & tāiⁿ).

Yes. 倒反 = tò-páiⁿ.

有意思.

Does anyone have an idea what the "chiam" is? Is it needle 針?

This goes back to the baht / poa̍t 鈸 thread.

This is an interesting point. In Bodman, 北京 is pak-kiaⁿ, but 上海 is siOng hai (i.e. not chiOⁿ hai). Also, 廣東 is kuiⁿ tang, but 廣府 is kOng hu (this one is not from Bodman).

Well, to most Hoklo speakers in the old days, siōng and ciūⁿ were just two different words, period...

I mean, why is 泉州 Coânciu, not Coâⁿciu? Either way, the written form would've been 泉州. The only way to know, is to know. I always thought of 東莞 as Tongkoán, but in Canton I heard people from Soàⁿboé call it Tangkoáⁿ.

天津 I'm guessing is Thiantin.

I remember that 屏東 in Taiwanese is Pîn-tong, but 臺東 is Tâi-tang, I have no idea why. It may be that the first one was in a Hakka-speaking district at one time and retained a Hakka-like name.

If I'm not mistaken, 屏東 is just a Hoklo-Han transliteration of an Austronesian name. Same with Lôtong 羅東 in Gîlân 宜蘭. Pintong, Rotong, Giran... All very Austronesian sounding names, 'kan? The name Tâi'oân itself is another example. Tâitang was coined in Sino-style, I think by the Japanese, although the "Tâi" is ultimately not SIno. Kelâng 基隆 is probably yet another example, I doubt chickens and coops had anything to do with it. Even 鹿港 might be a transliteration of Rokkang.

高雄 is transliteration of aboriginal Takau, but with Japanese readings. Ditto with 萬華 / 艋舺.

Interesting that the Hoklo in the Philippines made an effort to be unambiguous in how they used Tn̂glângjī to transliterate Austronesian and European names. Hence 嗎加智 instead of 馬加智 MAKATI, etc.

[amhoanna]

There is another example I can think of, though I am not sure if it qualifies as tone sandhi: 人 yan. It can either be a low tone when referring to persons in general, or a rising tone when specifying gender.

I think of the rising-tone thing to be equivalent to tacking on "-á" to s'thing in Hoklo.

Anyone know how sandhi tones developed? And how the early speakers applied those sandhis during the "implementation" period?

Where the tone sandhi comes from is a much more difficult question, I'll have a look and see if I can find some readable articles on the subject. I have seen many very difficult ones!

I posted a link to an old article on this subject a short while back, can't remember which thread.

Unless, unless... it is not 知道, but 知到. Not an impossibility, since Hokkien has its own 知影 cai-iaⁿ.

Interesting. I noticed in Canton last time that in the recorded announcements on buses tended to "merge" T3 and T7 when they occurred in sequence.

[Mark Yong]

I just re-read Bodman, and in Yap Un Pho's supplementary word list at the back of Volume 2, it says:

puăq: To throw on the floor.
puăq puê: To throw two wooden blocks in divination of one’s luck (Mark Yong: Sounds like 求籖 to me… y’know, shaking the container that contains the wooden reeds till one falls out).
Both entries are listed together, signifying the same morpheme.

I am assuming here that Mr. Yap knew the Chinese character for it, in order to make the above connection. On that basis, would anyone know what the character for puăq, as in “to throw on the floor” would be? And would that therefore be the Chinese character for puaq-kiau?