Some Rhymes in POJ and Characters

[SimL]

Indeed, my experience is identical to yours. After I wrote what I did, I thought about it last night, and realised that, in actual fact, I had never seen any Chinese actually explicitly worshipping the moon. The "hau-thiN-kong" (i.e. "worshipping Heaven") was very common when I was young, on one specific day of the 15-day Chinese New Year Festival (I forget which), but no moon stuff, as far as I know, on any day of the year (one would expect the 15th of the lunar month, of course). So, yes, I'm now also slightly puzzled by my relatives' remark (while, just like you, realizing that it doesn't at all seem contradictory with what we know about Chinese Folk Religion, for them to worship the moon). I will ask my father about this the next time we speak.

and

My mom says that some did (or may be still) pray to the moon on Capgomeh (Lunar 15/1) and Mid-autumn (15/8). May be they pray to 月裡嫦娥 ‘guat8-li2-Siong7-Ngo`5’ (Chang-e).

I asked my Dad about this when we spoke on the weekend. He explained that it was definitely done when he was very young. In his family, it was once a year, but he couldn't remember when. It was always done in the early evening, and that evening was called "pai3-gueh8-mE5" (拜月冥). An altar would be set up in the "air-well" (= chim1-cEN2 深井), and the offerings would be put on it. [This is in contrast to 孝/拜天公 hau3/pai3-Thi*1-Kong1, where the altar was outside the front of the house.] Although my father cannot remember the date, he remembers that the evening/night sky was always very bright on 拜月冥, so that ties in with niuc's mother's explanation that it was on 15/1 and 15/8. (It also makes total sense that praying to the moon would occur on the 15th of the lunar month.) My father went on to explain that his family stopped practicing this custom after his grandmother died, which I think was shortly after the end of the Second World War. My Mum can corroborate this, as she married my Dad in 1956, and she says she never saw his family do it, in their early married life.

[SimL]

Hi everyone,

I'm "stealing" this topic to post a Hokkien saying. The last few replies here have had quite a lot of topic drift (if not totally off-topic!), but that often happens - I'm just as guilty as anyone else. Anyway, I didn't really want to start a new topic, so this is being added here.

Recently, my mother told me of a Hokkien saying which I didn't know (and which isn't Penang Hokkien). Namely "kue1-nng7 bat8-bat8, to(h)4 u7 phang7", meaning (roughly) "the truth will out", "even the best kept secrets will eventually be known". Up to her telling me this saying, I didn't know the word "phang7" either.

But, I found it in Douglas (p391): phāng [R. hông, to sew, = col. pâng], a chink; a crevice; a seam in timber; an opening for finding fault or taking advantage of. khang-phāng, cracks and crevices; openings for finding flaws, faults, or opportunities (v. khang). bô-phāng thang-hiâm, having nothing that can be at all found fault with. gâu-chhē-phāng, fond of finding fault; good at finding a way to injure another or to make money. thàn-phāng, to use an opportunity for evil. etc.

And, lo and behold, even: koe-nn¯g bát-bát, to ū-phāng, in the closest matter (lit. egg) there is some hole.

It always gives me a slight thrill when something in my own family background or personal experience is actually "confirmed" in an "official" dictionary!

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Sim,

Thanks for sharing this. I did a quick Google search, and it yielded quite a few results of the versions 雞蛋密而有縫 (more literal) and 雞蛋密密也有縫 (clearly Mandarin).

So, that gives the Hokkien version as:
雞卵密密都有縫
ke1-nuiⁿ7 bat8-bat8, to(h)4 u7 phang7 (to Romanise into Penang Hokkien)

[amhoanna]

I thought I would add that that word "to" might be another example of a word that has cognates in Hoklo, Cantonese, Mandarin and I believe Vietnamese as well, even though it was apparently not represented in written Chinese till the Mandarin era.

The TW pronunciation is "to", T1.

[SimL]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for doing that. I never thought of it - Googling using either 蛋 or 卵.

On Google, there are 6 hits with 卵. There are even more hits for "鴨卵密密". Sadly, my Chinese is way not good enough to quickly see how many of these all are Hokkien versus Mandarin quotes. However, the fact that a large number of them are .tw sites suggests that those are Hokkien-related (some with mixed characters and POJ would obviously be so).

[Mark Yong]

Therein lies the ongoing dilemma with the Chinese language – the line that separates literal and colloquial writing is never clearly defined. The best I can do at this stage is offer a few guidelines:

1. For the bulk of the Chinese language websites, you can safely assume that they are written in Modern Standard Chinese (read: Mandarin).

2. If there was any website written in Hokkien using Chinese characters, then yes, it would likely be a *.tw one. But the reverse may not necessarily be true, as most Taiwanese websites are in Mandarin.

3. The problem with Classical Chinese idioms is that they would have been shared across all the dialect groups, but read out differently. As an example, here is a quotation from Confucius:

Original Classical Chinese: 己所不欲、勿施於人。 ki2 sO2 put4 iok8, but4 si1 i5 jin5.
Paraphrased into vernacular Hokkien: 汝所毋愛 e、毋通予別儂。 lu2 sO2 m'ai3 e, m'thang1 hO7 pat8 lang5.
Literally: “That which you do not want, do not bestow upon others.”

Telling clues that the latter is colloquial Hokkien would include the use of characters like the negative 毋 and the intrusion of the Romanised e (the possessive in Hokkien) which has no known Chinese character. By contrast, the negative 不 is rarely ever said aloud in Hokkien speech.

4. The problem as I see it is that, even if we were to travel a couple of centuries or more back in time to old Hokkien province and take Mandarin out of the equation (the reason I say ‘a couple of centuries or more’ is to also allow ourselves to pre-date and therefore disregard the Methodist missionaries who introduced 白話字 Peh Oe Ji), writing pure vernacular Hokkien using Chinese characters would have been anything between rare to non-existent.

5. Therefore, my take is that, until the day comes when there is really an established standard for writing Hokkien in Chinese characters, the next best compromise in making the links would be simply to train oneself to read whatever Chinese characters one encounters (Classical Chinese, Modern Standard Chinese... whatever) using the Hokkien pronunciations, and build one's arsenal from there. That would be far more practical than the futile exercise of trying to locate the already-scarce Hokkien-in-Chinese-characters texts in order to read them in Hokkien. The way I figure it, the Hong Kongers are doing pretty well with that model using Cantonese so far; they read Modern Standard Chinese using Cantonese pronunciation, yet the purely colloquial features of their spoken Cantonese language is far from Mandarin-ised. My only grouse with them is that they get all their 本字 punji wrong.

[amhoanna]

If I might butt into this conversation... I say the vernacular must be written.

Hoklo should be not only spoken, but written as itself.

Reading and writing Classical Chinese with Hoklo phonology is "valid", but is different from reading and writing in Hoklo. It's like milk and honey. U can survive without either, but neither substitutes for the other.

Hoklo is made up of both colloquial and literary elements. Either one of these has a life of its own, independent from any other language. Classical Chinese has a special relationship with spoken Hoklo, just as it has a special relationship with Vietnamese, Mandarin and Ryukyuan, or just as Sanskrit has a special relationship with Siamese and Bengali. But Bengali and Siamese are not Sanskrit. And Mandarin, Vietnamese, Hoklo and Ryukyuan are not Classical Chinese.

Mandarin does not have a special relationship with Vietnamese or Hoklo, etc. Mandarin is not Classical Chinese. To the extent that Modern Standard Chinese is Mandarin (i.e. 100% nowadays), Modern Standard Chinese is not Classical Chinese. Given the special relationship of Classical Chinese to Hoklo, Cantonese, Japanese, etc., accepting Modern Standard Chinese as a modern incarnation of Classical Chinese -- which is what's being done in Shanghai and the Cantosphere -- is like cùsiạ Mantalịn tữ lán kakĩ ẻ hui'kuíⁿ using a dirty needle.

And I respectfully challenge Mark's claim that the phenomenon of "Mandarin as literary Cantonese" isn't affecting spoken Cantonese.

In Taiwan last month there was a big fuss over "Modern Standard Chinese as a stand-in for written Taiwanese". A well known writer lost his cool during a high profile public speech because an activist in the audience silently accused him of not writing in a Taiwanese language. Much of the media storm that followed was one sided b/c the ROC-brainwashed Taiwanese public saw things in the same paradigm as the well known "Taiwanese writer" who writes in Modern Standard Chinese and somehow tries to palm this off as an equivalent for Hoklo literature. Not to mention the growing "consciousness" that "Taiwanese Mandarin" "is a Taiwanese language", which is utter bullshit. Of course, the perception of Hoklo as being native to Taiwan is also gủsái, GKLK (goá kạng lứ kóng).

Hoklo is Hoklo is Hoklo.

[SimL]

Hi Mark & amhoanna,

I don't have a very strong position on this whole area, because I don't feel I know enough about it. My ideas will slowly develop as I read the discussion between you two, who have obviously thought about it a lot.

Mark: I think the list of words you wanted to offer as clues (your point #2 above) has dropped out. If you'd like to add it by editing, or in a further reply, then please do.

[niuc]

My mom sometimes also say 雞卵密密都有縫 or 雞卵密密mā有縫. Same as TW, 都 in my variant is "to" (tone 1).

[SimL]

Thanks niuc.

There seems to be considerable variation on this expression. Google gives quite a lot of hits for "嘛有縫", including "鴨卵卡密嘛有縫", "雞卵密密嘛有縫", "網卡密嘛有縫", "網卡密嘛有縫".