Hoklo and VNmese: keeping up with the Trans

[amhoanna]

So last night I buy a new laptop briefcase (TWnese: "khabáng") at the dep't store. I wasn't looking for one at the time, but they gave me a product and a price I couldn't refuse. This khabáng was a middle-of-the-line product, but it was cheaper than all the cheapo low-grade khabáng displayed on the same shelf. The saleslady was patient enough to tell me why, 3x, but I didn't have enough VNmese to understand her. All I knew was it was something about "làm phát" (huh?) and "kinh tế" (the economy???).

So I get home, fire up the dictionnaires, and look up "làm phát". No luck, but there is a "lạm phát" -- pretty much the same pronunciation, given the tone sandhi -- and it means INFLATION. Bingo.

The khabáng was cheaper b/c of inflation, b/c it was priced and marked for sale back when the VN đồng (銅) was worth more than it is now, i.e. several months ago, maybe. Wow.

Next, it's pretty obvious that phát is 発. How about lạm? I Google "lạm phát 發". Sure enough, lạm is 濫.

Lạm phát, 濫発. VNmese for INFLATION. A word that not only (1) applies an existing concept to modern-day fiat money phenomena, but also (2) describes the phenomenon better than euphemistic equivalents like 通貨膨脹 and inflation.

Now, how do we say INFLATION in Hoklo?

Exactly.

When it comes to creatively applying their living language to new concepts, I'd rank the Sinospheric language communities like this:

VNmese > Mandarin > Cantonese > Korean > Japanese

The VNmese use both their Sino and AA (Austro-Asiatic) roots pretty well... They don't copy off Mandarin... They do suck in a lot of European words in practice, but not as much as the neighbors do.

Mandarin does pretty well, considering that it lost a lot of its contrasts when it Altaicized, so that what works for VNmese may not work for Mandarin. A lot of the 3- and 4-syllable words look shoddy from a Classical Chinese standpoint, but 2-syllable words aren't always optimal for Mandarin, b/c of the lack of contrasts. Mandarin has the least direct European loanwords, but it does have a lot of slavish calques.

Close, but Cantonese copies a lot of Mandarin's 3- and 4-syllable words despite poor fit. Cantonese also sucks in more English than Mandarin does. When the Cantonese do bother to extend their existing language, what they come up with tends to look really cool from a Sino or Hoklo standpoint.

"Capitalist" Korean uses Sino roots and European loans in cool ways, but it takes in way too much English even compared to Cantonese. But ... I wouldn't be surprised if there were some really cool words being used in the North!

Japanese takes the European loans to a fetish pitch. It's like they forgot they had native and Sino roots to work with. They've sucked in as much European loanage as cultures that were illiterate 150 yrs ago...!

What about Hoklo? Some yrs ago there was a thread on this on the Tảigứbãng. Someone listed the Mandarin and the Japanese for each term, "approved" all terms shared by Mand and Jap, "adopted" some terms used by one of the two, and suggested some pretty cool words for the rest. It's a shame VNmese wasn't in the running -- it has way more "參考價值". I'm going to set up a public spreadsheet for this soon. I'll put up a link in this thread.

In practice, whatever we come up with, all we can do is float it in our daily lives -- Mark Yong-style, and then some! What is there to lose anyway? We can also reverse hijack our Written Chinese with some of the words, HK-style, e.g. 寫字楼, etc. All in a day's work.

[Yeleixingfeng]

What does 寫字樓 mean?

[amhoanna]

OFFICE.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Just stating a fact.

The Japanese got their writing system and many of their vocabularies from Chinese - it's borrowing. So I guess it wouldn't be any difference to copy straight from English, as how their ancestors did from Chinese. What do you think?

[amhoanna]

The Japanese got their writing system and many of their vocabularies from Chinese - it's borrowing.

True. The Hoklo also got their writing system and much of their vocabulary from Chinese via borrowing! Not to deny nor affirm that the Hoklo also got much of their vocabulary from China through "hereditary" mechanisms.

So I guess it wouldn't be any difference to copy straight from English, as how their ancestors did from Chinese.

This is like saying they phokkaai once before, so they might as well phokkaai again.

So far there's no sign of integration btw JPnese and Sino-JPnese elements on one hand, with European elements on the other. Why did they need katakana? Why not use just hiragana and kanji? A Confucian xenophobic complex, maybe?

[amhoanna]

Link to my VNmese "loan idea" spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/a/tawa.asia/spr ... h_TW#gid=0

I don't see any reason not to include other languages, e.g. Canto and the JMK languages. Actually, M is already on there to help people navigate.

Who wants to work on this spreadsheet, when the spirit moves them? Email me.

As U guys may know, I've had it in mind to build a bigger database of "core" Southeast Asian languages, including Hoklo. It would be a loose polyglot dictionary. Ideally, it would grow to include good "language pair" dictionaries. One of the best I've seen of this last type is reverso.net. I'm "struggling" with how to "see" the whole concept... And the technology is way over my head. Sooner or later, though, this spreadsheet might feed into that.

If U guys are wondering why I've been using "non-standard" tone diacritics lately, it's b/c I'm trying to account for T6. Just b/c it "doesn't exist" in Amoy and the TWnese cities ... doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'd also like to account for the two T4s.

What two T4s, U ask? Well, when we see a T4 glottal-final syllable in running position, how do we know if it takes the high-falling running contour or the high-level-checked running contour? Right. We don't, not automatically. No rules govern. We have to refer to all the times we've heard this word before. Only a speaker would know. They're distinct categories. Wonder why the old-timers didn't notice. Maybe the split happened in recent times?