Original chinese characters for Minnan

Discussions on the Hokkien (Minnan) language.
niuc
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Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 3:23 pm
Location: Singapore

Re: Original chinese characters for Minnan

Post by niuc »

Hi Amhoanna

Good question. My vague impression is that I ever heard some pronounced 會 as uē, but not sure when & which variant(s). As you said, most (if not) all Hokkien variants that I ever heard, including E-mng, say ē. So I think that [勿會] buē in my variant is from 無 bô + 會 ē -> boē -> buē. Good thing that just now I had the idea of asking my Teochew friend, who confirms that in his Teochew variant: 會 indeed is oē ('o' there is really 'o', not 'u'; so it really sounds oē, unlike POJ oē which actually sounds uē). And he pronounces [勿會] & 未 both as boē (not buē)! :idea:

About 'l' & 'd' sounds, I find them interesting and quite mixed up in my variant, e.g.:
'la', 'lai', 'lau', 'lam', 'lan', 'lang', 'lak', 'lap', 'lak', 'lat' -> same.
'li' -> usually still 'li' e.g. 李, 理, 離, 籬; exception: 利 often becomes 'dī'.
'ji' -> usually 'di' e.g. 字, 二; exception: 兒 often becomes 'lî';
(it seems that lî/jî often -> lî, while lī/jī often -> dī).
'lin' -> often becomes 'din' e.g. 恁, 乳/奶.
'jin' -> usually 'din' e.g. 人, 仁.
In any case, wherever a Chinese-speaking woman is having the babies of a non-Chinese-speaking guy, U know the Tnglang are well and truly entrenched in that place -- even West Malaysia isn' there yet.
You mean "entrenced" in the sense of "assimilated"? When I was on a business trip to Bangkok a few years ago, there was a Thai Teochew young lady who just married a "native" Thai. She was very "Chinese"-looking & fair skinned while he was dark skinned and very non-"Chinese" looking. I was a bit surprised on how at ease she & all colleagues (many of them were "Chinese"-looking) were about the mix-marriage. Surely there were Chinese ladies who married "natives" in Indonesia & Malaysia, I met some, but they were exception; while in Thailand it seems to be a "norm". I think this has a lot to do with religion, because most Thais (& mainland SEAsia) are Buddhists & so are most Chinese there; also the culture may be more similar due to proximity with China (compared to Msia/Idn). How about TW, how often Hoklo/Hakka ladies married Alisan-lâng?
amhoanna
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Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:43 pm

Re: Original chinese characters for Minnan

Post by amhoanna »

Interesting with the Teochew!

I've been thinking ... so many of our "problem kanji" are actually contractions.

"Bētàng" is just 無會得通.

未当? 袂凍? These could be resolved if we could just make the characters we needed and add them to Unicode / UTF-8 or whatever... Actually, 𢓶 already exists. :lol:

d/l: Thanks for sharing, once again. Coincidentally, Vietnamese "d" is /z/ is some dialects, /j/ in others. (/j/ as in the English word YAY.) In general medieval Vietnamese, the corresponding reflex was indeed something like /d/.
You mean "entrenced" in the sense of "assimilated"?
Mutually assimilating!

In Sabah, Cambodia, Saigon, and maybe Sarawak and some other places, it's common for people with just partial Tnglang ancestry to speak one or more Sino tongues. In Bangkok, I'm guessing it was done at some pt, but my guess is that most orang Bangkok with one non-Sino parent nowadays can't speak any Sino language. My impression is that most orang Bangkok under a certain age can't speak any Sino language even if they have two Sino parents.

Moslem-infidel marriages are discouraged in SEA nowadays, no doubt about that. Yet I'm under the impression that when one side is Moslem and the other side is non-Moslem AND SINO, the Moslem side is statistically overwhelmingly female. This is the point I was making, that Chinese women tend to be more endogamous, or "conservative", than the men in situations of cultural continuity. The reverse may be true in situations of cultural discontinuity, e.g. the Anglostans, where cultural "generation gaps" crop up from the time of arrival and out-marriages tend to be Chinese woman + White man.

There's something very "equal" about the Cambodia or Sabah model. Men and women outmarry equally. Offspring take after all their heritage cultures +/- equally.

I'm under the impression that there are lots of Chinese + Batak couples in and around Sumatera? Are there lots of Chinese woman + Batak man couples?

The TWnese situation: Anecdotally, the only Han + Alisan couples I know of socially are one or two generations up, where Chiang's soldiers took Alisan wives. Here we're not counting Sinicized Plains Aborigines as orang Alisan. The pop culture when I was a kid used to reinforce a stereotype that Alisan men would always "tńgkhì soaⁿténg" when they wanted to get married. Ironically, in reality, lots of highland girls back then were already down in the cities selling sex. In the past generation the Alisan have gone more mainstream. In any case, there's no preservation of the old Formosan cultures whatsoever when Han + Alisan. The Alisan partner conforms to Han culture. So do the kids. See baseball star 陳致遠 and his wife (pretty sure she's Han). Alisan songstress 温嵐 has never been packaged as anything but an R.O.C. starlet with an urban, "Americanized" twist. Alisan songstress 秀蘭瑪雅 was packaged as +/- "all-Taiwanese", although she sings in Hoklo w/ a heavy Amer. English accent. Then there's Amis aMei 阿妹. I bet plenty of fans off-island don't know she ain't Han.

Recently the movie SEEDIQ BALE came out, with most of the dialog in Seediq. At first, a lot of media outlets classified it as a 華語 "Chinese" movie! (華語 doesn't mean MANDARIN in that context.) There was a bit of an uproar over that and I'm curious to see how it's played out.
niuc
Posts: 734
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 3:23 pm
Location: Singapore

Re: Original chinese characters for Minnan

Post by niuc »

Ah! You hit it! It totally makes sense that bē-tàng is just 無會得通.
Actually, 𢓶 already exists.
Upsssttt! I cannot see the TLJ, just a square.

d/j: in old spelling of Bahasa Indonesia, 'j' is 'y' (Ejaan Baru, 1972), while 'j' was written as 'dj', 'u' was 'oe' (following Dutch?). So Jakarta was Djakarta and Surabaya was Soerabaja.

The lady whose salon I go to for hair cut is a Sabahan Nyonya. Indeed she speaks Malay, Hokkien and accented Mandarin. Although mostly I speak to her in Indonesian, sometimes she throws in Hokkien terms/sentences. About Bangkok, I have the same impression from my then conversations with Teochew colleagues there. In several Thai movies I watched, there are always some short conversations in Teochew spoken by the parents and grandparents that are understood by the youngsters but the latter always reply in Thai.
Yet I'm under the impression that when one side is Moslem and the other side is non-Moslem AND SINO, the Moslem side is statistically overwhelmingly female.
Probably. The ones I know are about 50-50. And most of the time the Chinese would need to convert. The female converts usually practise the religion more than the male ones, probably due to the fact that traditionally and religiously (extremely emphasized in Islam) speaking a wife should followed & under the authority of her husband. Male converts often still eat pork outside and rarely go to mosques or Friday prayer assembly (only for men).
The reverse may be true in situations of cultural discontinuity, e.g. the Anglostans, where cultural "generation gaps" crop up from the time of arrival and out-marriages tend to be Chinese woman + White man.
IMHO, the consistent factor is social rank and wealth. Many Asians still think of Angmohs as richer if not also higher in the social ranking, that's why a lot of Asian women (including Austronesians) out-marry to Angmohs. Let's say in the future Asians or Africans are much more richer and powerful (thus higher in term of social ranking) than Angmohs, then Asian women will hardly marry Angmohs anymore but to (other) Asians or Africans. In fact nowadays there are many Angmoh ladies who married rich Arabs & convert to Islam, right? Chinese women usually didn't/don't marry "native" men because they perceive most of them as "lower" and/or "poorer". One of my distant relative married a Moslem general (or some high rank soldier) in Riau and none seemed to object to that, unlike when the other (including men) married "poor/uncultured natives". Here I see a consistent pattern.
There's something very "equal" about the Cambodia or Sabah model. Men and women outmarry equally. Offspring take after all their heritage cultures +/- equally.
That is great! :mrgreen: Some among my family/relatives (Christians) are similar to that, actually not pure "native" but also some Eurasians (Dutch & Portuguese ancestries), in fact 1 man & 2 or 3 women; but 1 or 2 of the women themselves are mixed Chinese & "native" tribes, so roughly about equal percentage.
I'm under the impression that there are lots of Chinese + Batak couples in and around Sumatera? Are there lots of Chinese woman + Batak man couples?
I think so, also because Bataks (Toba & Karo) mostly are Christians (or rather Batak tribes with Moslem majority e.g. Mandailing refuse the name "Batak") and similar to Chinese in certain cultural things such as having patrilineal surnames & patriarchal structure. [They also have second burial custom!] In Bagansiapiapi I ever went to a rich Batak doctor whose wife was Chinese. I also heard from some people about another woman whose Batak husband helped to wash clothes (manually, there was no washing machine). Our impression was that Batak men were much more readier to help with house chores than Chinese. In fact I think there are more Chinese women (than men) married to Batak. A lot of (most?) Batak women (and men) are dark skinned and 粗肢骨/大顆, so probably that's a factor also.
Then there's Amis aMei 阿妹. I bet plenty of fans off-island don't know she ain't Han.
When I first knew about aMei many years ago, I thought she was Han (albeit with strong "Viet"/Southern features, not really a rarity among many Southern Chinese). But soon I read/heard that she wasn't Han, a surprise not so much about her appearance than about her popularity in TW. Later as the time went by, it became clear that there had been indeed many Alisan singers & celebrities etc. Btw 高金素梅 doesn't look like a typical Alisan.
Recently the movie SEEDIQ BALE came out, with most of the dialog in Seediq. At first, a lot of media outlets classified it as a 華語 "Chinese" movie! (華語 doesn't mean MANDARIN in that context.) There was a bit of an uproar over that and I'm curious to see how it's played out.
Please keep us updated. I read somewhere that the movie has no English subtitles? It's interesting that 華語 in that context doesn't mean Mandarin or any other Chinese (Sino) languages. I heard of 中華民族 used to include all tribes (or nations?) in 中國, but this is the first time I read of 華語 used to include non-Han languages, which in fact is consistent with that 中華 concept.
amhoanna
Posts: 912
Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2010 12:43 pm

Re: Original chinese characters for Minnan

Post by amhoanna »

this is the first time I read of 華語 used to include non-Han languages, which in fact is consistent with that 中華 concept.
The fact that the inclusion of a Seediq-language movie in the 華語 category, technically correct w/i the 中華民族 Tionghoa worldview, was "attacked" or brought to task so quickly and ruthlessly, and apparently undone w/o much debate or controversy, is a "good sign" that the Tionghoa 中華 concept is not doing too well on Taiwan these days!
IMHO, the consistent factor is social rank and wealth.
Memang!
Probably. The ones I know are about 50-50.
Interesting.
d/j: in old spelling of Bahasa Indonesia, 'j' is 'y'
Same in the IPA! (Kokcè Imphiau) ...
"y" represents the front rounded vowel in Mandarin qu4 去.
The lady whose salon I go to for hair cut is a Sabahan Nyonya. Indeed she speaks Malay, Hokkien and accented Mandarin. Although mostly I speak to her in Indonesian, sometimes she throws in Hokkien terms/sentences. About Bangkok, I have the same impression from my then conversations with Teochew colleagues there. In several Thai movies I watched, there are always some short conversations in Teochew spoken by the parents and grandparents that are understood by the youngsters but the latter always reply in Thai.
Interesting. Does she come from around Labuan (Labuhan)?
niuc
Posts: 734
Joined: Sun Oct 16, 2005 3:23 pm
Location: Singapore

Re: Original chinese characters for Minnan

Post by niuc »

amhoanna wrote: The fact that the inclusion of a Seediq-language movie in the 華語 category, technically correct w/i the 中華民族 Tionghoa worldview, was "attacked" or brought to task so quickly and ruthlessly, and apparently undone w/o much debate or controversy, is a "good sign" that the Tionghoa 中華 concept is not doing too well on Taiwan these days!
Interesting. Actually I was very surprised when I first knew that particular 中華 concept, as I had always thought of 中華 as just another name for 漢人 or 唐人, not including 藏/蒙/滿/莊/傣/阿里山/等等.
Interesting. Does she come from around Labuan (Labuhan)?
I'll ask her next time.
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