amhoanna wrote:... Sorry about the hanji, Sim. Mainly what the guy did was look at this whole thing from a Hakkophone perspective, since he speaks some Hakka as a 4th or 5th language. In Hakka, "ho11 lo52" couldn't possibly have anything to do with 福, but it could have something to do with a Hakka verb "ho" that means to take up space/resources/etc. And lo52 would still be 佬. ...
Hi amhoanna,
Oh, please don't apologize! It was more an admission of my own failings, than a reproach to either the original writer or to you for reposting... . Very interesting, thanks for the summary of the content. There's so much more going on "out there" that I don't know about. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of the members of this Forum.
Huili̍ppin is an incredibly interesting place for Hoklology. Stepped into a National Bookstore today and saw two books of the "learn Chinese, Filipino and English" variety, one by Johnny Young entitled KEEPING UP WITH YOUR CHINESE + FILIPINO, Vol. 2, or something like that, another by John Wangli entitled either SPEAK CHINESE-FILIPINO-ENGLISH THE FASTEST AND EASIEST WAY or PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CHINESE-FILIPINO-ENGLISH CONVERSATION. I'd seen the Young book before, or was that vol. 1? The Wangli book comes with a CD. Now the interesting thing is that both books had three columns for "Chinese", one for kanji, one for romanized Mandarin and one for romanized Hokkien. The romanizations are pretty bad, but 95% of the time I could make out what was going on. Now here's what was interesting:
1. The Hokkien was very pure, w/ little or no input from Mandarin.
2. The Mandarin was bookish, maybe better described as Modern Std Chinese, not quite the free-wheeling, "Northern" Mandarin that serves as a standard now.
3. The Hokkien seemed a tad bit formal or bookish too, at least Young's was.
4. Young's hanji actually seemed to key off his Hokkien, while his Mandarin keyed off his hanji.
5. Young's book covered all manner of topics relating to business and industry. Clearly, to Tsinoys (Phils Tn̂glâng), Hokkien is a language that covers everything, not just outdated or in-home topics.
6. A great number of Young's terminology was at odds with most modern Sino languages, inc. TWese Hoklo as it's spoken now. Meanwhile, his "Mandarin" was in line with his Hokkien as often as not.
It's like they're speaking early 20th century Hokkien, evolved to meet the demands of the days we live in. It's like they never got the memo on the use of Modern Std Chinese and how words would be coined in the future. Actually we can also observe that most Tsinoys simply don't "see" Hokkien and Std Chinese as different languages. To them, the two languages are almost like what colloquial and newscast Cantonese are to Cantophones. But b/c their "linguistic psychology" dates back a lot farther than that of other Hoklo-speaking communities ... they also don't see Hokkien as being somehow subordinate...
I'm tempted to buy the books, esp. the one with the recording. But it's the last thing a digital nomad like me needs.
Lí kóng liáu ū lí! I think I'll get the one that has the recording, when I make my way back to Manila.
I found Vol. 1 of the Johnny Young books up in Vigan yesterday. I had a long look through that one. There's another author named Betty Lee, I've seen three of her books on Hokkien in the bookstores. One of them refers to Hokkien as "Hokyanwe" in the title, soah m̄ cai it always rides solo between Hebrew and Italian on the shelves, while the other books on Hokkien ride in the "Chinese" section. Anyway, the Young books are interesting, but there's no recording, and the romanizations are inconsistent. He tries to spell everything so that you could read it as if it were English, but he supplements it with tone marks (numbers) where he feels it's necessary. Then there's typos on top of that. I can figure out most of the book fine b/c of what I know from other kinds of Hoklo, but when he gets to words that differ from Taiwan/Amoy/Penang, then I'm in the dark. And arguably those are the most interesting words.
It occurred to me that I or we could contact Johnny Young directly for future projects. I bet he's knowledgeable and genuinely interested. M̄ koh unlike Ongmeister of Penang podcast fame, i sī ahboē se̍ksāi Aute'aló·'ā hit ê gíbûn coanka nātiāⁿ--lah.
Betty Lee's romanizations are a bit more systematic, but her lexicon "skews Mandarin" something fierce. She has a couple of primers out and a wordlist/dictionary. The wordlist is chock full of Mandarin words in Hoklo garb. Benar berani!
aPin, lí nā beh'ài, goá ēsái kā lí tàu bé ciah'ê che·h liáu'āu sûi kià hō·--lí, ū êng lí ciahkoh iōng Paypal ahsī Swift hêng goá lui. The Young books are PHP 370 apiece, the Lee books are in the 150-250 range. Phils being the kind of place it is, reliable postage may cost more than it would in the Commonwealth. Nā ū beh'ài, lépài àm kóng hō· goá cai tō hó.
Last note, the words and structures used in these Pinoy Hoklo books totally resemble how the kid and his mother (from the Amoy flight) talked. I wonder if this is b/c she came from the same linguistic zone as the original "Lūsòng khe·h" 呂宋客 -- are 南安 and 晉江 "like that"? Or if it's b/c she adjusted her Hoklo to Binondo. After all, she spoke fluent Tagalog. That impressed me endlessly.
The one badass word the kid used that stuck in my mind was "tâⁿ" for WRONG. He was practicing writing hanji. He would write a hanji, then say "tâⁿ, tâⁿ" and erase it while his mother would say "bô tâⁿ! bô tâⁿ lah!" We use "tâⁿ" in TW as in têngtâⁿ, but m̄ tio̍h seems more common in these contexts; and in Soàⁿboé and Chonglâm they might just say "chò, chò".
amhoanna wrote:
The one badass word the kid used that stuck in my mind was "tâⁿ" for WRONG. He was practicing writing hanji. He would write a hanji, then say "tâⁿ, tâⁿ" and erase it while his mother would say "bô tâⁿ! bô tâⁿ lah!" We use "tâⁿ" in TW as in têngtâⁿ, but m̄ tio̍h seems more common in these contexts; and in Soàⁿboé and Chonglâm they might just say "chò, chò".
My variant usually use "m̄-tio̍h", while "chò" is (only) used in "literary context". We use tâⁿ to mean wrong in the sense of blurred or mixed up. Bàk-ciu (khuà-lòh) tâⁿ-tâⁿ = (My) eyes' vision is blurred / not clear. Khuà/Thiaⁿ-tâⁿ is a subset of khuà/thiaⁿ-m̄-tiòh, implying that there was some distraction/noise.
amhoanna wrote:The one badass word the kid used that stuck in my mind was "tâⁿ" for WRONG. He was practicing writing hanji. He would write a hanji, then say "tâⁿ, tâⁿ" and erase it while his mother would say "bô tâⁿ! bô tâⁿ lah!" We use "tâⁿ" in TW as in têngtâⁿ, but m̄ tio̍h seems more common in these contexts; and in Soàⁿboé and Chonglâm they might just say "chò, chò".
amhoanna, I've just checked that word with my tutor, and apparently she's not familiar with that word, at least in that context. She said she'd use m̄-tio̍h...
We're now going through Lesson 5 (body parts) from Young's book. She gave me a Hokkien equivalent for a few words Young would use the Mandarin word pronounced in Hokkien. I'm not familiar with these words in Taiwanese and still haven't got a chance to check what they have for it. She's not familiar with some medical terms that appear in the lesson such as bile or enzyme, but I'm impressed she knows most words in the lesson. I wouldn't know some in Portuguese, to be honest I'm finishing my coursework now, so I'll probably not be able to organize my notes so soon. Hopefully I'll be able to share that with you next month
amhoanna wrote:
It occurred to me that I or we could contact Johnny Young directly for future projects. I bet he's knowledgeable and genuinely interested. M̄ koh unlike Ongmeister of Penang podcast fame, i sī ahboē se̍ksāi Aute'aló·'ā hit ê gíbûn coanka nātiāⁿ--lah.
Ha! I just spotted this now, years after you wrote it! Lú sī kóng wá, sī ô?
. Very interesting, thanks for the summary of the content. There's so much more going on "out there" that I don't know about. Thanks for bringing it to the attention of the members of this Forum.
I'm finishing my coursework now, so I'll probably not be able to organize my notes so soon. Hopefully I'll be able to share that with you next month 