Penang Hokkien Vocabulary Questions

[niuc]

SimL wrote:
the verb "lEh4"... describes rolling over something with a wheel... Is there a known character for it?

A guess... a very wild guess: 轆.

In my variant it is luê, which I believe is 犁; its original meaning is to plough a field, and extended to mean going over something with wheels (similar action, both having "track").

[amhoanna]

Sim's word leh4 could be related to TW teh4 TO CRUSH (UNDER SOMETHING HEAVY). Here's a better definition than I could ever get going:

http://taigi.fhl.net/dict/search.php?DE ... ic&graph=2

There's a lot of go-between between "teh" and "leh" in Hoklo, 'kan? But in Malaya (I ain't talking about the colony) and the Malaccas, it may well've joined forces with a Malay word such as "golek". And the meaning may've shifted to blend Hoklo teh4 TO CRUSH with Malay golek TO ROLL. It's gon take a scholar to make sure this really happened. I'm just saying this kind of thing does happen, and has. I bet there's also a nice kanji, probably a phonosemantic compound kanji, that would fit teh/leh by sound and by meaning. And another that would fit the first syllable of the Malay word, go-. Without even having to craft an excuse and ignore sound change rules. All U need is a big-enough kanji-nary (jītián).

Lê / loê 犂 is used in TW. Karena gua orang bandar, I mostly hear it in the word lêchân.

http://taigi.fhl.net/dict/search.php?DE ... ic&graph=2

lêchân 犂田 = TO BE IN AN ACCIDENT AND FALL OFF YOUR MOTORBIKE. I guess maybe in the cngkha it means something else, like plowing them fields.

[Mark Yong]

Okay, I take back my 轆.

The 反切 for 犂 and 犁 (they appear to be variants of the same character: 犁: 《正韻》鄰溪切。同犂。) seem to fit, and allow for the -e/-ue variation:

《廣韻》 郎奚切 《集韻》《韻會》 憐題切，𠀤音黎。

And all the definitions point to ‘ploughing’.

《玉篇》耕具也。《廣韻》墾田器。山海經曰：後稷之孫叔均所作。魏略曰：皇甫隆爲燉煌太守，敎民作樓犂。《管子·乗馬篇》丈夫二犂，童五尺一犂。《正字通》宋淳化五年，武允成獻踏犂一具，不用牛，以人力運。　又《廣韻》耕也。《前漢·匈奴傳》犂其庭。《註》師古曰：犂，耕也。

Sim - an extended meaning to including rolling/ploughing over the frog is therefore not an impossibility!

[SimL]

Mark, niuc, amhoanna,

Thanks for your thoughts.

I'm a bit unsure about the connection to "le5" . For one thing, my Penang Hokkien variant also has the "le5" as a separate word, with the same meaning - "to plough" - as in other variants. This then differs from "lEh4" in two ways: "-e-" vs "-E-", and the absence vs presence of the glottal stop. Also, in terms of meaning, (for me) "le5" has the idea of pushing the earth aside (with no crushing or rolling feeling), while "lEh4" has the crushing and rolling feeling (with no pushing aside). [But I do acknowledge the parallel and connection between the two, niuc & Mark.]

I do like a mixture of all the inputs though. Perhaps it started out as "le5", and got the "-h" under the influence of Malay "golek", and the "-E-" and "-h" under the influence of "tEh4" (and hence also the added shade of meaning of "crushing").

Guess we can't know for sure.

PS: niuc, interesting that in your variant they are the same word (with extended meaning to include the rolling over / crushing aspect). Perhaps Penang Hokkien borrowed that word with the rolling over / crushing meaning from a variant where all the "-e-" are "-E-", and where "lE" means both, as in your variant.

[Ah-bin]

Hello everyone,

There is a word I kept on hearing on the Penang Hokkien podcast. It was a ghost story podcast and they kept on saying bô tùi-phî (無對???), meaning "uncomfortable" or "a bit creepy"

I have never heard the word before, and I can't find it in any of my dictionaries (that seems to happen quite often), and the phî makes me think of Mandarin 皮， for some reason. It isn't a loan from Mandarin is it?

[Ah-bin]

Well, I'm back after finishing my thesis.....not that I ever gave up on Hokkien, just that I wasn't spending hours every day writing the dictionary. Now it's 186 pages long. Now I must beg the indulgence of native speakers again to answer some questions for me. Actually...there are a lot more of these to come!

1) Is this grammatical?

She left a week earlier than I did.
I cháu khah chá kòe wá chi-lê lé-pài.
伊走較早過我此一嚟禮拜

2) How to say ‘under the table’ in PGHK? Is it toh-kha 桌骹? I think I have heard this, but I am not sure whether was from a Taiwanese or a Penang Hokkien speaker ‘Table’ itself (toh-téng 桌頂) seems to have a postposition, I keep thinking I have heard a word toh-kha 桌骹

3) Sông 倯 – I know this word well from Taiwan, where it was once fashionable to say SPP, and acronym for some word meaning unrefined, vulgar or rustic, but I was told that in Penang the word thó• 土 is used in its place. Bhante Dhammavudho uses sông in a different way, meaning ‘common’, ‘poor’, less of an insult based on behaviour and more of a description of someone’s economic and social position. It would be nice to know the various shades of meaning it has in different kinds of Hokkien, or whether the usage was merely an idiosyncracy of Bhante Dhammavudho.

4) 小人 – a mean, small-minded person, is this pronounced siáu-jîn or sió-jîn or both?

5) kài hó 蓋好 my Chinese dictionaries define the kài as like ‘extremely’ (Mandarin 非常) is this commonly used? I’ve heard it on the podcast.

6) Chiáh-lát 食力 this seems to be the native Hokkien for a serious or terrible situation, I have noticed different speakers pronouncing it like Chia-lát 食力 (it's quite common for the glottal stop to be dropped in PGHK), which made me think it was a non-existent Malay word 'jalat', perhaps I was thinking of 'jahat' instead.

7) what are the Hokkienised pronunciations of these words, most of them are loans. I can guess a few, it is mainly the tones I am interested in.

Ma-thai 馬蹄 – water chestnut (Cantonese)

Ka-li and ku-lai (what characters do they use for the second one as well?)
Roti-canai (lo-ti cha-nai)

Wantan in wantan-mī (wan-than-mī)

Jiu-hû eng chai = Kangkong Sotong

Iong tāu-hū 豆腐 (what does the iong mean?)

What are the tones and characters for Pasembur (chhe•n-hu)?

Thank you all in advance for your answers!

[AndrewAndrew]

Ah Bin

Can I please put in a request for an iPhone app version of your dictionary? There are so many times I am walking around and need to look up a Hokkien word. I already have Mandarin and Malay dictionary apps. It would be a best-seller, and easy to update with new editions.

The following for now:

7) what are the Hokkienised pronunciations of these words, most of them are loans. I can guess a few, it is mainly the tones I am interested in.

Ma-thai 馬蹄 – water chestnut (Cantonese)

Ma44 thai22

Ka-li and ku-lai (what characters do they use for the second one as well?)

ka44 li53

gu22 lai53 - no characters as it's Malay

Roti-canai (lo-ti cha-nai)

lo22 ti22 ca22 nai44

Wantan in wantan-mī (wan-than-mī)

wan22 than44

Jiu-hû eng chai = Kangkong Sotong

jiu22 hu22 eng44 chai21

Iong tāu-hū 豆腐 (what does the iong mean?)

yong22 一釀 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yong_Tau_Foo

What are the tones and characters for Pasembur (chhe•n-hu)?

[/quote]

cheenn22 hu24 生魚

[niuc]

Hi Ah-bin

Nice to see your & Andrew's postings again.

1) Is this grammatical?

She left a week earlier than I did.
I cháu khah chá kòe wá chi-lê lé-pài.
伊走較早過我此一嚟禮拜

I am not sure about Penang Hokkien but this sounds OK to me. In my variant, using the same words, I usually say 伊早我一禮拜走 or 伊比我早一禮拜走.

2) How to say ‘under the table’ in PGHK? Is it toh-kha 桌骹? I think I have heard this, but I am not sure whether was from a Taiwanese or a Penang Hokkien speaker ‘Table’ itself (toh-téng 桌頂) seems to have a postposition, I keep thinking I have heard a word toh-kha 桌骹

Again, not sure about PGHK, but in my variant it's indeed tohkha 桌骹. Since 桌骹 can also mean the legs of a table, we usually say 桌骹啊 tohkhai_a which only means "under the table".

3) Sông 倯 – I know this word well from Taiwan, where it was once fashionable to say SPP, and acronym for some word meaning unrefined, vulgar or rustic, but I was told that in Penang the word thó• 土 is used in its place. Bhante Dhammavudho uses sông in a different way, meaning ‘common’, ‘poor’, less of an insult based on behaviour and more of a description of someone’s economic and social position. It would be nice to know the various shades of meaning it has in different kinds of Hokkien, or whether the usage was merely an idiosyncracy of Bhante Dhammavudho.

In Bâgán'uē we also usually say thó• 土 for unrefined or vulgar; while sông 倯 usually means unrefined in the sense of bad taste in clothing etc and ignorant of many things.　

Could it be that Bhante Dhammavudho's saying sòng instead? For "poor", I used to come across the word sònghiong (written as 宋凶 or 宋兇 in http://210.240.194.97/iug/ungian/SoannT ... taihoa.asp) in Amoy Bible.

4) 小人 – a mean, small-minded person, is this pronounced siáu-jîn or sió-jîn or both?

It's siáujîn in my variant.

5) kài hó 蓋好 my Chinese dictionaries define the kài as like ‘extremely’ (Mandarin 非常) is this commonly used? I’ve heard it on the podcast.

Interesting. I used to think that kài is Taiwanese.

6) Chiáh-lát 食力 this seems to be the native Hokkien for a serious or terrible situation, I have noticed different speakers pronouncing it like Chia-lát 食力 (it's quite common for the glottal stop to be dropped in PGHK), which made me think it was a non-existent Malay word 'jalat', perhaps I was thinking of 'jahat' instead.

In Bâgán'uē, tsiàh-làt 食力 only means needing a lot of force (Mandarin: 吃力 / 費力). For serious or terrible situation (嚴重), we say tsiâⁿ-làt. However, I cannot find the latter in any dictionary. The dictionary link above also put 嚴重 as one of the meaning of 食力. Since the sandhi of T8 and T5 are both T3 in my variant, actually the difference between tsiàh-làt and tsiâⁿ-làt is only the nasalisation.

Ma-thai 馬蹄 – water chestnut (Cantonese)

I don't know about water chestnut, but there is a kind of "biscuit" called 馬蹄酥 which we say bétuêso·.

Ka-li and ku-lai (what characters do they use for the second one as well?)

My variant has kalí and kīng (Thai: kaeng) but not ku-lai/gulai.

Roti-canai (lo-ti cha-nai)

Bâgán ū lôti tānsī bô roti-canai.

Wantan in wantan-mī (wan-than-mī)

I say uânthanmī (or piánsi̍tmī 扁食麵).

Jiu-hû eng chai = Kangkong Sotong

蕹菜 ìngtshaì.

Iong tāu-hū 豆腐 (what does the iong mean?)

In Singapore and Malaysia it's Yong, but in Jakarta I saw it written as "Liong Tahu". I just found out that 釀 indeed can be pronounced as liōng in Hokkien.

[Mark Yong]

jiu22 hu22 eng44 chai21 鰇魚蕹菜. Note that the first character is usually written on stall signs as 魷, which is technically not the 本字 for jiu22. One of my pet peeves.

I believe 釀 on its own means ‘to ferment’.

And while we are on the subject of Penang foods, a couple more that deserve correction...

- àng-tău sng (‘ice kacang’) should be 紅豆霜, not 紅豆冰.
- Ò cùt-bȋ (‘pulut hitam’) should be 烏秫米, not 黑糯米.

What a great way to make a come-back... by my usual *bitching* about 本字!

[Ah-bin]

Ah, Wonderful! Thank you all for all of these. Now only a few words remain unentered from Tan Choon Hoe's first book. I might add some more names of food later, as it is a popular thing to talk about in Hokkien...and no wonder.

I'll have to get someone else to help with iphone apps I think, Andrew. Last week I couldn't tell the difference between an iphone and an ipod....I've never held either of these things in my hand as yet!

Some comments:

cheenn22 hu24 生魚

Now this is interesting, because that is the word that occurred to me straight away, but I thought it was impossible based on what the dish contains, I am happy to know that my initial intuition was correct!

Could it be that Bhante Dhammavudho's saying sòng instead? For "poor", I used to come across the word sònghiong (written as 宋凶 or 宋兇 in http://210.240.194.97/iug/ungian/SoannT ... taihoa.asp) in Amoy Bible.

Ah...of course I should have listened carefully to the tone! I do believe it is sòng or sōng. My big green Chiang-chiu dictionary has sòng-hiong as 鬆兇 for some reason, defined as "poor", but two entries later there is sōng　(the character provided is 倊) meaning 1) drowsy 2) too long (of clothes) and 3) scruffy and not particularly clean. I think he may in fact have been using this last word. The pure Chiang-chiu for 倯 is sôm, which I have never heard myself.

In Singapore and Malaysia it's Yong, but in Jakarta I saw it written as "Liong Tahu". I just found out that 釀 indeed can be pronounced as liōng in Hokkien.

Ah, interesting, it is supposed to be liōng in Amoy-Choan-chiu and liāng in Chiang-chiu. Iong-tau-hu looks like a half-Cantonese and half Hokkien expression.

The water chestnut thing is interesting. It seems like Niuc's variant has borrowed the Cantonese character compound and pronounced it according to Hokkien, as has that variety of Sumatran Hokkien I have the article on. PGHK on the other hand, has borrowed the word in Cantonese pronunciation. I believe it's something else entirely in Amoy, but I can't find it in any dictionary I have at hand at the moment.