Today, I got some help with pronunciation from a Taiwanese from 台南, and I wrote down his pronunciations 'cos although my textbook says pronunciation on CD/romanization is based on 台中, to me it sounds more like 台北. (nothing against 台北, just that his pronunciation resembles more that from another speaker I met, so since they're helping me out I decided to take their pronunciations as a model instead of that on my textbook ) Anyway, I don't know enough about Taiwanese dialects.
Something intriguing was that he pronounced tui3 on one sentence as tu3:
我對東京来。 -> goa2 tu3 tang-kiaN lai5.
but in this sentence, he insisted that it was tui3:
我對臺湾語真有興趣。 -> góa tui3 tai5-oan5-oe7 chin u7 heng3-chhu3.
My textbook teaches it as tui3 in both, and the only variation I was able to track down on dictionaries was ui3. Does anyone know about any other Hokkien dialect using tu3 or distinguishing two different forms of 對 (if used in other dialects) as that 台南 speaker?
tui3 vs tu3
tui3 vs tu3
Last edited by FutureSpy on Fri Mar 30, 2012 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: tui3 vs tu3
Not my variety. I use "tui" for a variety of meanings, from "tui" (to, against, with regard to) to "tui bin" (opposite position, facing). Never heard someone say "tu".
Re: tui3 vs tu3
Another thing I found intriguing is that he pronounces 日本 as git8-pun2 instead of jit8-pun2 or lit8-pun2. I should have asked him how he pronounces 雖然...
Re: tui3 vs tu3
During a boring class I remembered a word with perhaps pretty much the same variation as 日本: 偌儕. Seems like 偌 can be joa7, goa7 or loa7 in Taiwanese. So that git8 pronunciation seems perfectly okay...
Re: tui3 vs tu3
It should be tui3 in both contexts. In the FROM context, it's interchangeable with ui3 and an3. From your post, my guess is that he was talking fairly fast and tui3 came out as tu3.My textbook teaches it as tui3 in both, and the only variation I was able to track down on dictionaries was ui3. Does anyone know about any other Hokkien dialect using tu3 or distinguishing two different forms of 對 (if used in other dialects) as that 台南 speaker?
This is common in and around 高雄 Takau / Kohiong: /j-/ merges to /g-/ before /-i-/. The /g-/ is often very weak. Another trait of that "accent" is that the mid-level tone is relatively high, almost as high as the high-level.Another thing I found intriguing is that he pronounces 日本 as git8-pun2 instead of jit8-pun2 or lit8-pun2. I should have asked him how he pronounces 雖然...
I'm under the impression that this is mostly a Takau-Pintong 屏東 thing. Then again, I haven't spent much time down there. Tailam 台南 vs Takau is analogous to Kyoto vs Osaka -- Takau is a bigger city, but Tailam is old and proud and does not seem to let Takau influence it.
The same feature is found in Ciangpo· 漳浦, in China. It seems likely that there's a connection, even though Ciangpo· migrants never formed a majority in any sizable part of TW... I've flirted with the /g-/ pronunciation and I can say that it is so easy that if U get used to it, U'll probably never go back to /j-/ (in either of its forms) or /l-/.
Yes, joa7 is relatively rare in TW now, and goa7 is probably more common than loa7 islandwide even though the git8 pronunciation is limited to part of the South. This probably proves that sound change occurs unevenly...During a boring class I remembered a word with perhaps pretty much the same variation as 日本: 偌儕. Seems like 偌 can be joa7, goa7 or loa7 in Taiwanese.
It's not that simple, to put it simply.Today, I got some help with pronunciation from a Taiwanese from 台南, and I wrote down his pronunciations 'cos although my textbook says pronunciation on CD/romanization is based on 台中, to me it sounds more like 台北. (nothing against 台北, just that his pronunciation resembles more that from another speaker I met, so since they're helping me out I decided to take their pronunciations as a model instead of that on my textbook )
First of all, in EACH of the counties of 台南, 台中, and 台北, U'll find almost the full of spectrum of Taiwanese Hoklo dialects -- in the speech of the old-timers. And when someone says they are from one of these places, they usually mean the county.
There's even variation w/i the cities. In Taipak, old-timers in 大稲埕 speak the "Taiwanese Amoy" accent, with Lâm'oaⁿ and Tâng'oaⁿ influences poss. depending on family bkgrd or neighborhood. A few stops up the Red Line in Sūlîm, in the old-timers speak with a Ciangciu accent in line with the North Coast and the foothills of Middle and Southern TW.
A "Mainstream Taiwanese" accent has taken the place of all the old dialects. This dialect started forming in the Japanese Era with the advent of radio and the railroad. As a rule, everybody under 50 or 60 either speaks Mainstream Taiwanese or something heavily influenced by it -- unless they live in a remote place or unless a more prestigious dialect was at play. The only prestige dialect was the Taiwanese Amoy dialect of Taipak, centered in 大稲埕 Toātiūtiâⁿ.
Everybody under 25 or 35 seems to speak Mainstream Taiwanese almost regardless of location -- if they speak it at all. DOOR is mûi in Gîlân to people over a certain age, but people in their 30s tend to say mn̂g.
Mainstream Taiwanese is basically "Ciangciu", and basically Southern. TW Hoklo in Taipak has been upheld for decades by migrants moving in from the South and the Middle. Taipak-bred kids Mandarize, then go work for companies in town, while economic centralization brings in more Hoklo-speaking migrants from the South, whose kids or grandkids will Mandarize ... and the cycle continues.
The Taiwanese Amoy dialect is more or less dead to the 30-and-below bracket, a frontline casualty of KMT Mando-chicanery. The Taiwanese Amoy accent "lived on" for a long time as the "standard" for Hoklopop, but I notice that in the last 10 yrs or so, the new artists seemm to be switching to singing in Mainstream TWnese.
Takau 高雄 and Taitiong 台中 were built by and under the Japanese. They never had the intricate dialect tapestry that Taipak and Tailam had. Migrants brought their dialects into town, and their kids learned to speak "mainstream". When Maryknoll says they present Hoklo in the Taitiong dialect, they're really saying they teach Mainstream Taiwanese.
Re: tui3 vs tu3
One more thing. The /j-/ to /g-/ merger only took place in front of /-i-/, but I think joa-to-goa is related. My uneducated guess is that joa7 is actually two syllables merged into one, with the first word being jiok8. In Hokkien we say joa7-coe7, but in Teochew they say jiok8-coi7.Yes, joa7 is relatively rare in TW now, and goa7 is probably more common than loa7 islandwide even though the git8 pronunciation is limited to part of the South. This probably proves that sound change occurs unevenly...
Re: tui3 vs tu3
Glad to see so many new postings in this forum again. Thanks, FutureSpy, for the topics. And welcome!
Thanks to Amhoanna for the interesting facts about TW variants.
Same as Sim, my variant uses tuì 對 and never tù or uì. I used to think that uì was a TW thing, but Lim (from E-mng 廈門, a friend of Amhoanna too) just informed me that in E-mng they have both tuì and uì.
Thanks to Amhoanna for the interesting facts about TW variants.
Same as Sim, my variant uses tuì 對 and never tù or uì. I used to think that uì was a TW thing, but Lim (from E-mng 廈門, a friend of Amhoanna too) just informed me that in E-mng they have both tuì and uì.
Re: tui3 vs tu3
niuc, thanks for the welcome.
And amhoanna, thanks for all the info! Very interesting things about Taiwanese!
BTW, I was surprised to find out she can speak Hakka too, although she's Hoklo. She said it was because at her school, there were lots of Hakka kids and often they'd mix them up. And again, she mentioned there's a number of Taiwanese people of Hakka heritage here too, so she still uses the language. I was very inclined about recording her reading some of the dialogues on the Hakka textbook in Japanese I shared on "Learning Hakka" forum, but it was just an idea. Nah, I'd better focus on Taiwanese now...
Another thing I'd like to ask is about glottal stops. I can't notice them at all. They don't sound like glottal stops like the ones you hear in Tagalog or Hawaiian. Could someone shed me a light, please?
And amhoanna, thanks for all the info! Very interesting things about Taiwanese!
I thought that too when he first read aloud that sentence. But they I got him to go through each word in the sentence and he indeed pronounced it as tu3. I'll see if I can get to record him next time we meet and post it here.It should be tui3 in both contexts. In the FROM context, it's interchangeable with ui3 and an3. From your post, my guess is that he was talking fairly fast and tui3 came out as tu3.
Indeed. I got to meet the old Taiwanese lady today, and re-checked some pronunciations. She does say 日本 lit8-pun2, but 入來 gip8-lai5 (as you said, it's a soft /g/), 今仔日 kin-a1-jit8 and 雖然 sui-jian5. I said I'd try to mimic pronunciation from the two speakers helping me out, but I find it very ackward as they clearly pronounce many things differently. With her, it's even more uneven, 'cos she sometimes seems to use be7 and sometimes boe7. I have no idea of what to do, but boe7 sounds like a more embracing form 'cos it does sounds like a 無會 contraction. I still want to check with the other speaker how he pronounces 阮. Gún seems majoritary in Taiwanese, but góan would have the advantage (IMHO... I don't know how realistic that could be) of being easier identified by people who use 我人 góa-lâng and 阮人 gún-lâng.Yes, joa7 is relatively rare in TW now, and goa7 is probably more common than loa7 islandwide even though the git8 pronunciation is limited to part of the South. This probably proves that sound change occurs unevenly...
BTW, I was surprised to find out she can speak Hakka too, although she's Hoklo. She said it was because at her school, there were lots of Hakka kids and often they'd mix them up. And again, she mentioned there's a number of Taiwanese people of Hakka heritage here too, so she still uses the language. I was very inclined about recording her reading some of the dialogues on the Hakka textbook in Japanese I shared on "Learning Hakka" forum, but it was just an idea. Nah, I'd better focus on Taiwanese now...
Another thing I'd like to ask is about glottal stops. I can't notice them at all. They don't sound like glottal stops like the ones you hear in Tagalog or Hawaiian. Could someone shed me a light, please?
Re: tui3 vs tu3
Right, not only do different people use different pronunciations, but even the same person will mix pronunciations. If U can't beat them, join them. I did. U might as well mimic whoever U're learning from at the moment. I've had Taiwanese Amoy-type speakers correct my Mainstream pronunciations, and Mainstream spkrs tell me my TWnese Amoy pronunciation was off. Yet everyone understands both accents in real life w/o problems. This kind of "patronization" went away once I reached a certain level of fluency.
The glottal stops in Taiwanese are supposedly silent mid-sentence, but heard sentence-finally. Yet my experience has also been that glottal stops aren't always heard at all even sentence-finally. In particular there are many speakers whose sentence-final T8 is just a high-falling tone w/ no stop. Other times, the glottal stop itself will not be obvious, but the syllable will be quick. This may be true even mid-sentence. Ciah (則/即/才) always seems to be quick like that.
I also believe there are some words that've been written with an -h but don't actually have a glottal stops. Sentence final "ah" is one example, "chiah" as in "chiahni̍h" is another. "Chiah" never occurs in final position, so we woulnd't know anyway.
On the other hand, the glottal stops are clear and strong in M'sia, even mid-sentence for many if not all spkrs (will have to ask others to confirm).
And we haven't even discussed the "Mandarized" style of Hoklo that's spoken in TW by young women and female newscasters and sung by younger singers, esp. chicks.
The glottal stops in Taiwanese are supposedly silent mid-sentence, but heard sentence-finally. Yet my experience has also been that glottal stops aren't always heard at all even sentence-finally. In particular there are many speakers whose sentence-final T8 is just a high-falling tone w/ no stop. Other times, the glottal stop itself will not be obvious, but the syllable will be quick. This may be true even mid-sentence. Ciah (則/即/才) always seems to be quick like that.
I also believe there are some words that've been written with an -h but don't actually have a glottal stops. Sentence final "ah" is one example, "chiah" as in "chiahni̍h" is another. "Chiah" never occurs in final position, so we woulnd't know anyway.
On the other hand, the glottal stops are clear and strong in M'sia, even mid-sentence for many if not all spkrs (will have to ask others to confirm).
And we haven't even discussed the "Mandarized" style of Hoklo that's spoken in TW by young women and female newscasters and sung by younger singers, esp. chicks.
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Re: tui3 vs tu3
The glottal stop is so clear in Malaysia that most M'sians/S'poreans follow the Malay convention of indicating it with a 'k'. The problem then becomes of explaining the difference between a glottal stop and a final 'k'.