Appropriated hanji for che/chiah--e5/chia/chit/chiah-nih8

[SimL]

I looked on the Forum (even via Google), but couldn't find the old posting about the performance in Amsterdam.

Here are two new clips I hadn't seen before. The first is good - if one scrolls downwards, there's some commentary on the language used. The second is the puppet version of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", and is poked fun at by Clive James. The Hokkien there sounds more modern.

- http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index. ... y-hokkien/
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StlXlDruB0I

On youtube, if you put "mackay taiwan" into the search box, a lot of the MacKay clips come up, along with heaps of other non-MacKay ones! Almost all of them are not known to me, so I'll be watching for a while!

This last link is a bit of information about MacKay himself.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Leslie_Mackay

[amhoanna]

A spectacular background and story, Future Spy. Bem-vindo a este foro.

U can always ask questions here. It's always a pleasure to help a Hoklo learner. I learned Hoklo as an adult, without having a Hoklo heritage. So did two of the other foreros.

So is it a better idea using romanization instead for this set of words?

In my opinion, a strong yes -- romanization or, theoretically, some other kind of phonetic writing system. But my view seems to be a minority view.

That's just a bunch of unconnected reasons, but basically that's why I want to learn Hokkien.

I also had a number of unconnected reasons. Finding out about how widely spoken Hoklo was "down south" in the equatorial zone was one of my motivators as well. I mean, I always knew Hoklo was spoken down there, but originally I thought it was just a few families here and there, not all around town as is the case in Penang, Medan, Singapore, etc.

I want to learn Taiwanese first, but later learn the differences with Amoy (and perhaps Penang) and how to avoid Japanese loans in order to communicate with other Hokkien speakers as well.

Mainstream Taiwanese is actually closer to Amoy than other China-side dialects are to Amoy -- at least in terms of phonology and basic and "old" vocabulary. Counter-intuitive but true. This is a reflection of history, of powerful cross-Strait connections that extended down to Java and from Luzon to Burma before the Cold War and nationalist States shut it down.

Penang-Medan Hokkien is a beautiful outlier... In some ways, TWnese, Amoy, and most of the dialects of the Phils and M'sia/Sg are much more "internally consistent". On the other hand, Phuket Hoklo (dead or dying) and Burma Hoklo (dying?) seem to be in line with Penang-Medan Hokkien. They are really a kingdom unto their own: "Andaman Hokkien." And this forum is in some ways their cult!

Most of the Japanese loans in Taiwanese are Sino-Japanese calques that were also borrowed into Korean and Chinese at roughly the same time, and from there into Vietnamese, Amoy Hoklo, etc. There's also a lot of Japanese loans in machine-related contexts that were English loans into JPnese, such as "hantóluh" STEERING WHEEL. There are cases where the M'sians or Tsinoys will actually have a "real Hoklo-sounding word" for the same thing. If you search here for "steel", U'll find a cool post on this topic.

Old city cats in TW may code-switch with beaucoup Japanese, but if we define a loan as something that a farmer in southern Taiwan with no Japanese education would use or understand, then there's really not that many loans from "native Japanese".

Speaking of Port., I always think of the difference between Hokkien and Teochew as being analogous to Port. vs. Esp., while the Haklau spoken around Soàⁿboé 汕尾 and Háihong 海豐 plays the part of Galician.

Maryknoll Taiwanese is a great resource. It was really well-edited -- pretty much mistake-free. Also, in their texts they label where U should use the "running tone" vs the "standing tone". I thought this was priceless. Before I bought Maryknoll, I was a stammering idiot b/c I was always trying to guess where to use which.

A friend of mine used to joke that Hokkien was great to swear... (Is that some kind of cliché joke?

A stereotype that won't go away. The KMT literati and Harry Lee (Kuan Yew) have been promoting this stereotype for decades in a sneaky effort to clear Hoklo off "their" islands. On the other hand, it's prob. true that KMT/Taiwanese Mandarin and Sing. English have not been good languages to swear in. Any language introduced from the top down will tend to lack color.

There's a counter-attack in the form of claims that Hoklo is directly derived with minimal alterations from the court language of some unspecified Chinese dynasty, as if southern Hokkien was the Brasil to the Yellow River's Portugal as the royalty fled south and ensconced their culture in the hills of Hokkien.

I know, however, most speakers are eldery.

Or workingclass. There are still people in their 20s and maybe teens in TW who speak Hoklo better than Mandarin. But I find that they're socially walled off from me when I go there.

We've also had "reports", right here, that the Philippines is an exception to the widespread leaching of Hoklo from the youth...

Taipak / Taihoku is a solid Mandophone city now, but even in the early 90s there were neighborhoods where the kids spoke Hoklo to each other. Change came fast. These kids are 35 now and some no longer speak Hoklo except with aging relatives.

Another reason why I'm learning Hokkien is that hanji and Japanese kanji pronunciations are much closer (looking at them isolated and ignoring the way they form compounds and frequency of use, of course) than Mandarin hanzi in many cases

Absolutely. Interesting.

Much but not all of this is shared with Korean, Cantonese, etc.... Japanese, Hoklo, Hokciu, etc. share influences from an ancient form of 江東 ("River's East") Chinese probably centered around where Northern Wu is spoken today. The "layers" of Chinese in Japanese and those in Hoklo are probably closely related, since they probably reflect high-water marks in the soft power of different North and East China juggernauts... The "New Chinese" powers of the last 800 yrs or so have been so land-based, so land-bound, that the seaboard and the islands offshore still vibrate at the frequency of an older "China"...

[FutureSpy]

Hi SimL.

Whoops! Here's why typing in Japanese "hoteigeki" isn't always a good idea: 劇 is slightly different from 戲. I only realized that after seeing your quotes in bigger fonts.

Actually the only 布袋戲 I've been watching to are some of 霹靂 (Pili) series, which aren't exactly traditional 布袋戲, but probably the easiest ones to find available online and with hanji subtitles

I read on Wikipedia the other day that Pili movie was released in Japan with bad English subtitles. Hopefully they'll include also some decent Japanese subtitles. I'll try to get a copy of it, as I'm completely clueless of what goes on!

And awesome! Those Mackay clips have English subs! 多謝！

Sorry amhoanna, I'll reply you tomorrow. Going to bed soon to meet that old Taiwanese lady tomorrow early in the morning. I don't like writing rushed posts and my English gets drastically worse than usual at these late times. Thanks!

[FutureSpy]

Wow, amhoanna. Sounds like you know a lot of languages : )

U can always ask questions here. It's always a pleasure to help a Hoklo learner. I learned Hoklo as an adult, without having a Hoklo heritage. So did two of the other foreros.

Thanks for this long input. Whoa, you really know a lot about Hokkien-speaking areas. I know it's going to take up many years until I learn how to speak it, but I've been enjoying it so far. Actually, I haven't find any languages I was as interested as in Hokkien in many years. I hope I won't quit so soon... ^^

In my opinion, a strong yes -- romanization or, theoretically, some other kind of phonetic writing system. But my view seems to be a minority view.

Perhaps because of Japanese I'm a little kanji-minded. To be honest, I've lost the ability of handwriting in Japanese as I haven't used it for years now, but I still can recognize and type characters. I'm not used to monosyllabic (okay, I know that's a little inaccurate, but please bear with my lack of linguistic criteria) languages, so associating words to hanji makes it easier to me to learn them, even if it's just some random character.

Most of the Japanese loans in Taiwanese are Sino-Japanese calques that were also borrowed into Korean and Chinese at roughly the same time, and from there into Vietnamese, Amoy Hoklo, etc.

The point is that even today calques like 便所 seem to be widespread, and my bet is that they aren't known outside Taiwan. They could go perfectly as Hokkien words as they are pronounced the Taiwanese way. Should I try looking at Xiamen to find more genuine equivalents? My grandma used to say 便所 [benjo] until she started watching Japanese TV everyday and switched to トイレ.

Speaking of Port., I always think of the difference between Hokkien and Teochew as being analogous to Port. vs. Esp., while the Haklau spoken around Soàⁿboé 汕尾 and Háihong 海豐 plays the part of Galician.

Interesting analogy. A little bit off-topic, but since we're in: does 汕尾/海豐 dialects retain any linguistic phenomenon lost in Hokkien? Modern Galician is getting more and more Spanized, but Portuguese also was under strong Spanish influence and got Spanized during a different period. In short, what I feel about Galician and Portuguese is that Portuguese and Galician are different pieces of the same puzzle, with Spanish replacing different (and sometimes the same) pieces on both sides, and the highest galeguity degree being possible to achieve by mixing some of Portuguese and Galician pieces... Other than that, IMHO we (Portuguese speakers and Galician people) still speak pretty much the same language

Maryknoll Taiwanese is a great resource. It was really well-edited -- pretty much mistake-free. Also, in their texts they label where U should use the "running tone" vs the "standing tone". I thought this was priceless. Before I bought Maryknoll, I was a stammering idiot b/c I was always trying to guess where to use which.

Absolutely! But I'm still not in the so-called learning stage. I'm just playing around with other simpler and less comprehensive (both in details and explanations) books, memorizing words with their respective tones but without worring too much about getting them right. I tried to teach myself other tonal languages in the past and spent so much time with tones and frustration that my motivation to learn the language faded away by the time. People argue that getting things right from the beginning would be benefitial, but oh well... The books I've been studying now don't provide further details on phonology other than sandhi, so I decided to save my Maryknoll books for a long run more serious study after I'm done with the other books. Maryknoll is dense and comprehensive, and its 5 volumes will clearly supersede contents from all other textbooks I have, but I find worthwhile going through this limited early "getting used" stage and am having a lot of fun, so that's what really matters.

[AndrewAndrew]

Is there an easy way to get a copy of the Maryknoll books from Penang? And would it be any use to a Penang speaker? Just wondering because the last time I looked into it it seemed rather complicated.

[FutureSpy]

Well, you can buy them from a bookstore in Taiwan called 台灣ê店: http://www.taiouan.com.tw . They ship overseas (got mine from there) and they accept credit card payments. They also have someone who can speak English in case you don't speak Chinese (like me). You can also buy them directly from Maryknoll as well, but the only payment method they accept is bank transfer. As for your question on usefulness, let's wait other's replies

[amhoanna]

Actually, I haven't find any languages I was as interested as in Hokkien in many years. I hope I won't quit so soon... ^^

Well, good luck. For me, Hoklo is an addiction.

so associating words to hanji makes it easier to me to learn them, even if it's just some random character.

You're not alone. I've been trying to learn a little Japanese, and seeing the kanji helps me tremendously even when it's konyomi or whatever it's called, native Japanese words not etymologically related to the Chinese.

The point is that even today calques like 便所 seem to be widespread, and my bet is that they aren't known outside Taiwan. They could go perfectly as Hokkien words as they are pronounced the Taiwanese way.

So U mean the minority of Sino-Japanese calques which are not shared with other Hoklo dialects? Such examples do exist. Off the top of my head, I'd say there's not a lot of them. Also, there's always a chance that non-TWnese will understand a TWnese word b/c they heard it in a TWnese soap opera.

Strangely enough, the word for BATHROOM in rural areas of Ciangciu is also piānsó· 便所. I'm guessing it's pure coincidence. In Amoy and Coanciu I wasn't able to make myself understood using 便所; in Soaⁿboe it was Cantonese to the rescue.

Should I try looking at Xiamen to find more genuine equivalents?

The hunt for genuine Hoklo vocab. I don't think Amoy vocab is any more authentic than TWnese vocab. Hoklo in China has generally been subject to the depredations of Mandarin for many years. Realize that many Chinese Hoklophones are able to read Std Chinese in Hoklo pronunciation, while TWnese and M'sians are unable to do this -- they are just unable to associate kanji with Hoklo. Ironically this has accelerated the Mandarization of Hoklo in China. The other day I was watching a Ciangciu clip on Youtube and a news host commented on something being "cin gû" -- gû being a calque from Mandarin niú 牛 meaning COOL or something like that.

The Klang area of M'sia might be one hotbed for genuine Hoklo vocab. The top spot in my mind is Bagansiapiapi on Sumatra, home of one of our foreros. But a lot of genuine vocab can be reconstructed just by comparing a wide range of dialects. Poss. even more interesting is "genuinely-coined new vocab".

Interesting analogy. A little bit off-topic, but since we're in: does 汕尾/海豐 dialects retain any linguistic phenomenon lost in Hokkien?

I don't know that dialect well enough to say for sure, but I would tend to say: few if any. Haihong Haklau is basically derived from Ciangciu Hoklo, with 400 yrs of influence from Teochew on top of that. In general, the Coanciu dialects are more conservative than the Ciangciu dialects. Teochew also seems to hv gone through a long process of vocab levelling with other Sino languages, poss. Hakka and some kind of Cantonese. But I'm sure someone well-versed in Haihong Haklau could find something there that's been lost elsewhere.

In short, what I feel about Galician and Portuguese is that Portuguese and Galician are different pieces of the same puzzle, with Spanish replacing different (and sometimes the same) pieces on both sides, and the highest galeguity degree being possible to achieve by mixing some of Portuguese and Galician pieces... Other than that, IMHO we (Portuguese speakers and Galician people) still speak pretty much the same language

What a word, "galeguity"! I think I know exactly what U're talking about -- a pure Galego could be achieved by casting out Spanish elements in favor of Portuguese ones. A pure Hoklo or Hokkien could also be achieved by mixing and matching btw dialects while casting out pieces from Mandarin, Japanese, Malay, Tagalog, etc.

Is there an easy way to get a copy of the Maryknoll books from Penang? And would it be any use to a Penang speaker? Just wondering because the last time I looked into it it seemed rather complicated.

I'm guessing the mainstream TWnese online bookstores don't carry it, so the 台湾个店 route might be easiest. I've never ordered from them online, but they seem to be a reliable merchant. And they're probably not in this business for the money.

[amhoanna]

As for the usefulness of the Maryknoll books to a Penang speaker... The short answer is that it'd probably be about as useful to U as a high-quality Penang Hokkien txtbk would be to a Mainstream Taiwanese speaker. There are hardly any Japanisms in the Maryknoll, as far as I can recall. If U really start speaking like Maryknoll, other people will probably think to themselves, "Wow, he talks really sinkheh for a young guy."

Since U're a native spkr of a different kind of Hokkien, U might wanna just buy the last, most advanced book in the series first and have a look.

[FutureSpy]

If there were a few people from a representative number of different Hokkien speaking areas interested on Hokkien and enthusiastic enough to buy the idea, constructing a Standard Hokkien wouldn't be impossible. A starting point would be making lists of high frequency words, defining how flexible (or strict) that Standard would be and what would be the goals of that standardization. I just don't know how complicated that would get due to my lack of linguistic knowledge, but even if there were as few as, say, 6 or 7 natives taking part in such a project, I think things would kickoff. Of course, that would end up being a completely elitist project as people outside that very small online community would still use their own dialects, but what if these few speakers agreed to communicate each other online using that Standard Hokkien, perhaps things could get bigger by the time and a true Hokkien Standard would arise and serve as a bridge to speakers from different Hokkien speaking regions. Many minority languages are hardly spoken, but are vibrant online. Perhaps it's too much of idealism from my part? If people don't even speak Hokkien as-is, would they ever take some time to learn something of possibly no use? And of course, the rest of speakers would resist saying that it's artificial and has nothing to do with what they speak. There isn't even Hokkien writers to agree to write in that Standard, nor public for Hokkien books. Let alone most speakers can't even read/write in Hokkien. Now that I come to think, if Hokkien speakers could write properly in Hokkien with the right hanji, wouldn't that be enough to put Hokkien speakers together? Wouldn't then a Standard arise naturally this way? Okay, sorry, I'm starting to get sleepy now.

So U mean the minority of Sino-Japanese calques which are not shared with other Hoklo dialects? Such examples do exist. Off the top of my head, I'd say there's not a lot of them. Also, there's always a chance that non-TWnese will understand a TWnese word b/c they heard it in a TWnese soap opera.

But aren't they representative enough in the sense they make up an important part of our modern life style?

Now 便所 being used somewhere else makes me wonder where Japanese got it from. Perhaps it represented some old concept (meaning the word was borrowed from some Chinese dialect) which got obsolete, and they simply assigned that word to a new modern meaning? What if Ciangciu people coincidently made the same?

What a word, "galeguity"! I think I know exactly what U're talking about -- a pure Galego could be achieved by casting out Spanish elements in favor of Portuguese ones. A pure Hoklo or Hokkien could also be achieved by mixing and matching btw dialects while casting out pieces from Mandarin, Japanese, Malay, Tagalog, etc.

LOL, I didn't coin the word. It actually exists in Galician: "galeguidade". I just forgot to add quotes to it. But you got the idea. Not a "pure Hoklo", but let's put it in another way: "a purer Hoklo"... Personally I think there's nothing wrong with loans from other languages the way they used to be incorporated in the past and languages influenced one another. It's different from what happens today, where the dominant languages simply swallow down the submissive ones: in other words, a one-way street.

Okay, you guys can beat me for being off-topic, but I know this Singaporean guy who... whatever, lemme quote him:

And in the army, it's you have a good chance of hearing it too. As last time, there used to be certain battalions where the people speak purely hokkien to each other. Even if some of them may not be of hokkien descent.

...and he's picking up Hokkien there. So there's still some hope for Singapore!

[amhoanna]

Personally I think there's nothing wrong with loans from other languages the way they used to be incorporated in the past and languages influenced one another. It's different from what happens today, where the dominant languages simply swallow down the submissive ones: in other words, a one-way street.

¡Eso! Agree, 100%.

I esp. like how MY/SG Hokkien has taken in a lot of Teochew and Malay elements. Harry Lee got a kick out of calling Sg Hoklo "an adulterated Hokkien-Teochew mix", but what could be better for Hokkien and Teochew than to adulterate each other and grow?!

but I know this Singaporean guy who... whatever, lemme quote him:

And in the army, it's you have a good chance of hearing it too. As last time, there used to be certain battalions where the people speak purely hokkien to each other. Even if some of them may not be of hokkien descent.

...and he's picking up Hokkien there. So there's still some hope for Singapore!

And if there's hope for Singapore, then there's hope for Hoklo.

The idea that the poor and dispossessed should "fight for their rights" ... is much better developed in Singapore than elsewhere in the Hoklosphere. Elsewhere, the old (loosely) Confucianist idea is that the poor and dispossessed should be ashamed of themselves, and should submit to the rich and powerful in hopes of becoming rich someday.

The military: always an interesting element. My guess is that military service has played a HUGE role in the acceptance of Mandarin in Taiwan, and in building tolerance for Hoklo among the 49er Chinese of TW. It's also a powerful indoctrination in ROC identity. Guys who've done their time in the ROC armed forces seem to be unable to relate to China (PRC) wholeheartedly -- there's always this animosity there, this vague, "wanton" desire for revenge.

Now 便所 being used somewhere else makes me wonder where Japanese got it from. Perhaps it represented some old concept (meaning the word was borrowed from some Chinese dialect) which got obsolete, and they simply assigned that word to a new modern meaning? What if Ciangciu people coincidently made the same?

This is the most likely explanation, as far as I can see.

So U mean the minority of Sino-Japanese calques which are not shared with other Hoklo dialects? ...

But aren't they representative enough in the sense they make up an important part of our modern life style?

Maybe. Maybe not. Psychologically, they're very important to some people. Loanwords from JPnese form the backbone of the argument that "TWnese and Banlamese are two different languages". But how many JPnese loans are there in TWnese Hoklo that don't exist side by side with a commonly used native word or Mandarin loan? Of the hundreds or thousands that fit this description, I'd venture to say that most are either pan-Asian-Pacific Sino-Japanese calques OR have to do with 20th cen. technology, such as the parts of a car or motorbike, or the word for MOTORBIKE itself: o·tóbái, or the word for LIGHTER: làità.

But, language aside, I think the JPnese influence on the Sino-Taiwanese psyche was profound. The idea that any invention or concept dating to the late 19th century or later requires an English loanword ... is very "Meiji". Also the approach to sex and the sexes.