Diphthongs

[FutureSpy]

The other day I was reading this thread ( http://www.chineselanguage.org/forums/v ... =6&t=10785 ) and amhoanna commented:

I notice a lot of people out there using 未 to write [勿會], including people whose kanji usage is fairly well thought out. This is not only etymologically off, but also way confusing for the average Beng. I guess it really bugs me. Why do people do this? Any logical reason?

...to what niuc replied:

Probably because in certain variants, [勿會] and 未 are pronounced as bē. In my variant they are quite different, buē and bē· (=bēr).

...and finally another amhoanna's reply:

In Mainstream TWnese, [勿會] = bē and 未 = boē.

In Amoy TWnese, and Mainstream Amoy, these two are flipped.

I've never heard or heard about a dialect where the two were merged! But the potential for confusion is always there, esp. with different dialects in earshot of each other throughout most of the Hoklosphere. No doubt there's some "not 3, not 4" semi-speakers who mix the two w/o even knowing the difference.

Although I think Sisuahlai wrote a blog post about the general trend of 無 and 勿會 and maybe 未 as well all merging in his dialect (Kuching, Sarawak).

There was a TWnese blogger who wrote a post justifying the use of 未 for both 未 and 勿會, saying that which is which is always clear from context. I can't help thinking that the real thinking behind all this is a wish to write Hoklo using just kanji that are used in everyday Mandoscripts. Or am I missing something?

And then I realized my textbook actually has both as boe7, and it was merged down using the character 没 (wrong hanji, I guess ). In short, they wrote chiah8 pa2 boe7 as 食飽没. Only then I realized that both speakers I know use be7 for 無(勿)會, and boe7 for 未, and that my textbook was wrong in rendering both as the same word (they happened to be homophone on the author's dialect, I guess).

Before, I simply had decided I'd prefer pronunciations with diphthongs or even triphthongs over the shorter ones, but apparently that's not a good idea 'cos I'd end up with boe7 and boe7 for 無會 and 未. I don't know what other pairs would be problematic, but I still have to choose between geh8 and goeh8 (月), or peh and poeh (八), poe or pe (飛)... Any ideas about other variants?

[SimL]

Hi FutureSpy,

I don't think there's a single solution to the "e-vs-ue-problem" in the Hokkien variants. Some variants have it one way for two parallel sets set of words, and other variants have it precisely the other way around.

For example, my paternal side of the family is N. Malayan, and my maternal side S. Malayan.

Paternal:
- e2 (short in stature), e5 (shoe), be2 (buy), be7 (can't, not able to), be7 (sell), ce7 (to sit), ce7 (many), ke1 (chicken), phe1 (letter), se1 (comb), se2 (to wash), se3 (small), seh4 (to tuck (cloth)), te2 (to contain), te7 (plot of ground, area of land)
- bue2 (tail), gueh8 (moon), hue2 (fire), kue2 (cake), kue3 (to cross), tue3 (to follow)

Maternal:
- ue2 (short in stature), ue5 (shoe), bue2 (buy), bue7 (can't, not able to), bue7 (sell), cue7 (to sit), cue7 (many), kue1 (chicken), phue1 (letter), sue1 (comb), sue2 (to wash), sue3 (small), sueh4 (to tuck (cloth)), tue2 (to contain), tue7 (plot of ground, area of land)
- be2 (tail), geh8 (moon), he2 (fire), ke2 (cake), ke3 (to cross), te3 (to follow)

My natural accent is N. Malayan, but because of exposure to my maternal relatives as a child, I can make myself sound slightly more S. Malayan if I want to (not just this set of vowels, but lots of others as well). I just adjust my vowels according to whom I'm speaking to (*if* I make the effort to sound more S. Malayan, which I sometimes do, depending on which S. Malayan speaker I'm speaking to). Somewhere else on the Forum I told a story about my maternal grandmother and me teasing one another about "kiauN1" vs "kiuN1" for "ginger". If you prefer diphthongs to monophthongs, then perhaps you prefer triphthongs to diphthongs, so "kiauN1" is what you should be saying for "ginger" .

[amhoanna]

and that my textbook was wrong in rendering both as the same word (they happened to be homophone on the author's dialect, I guess).

I can't say for sure, but I bet it's just personal, or at most a family thing. I'd be surprised if any town or neighborhood mixed the two across the board like that. That said, personally, I say 𣍐 as bē sometimes and as boē other times. There's also a preference for the diphthong in song.

I don't know what other pairs would be problematic, but I still have to choose between geh8 and goeh8 (月), or peh and poeh (八), poe or pe (飛)... Any ideas about other variants?

The other major alternative is the "poeh ge̍rh" set, where /er/ stands for a central vowel. I think this is how they talk in urban Coanciu and the seaward districts... Pasang (Klang) and thus Astro 歡喜台 seems to skew toward this type as well. This set might be closest to Teochew and the "protolanguage". The /er/ must've evolved into /e/ fairly recently and spread by sea to (as far as I can tell) bigtime port cities only: Amoy, Taipak, Manila, Zamboanga ... Singapore?

Where was your S. Malayan kin from, Sim -- Amoy? And where did they settle in MY?

[SimL]

Where was your S. Malayan kin from, Sim -- Amoy? And where did they settle in MY?

Hi amhoanna,

My maternal grandparents ended up in Seremban after the Second World War, but originally a large number of family members (their brothers, sisters, cousins, parents, uncles and aunts) settled - directly from China - in a rural area near Sitiawan, in Perak, in the very early part of the 20th century. This region was known as "The Dindings", and was one of the 4 areas of the so-called "Straits Settlements" (a colony directly under the control of the British colonial administration - in contrast to the Federated and Unfederated Malay States, which were controlled via the British Resident or British Advisor). That the Dindings were part of the Straits Settlements is a little known fact among the general population, even among people interested in the British colonial history of Malaysia - normally, one hears only of Singapore, Penang and Malacca.

The Wikipedia articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Malaysia and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straits_Settlements both give an excellent diagram of the history of the different regions which eventually became Malaysia/Singapore, showing how and when they merged (or split). The second article has this to say: "The Dindings, consisting of some islands near the mouth of the Perak River and a small piece of territory on the adjoining mainland, were ceded by Perak to the British government under the Pangkor Treaty of 1874. Hopes that its excellent natural harbour would prove to be valuable were doomed to disappointment, and the islands, sparsely inhabited and altogether unimportant both politically and financially, were administered by the government of Perak."

According to my (Baba) father, Chinese were able to buy and own land in the Straits Settlements, but not in the other parts of Malay(si)a, which (again, according to my father) explains why my maternal (Sin-Khek) family settled there massively. From my family history research, I found out that about 10-15 separate households (I'd have to look up my notes to see exactly how many) bought plots of land next to one another, creating a whole "village" (called "Ji Tiau LO"). My mother drew me a map of the village, and there were only 2 households there at all who were not members of my mother's extended family! The whole family was Methodist (converted in China already), so this was a (for me) very interesting situation of a whole village consisting basically of one extended family, all Methodists. [Sadly, this village was razed to the ground, soon after the Second World War, because of the resettlement of rural Chinese (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Village), as a reaction to the Emergency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency).]

This extended (Fang) clan came from Hui-UaN, but my maternal grandmother (not a Fang, married into the Fang family) came from Amoy/KO-long-su. As a child I remember a conversation between my maternal grandmother and grandfather, where they commented on their respective different ways of say "fish" and "pig" ("hi5" vs. "hir5" and "ti1" vs. "tir1" respectively, where "-ir" is the high back unrounded vowel).

[amhoanna]

Thanks, Sim. Very interesting!

So do your Hui'oann relatives say poeh-ge̍h for August? Just like Amoy? I would've thought they'd have a central vowel for ge̍h, or 火, or 尾, etc...?

Were your maternal grandparents affiliated with the KMT? It surprises me that so many Southeast Asian lineages made the move out of the Deep South of China around that time, the 1940s.

I didn't know Sitiawan was a Straits Settlement. Labuan was too, right?

Interesting reading about the Malayan Emergency. This whole thread of history goes a ways to explain why the Malaysian Chinese have been so gung ho about accepting New China, while in Vietnam even the Saigon Communist Party has to print its newspaper in Traditional.

It's always good to rd about people "fighting the power". It's kind of ironic that the M'sian gov't has been so adamant in opposing Chin Peng, a guy who came up as a fighter against British rule. They celebrate their independence from Britain twice a yr. But where is the independence???

[FutureSpy]

SimL, thanks for sharing the story of your family

I don't know much about Malaysia, but I remember looking for Singapore on a encyclopedia (yep, those huge books kids nowadays don't know anymore) when I was still in Jr. High, and getting really surprised at the fact Malaysia and Singapore were once a single country. Why Singapore has a Han majority? Settlements in Singapore occurred in a different way there?

[SimL]

Hi FutureSpy,

Glad you found the background information interesting.

I think many people have fascinating backgrounds actually - we're all the product of "History". For example, when I was living in Australia, I met a girl with a German surname. I asked about her family background, and it turned out that she was the (of course thoroughly Australianized) descendent of German migrants to South Australia from the middle of the 19th century (a *very* long time ago, by white Australian standards). Because I've always been interested in Germany history and culture, I knew something about this whole topic. So, I spontaneously went: "Oh, your background is the famous wave of German immigrants who fled persecution in Germany, and helped to establish the South Australian wine industry! How nice!"

She looked at me amazed, and said "Hmmm, I guess I am!". She'd never thought of her background as being "interesting" in any way - it was just who she was. She'd grown up with full awareness of what she was, but had never "seen it in a historical context" before. So, my remark sort of made sense to her, in terms of the *factual* content, but it was just a very different "attitude" to it, which caused her to be so surprised.

So, anyway, to get back to your posting. Yes, indeed, Singapore and Malaysia were (for quite a short time) part of one country. But even more dramatic than that: before independence for Malay(si)a, places like Singapore and Penang were very much "closer" (culturally and emotionally) to one another than to the rest of Malay(si)a. As mentioned in earlier entries to this thread, Singapore and Penang (and Malacca, but it lost its economic importance to Singapore and Penang quite early) were once 3 (of the 4) major parts of the "Straits Settlements", a direct British Colony. This means that for about the first two-thirds of the 20th Century, Penang and Singapore were very close to one another, in terms of the demographics, the culture, the language, the architecture, the style of administration etc.

They were both highly urbanized places, settled by huge numbers of Chinese, many of them English-educated. I'd be guessing here, but up to the middle of the 20th century, perhaps more than 80% of central Penang and Singapore was Chinese. Even when I went to school in the 1960's and 70's, there were only about 5 Malay and maybe 2 Indian boys in my class of 40. When we went on holidays to Singapore (my father would drive us there over 2 days, stopping in KL or Seremban on the way to meet up with relatives), we would be going from one urbanized, largely English-speaking, largely (Hokkien-speaking) Chinese area to another. For a good 10-20 years after Singapore's independence, it was very hard for me to really *realize* that it was now a different country.

So, to answer your question directly: it's not so much that Singapore is so special in terms of having a Han majority. It's just that Malay(si)a/Singapore was largely rural when the British first arrived. They established major trading ports (Penang, Singapore) and other urban centres (Ipoh, KL), and the Chinese immigrants flocked to them, making the centres of all the major towns and cities "Chinese". To this day, as you travel through Peninsular Malaysia, the main street of even small and medium-sized towns will be a line of exclusively Chinese shophouses.

Hope that helps you to place the current situation in its historical context.

Warning: the above could be seen as written from the very "biased" perspective, of a Chinese of Baba background. It buys into an NON-anti-colonial vision of the past of that region. A person from a Sin-Khek background might well not see Penang and Singapore as "largely English-speaking" at all. And many non-Chinese might not at all agree with the idea that the "cities were created by Chinese immigrants". They might see it as "Hey, we had our own cities here before anyway; we had our own major trading ports (e.g. Malacca), before you Whites and Chinese came along". These are all valid points of view too, they're just different from how I conceive of this aspect of the history of the region.

[SimL]

Hi amhoanna,

So do your Hui'oann relatives say poeh-ge̍h for August? Just like Amoy? I would've thought they'd have a central vowel for ge̍h, or 火, or 尾, etc...?

To be honest, I don't know/remember. When I try to speak more like a S. Malayan, I imitate my mother, and I think she gets her accent from her mother, and hence Amoy. So, I never say "hir", "tir", always "hi", "ti". Similarly, I indeed say "poeh-geh", but that could be for exactly the same reason. Somehow, I think you're right, and my hui-uaN granddad did indeed have a more central vowel for 月. [BTW, I'm not sure what the "̍" in your question is, as it shows up as just a very tiny square box on my screen here.]

Were your maternal grandparents affiliated with the KMT? It surprises me that so many Southeast Asian lineages made the move out of the Deep South of China around that time, the 1940s.

No, not at all. My grandfather was a passionately idealistic man (which I admire(d) him a lot for), so in the early part of his life, he was very supportive of the Communist Party. He certainly wasn't a Communist himself, and didn't and wouldn't have supported Communism *in Malaysia*. But he saw/believed that the KMT (at that time) was very corrupt, and he believed that the CCP was a much better thing *for China*. He believed this up to the mid-1900's. It was only after various members of the extended family had experienced quite a lot of privations and bad treatment in China that he lost some of his idealism. So no, that side of my family was never pro-KMT. [My paternal Baba side of course has no particular feelings about the KMT or CCP. I guess they felt about the civil war in China in much the same way as they might have felt about the civil war in any other country - regrettable and sad, but not really connected to their life.]

I didn't know Sitiawan was a Straits Settlement. Labuan was too, right?

I didn't know about this either, but English Wikipedia confirms this.

It's always good to rd about people "fighting the power". It's kind of ironic that the M'sian gov't has been so adamant in opposing Chin Peng, a guy who came up as a fighter against British rule.

In my highschool class, there was a guy called Peng Soon, and his surname was Chin, so he got teased about this a lot (as Chin Peng was a very well-known and talked about figure in my youth)!

I was kinda sad to read that the Malaysian government has so far refused to allow him to return to Malaysia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chin_Peng). He's an old man now, and they've done so much more forgiving when it comes to Japan...

BTW, I was thinking of you (among others, of course), when I wrote that remark about other people have a more anti-colonialist stand than I myself. Please understand that I respect that, and even "believe" it, from an intellectual / factual point of view. It's just that my Baba background makes me much more pro-colonial, as the Babas did very well under the British (for us, a sort of "Golden Age"). This carries through for me, in the way I look back on that period, even if (on the rational level) I realise that it wasn't so great for many sinkheks and other non-Chinese.

[FutureSpy]

Hi SimL. Thanks for your explanations and for sharing your views.

BTW, I was thinking of you (among others, of course), when I wrote that remark about other people have a more anti-colonialist stand than I myself. Please understand that I respect that, and even "believe" it, from an intellectual / factual point of view. It's just that my Baba background makes me much more pro-colonial, as the Babas did very well under the British (for us, a sort of "Golden Age"). This carries through for me, in the way I look back on that period, even if (on the rational level) I realise that it wasn't so great for many sinkheks and other non-Chinese.

I think it's somewhat similar to Taiwanese people who lived Japanese rule, even though the last years seemed to be kinda repressive. I've read so many opinions on that period, and 99% of them being completely positive. Seems like anti-Chinese feelings in Taiwan are far much greater than anti-Japanese feelings. Since you mentioned backgrounds, my great-grandparents came to Brazil in the early 30's. Back then Japan was very poor and Japanese gov. pushed immigration in order to control population growth. Not everyone was granted the right of immigrating, so it was highly seem as a privilege. So many immigrated to Brazil believing they'd enrich here and then come back to Japan again in a few years. Of course, they got deceived and the 支配者 in the farms came up with a way to get people working without getting paid: Japanese (and also Italians) arrived here with no money, so they had to buy food, etc. even before getting to work, besides paying the tickets for them to immigrate. They'd have to wait 'til the next harvest to get paid. What they did was simply manipulating their debts (adding stuff they didn't buy, for an instance) so that by the time they got paid, their debts would be greater than their debts and they wouldn't get paid. In short, following that cycle they'd never get paid. Immigration was a replacement to slavery, but they came up with a brilliant way to preserve it without drawing attention of international community. That's a very delicate part of immigration history in Brazil most people don't know about. Now, back to the Taiwan point, all Taiwanese I've met here treat me very well. But not Chinese and Koreans. I even got cursed a couple of times by Chinese clerks and treated poorly in Chinese stores...

[FutureSpy]

Sorry for the rushed post, I was moving from one campus to another while writing. Anyway, seems like Taiwanese eldery see Japanese rule as some kind of "Golden Age" as well. Maybe it's just my impression, but to be honest it really makes me feel bad when they talk nostalgically about it. Anyway, China and Korea are probably a different case, and I'm aware, at least partially, of what they did there. That summed up to what they did to get rid of their own people, and also all assimilation policies even inside Japan after my great-grandparents left led me to develop some kind of anti-Japanese feeling. And it's precisely that what made me get interested in my roots up in the North and start to see the way my grandparents speak from a different perspective, so it was for good afterwards. I'm proud of my Northeastern Japanese roots (at least the confirmed 3/4.. the remaining 1/4 are possibly from there too, but I still need to find out) and what my grandparents gave me, even though they themselves look down at it and think the centralist mainstream Japanese culture and Tokyo dialect are superior.

And what else, who knows if I don't have some Emishi roots. The Emishi are said to be related to Ainu people and are natives to the region. They mixed with Japanese in very early periods and got assimilated, and I like to believe Northeastern Japanese intonation and pronunciation comes from that substratum. Me being more hairy than average Japanese is perhaps an indicator of it...