Misc. random questions: pronunciation, final particles, etc.

[FutureSpy]

I have a few random questions (sorry for the loose translations):

- 讀書x讀冊
At first, when I heard the Tâi-lâm speaker pronounce thak8-chu 讀書 "to study (at school?), to read a book" as thak8-chheh, I thought chheh was an alternative pronunciation to chu 書. But then, when I came across thak8-chheh 讀冊 "to study, to read a book" and found out he pronounced it the same way, I was confused. According to the definition in 台文/華文線頂辭典, 讀冊 seems to be a merger of 讀書 and 讀冊. Are they complete synonyms or should I still write 讀書 and 讀冊 but pronounce it as thak8-chheh if I were to take his pronunciation as a model?

- 歯茎 alveolar fricatives(?)
Pronunciation for 歯茎 alveolar fricatives (ch and chh in POJ) in all my textbooks recordings is very regular. So is the pronunciation by the Tâi-tiong old lady I know. Well, by regular I mean ch being pronounced as /ts/ and chh as /ts'/. But the speaker from Tâi-lâm seems to pronounce ch as /ts/, but chh as something like /tʃ'/. At least, I saw that occur in thak8-chheh 讀冊 "to study", hèng-chhù 興趣 "interest", chhut-hoat 出發 "departure", and even my name Iu-chhù 優次 (Yuji). Does that happens in any of your dialects too?
[EDIT: Of course, chi is pronounced as /tʃi/ (and sometimes che when e is in-between e and i) by both, but the Tai-lâm speaker pronounces chh in all cases as /tʃ'/]

- s palatization
Most sources I have pronounce si as /ɕi/ (or perhaps /ʂi/?), but the Tâi-lâm speaker says /si/ most of the time, although not so often he does say something close to /ɕi/ but not quite it. With which one should I stick?

- lip8--lai5 入來 "to come in"
Both speakers I know pronounce that very differently from the way my book does. The Tâi-lâm speakers pronounce it as something like /gip̚.pai/ but /p/ there is very soft, and if I'm not mistaken, the Tâi-tiong old lady does it as /ɽip̚.pai/ or /ɽib.bai/. Any "rules" for when should I pronounce it that way?

- leh x eh
In the sentence "chiah8 khoaN3-mai7 leh." 食看覓leh。 "Please try it", the Tâi-lâm speaker says "chiah8 khoaN3-mai7 eh (or e?)." sounds more natural. He told me the same in the sentence "goa2 siuN7-beh khi3 hai2-piN kiaN5 kiaN5 leh." 我想欲去海邊行行leh。 "I'd like to go to beach and hang around", which for him is "goa2 siuN7-boeh khi3 hai2-piN kiaN5 kiaN5 eh.". Is it perhaps e5?

- e5 x koan(?)
"lin2 nng7 e5 siN-cho3 chiok kang7 e5." 恁兩個生做足共ê。 "You two are really alike!" was amended to "lin2 nng7 e5 siN-cho3 chok (/ts'ok/) kang7 koan (not sure about the tone).". Any ideas?

- to x lon, bo5 x bo5 ooh8
This sentence was a little bit more problematic: "li2 e5 hiaN-ti7 chi2-be7 chit8 e5 to bo5?" 你ê兄弟姊妹一個都無？ "You have no brothers?". He said to 都 should be lon (long perhaps? and no idea about the tones...) and 無 bo5 was bo5 ooh8 (he wrote down 喔 on my textbook). So the sentence became "li2 e5 hiaN-ti7 chi2-moai7 chit8 e5 lon bo5 oo7?". Any ideas?

- ma2-chai3-a(?)-khi2
min5-a2-chai3 明仔載 "tomorrow" is ma2-chai3 (although I hear a long a or perhaps ma-a, no idea about tones) in the Tâi-lâm speaker's dialect. Then when the word min5-a2-cha2-khi2 明仔早起 "tomorrow morning" appeared on my textbook, according to my awkward notes, he pronounced it as ma2-chai3-a(?)-khi2. I'll recheck that next time I meet him.

Sorry for asking so many (and not just a few as I said in the beginning of this topic) questions at once. Actually, I had in mind only two or three of them, but as I was writing this post and leafing through my textbook, I remembered more and more things. If that helps, I can try to record him saying these sentences/words (and also tui3 對 pronounced as tu3 in some cases)

[SimL]

Hi FutureSpy,

Really, really don't apologize for the questions. People who are interested in Hokkien and wish to promote its use (like us) are only too happy that someone like you has this interest.

I can't answer any of the questions with regard to which particular sound to choose. This is largely due to my unfamiliarity with Taiwanese, but perhaps goes further, to a more fundamental issue. If you try and learn English from people living in England (as opposed to the US or Australia, where accents are less subject to regional variation), then you will find similar issues. The fortunate thing is that - for English - there are 2-3 different versions of "standard English" (British RP, Midwestern in the US, Standard Canadian English, etc). We don't have this for Hokkien. You will undoubtedly have seen in earlier threads that for much of the late 19th and early 20th century, Amoy Hokkien was considered a sort of standard. I understand that these days (with the rise economically of Taiwan), a Taiwanese variant of this is informally "more respected". Maybe you could model yourself on a couple of Taiwanese newscasters, and just note the variations that you hear in other people (which you are already doing).

As for the 冊/書 question, I'd venture a guess that this is a similar situation to 細/小 and 芳/香. The first member of each pair is the "etymologically correct" character. The second is the one which corresponds to the character for the equivalent common word with that meaning in Mandarin.

[SimL]

- 歯茎 alveolar fricatives(?)
Pronunciation for 歯茎 alveolar fricatives (ch and chh in POJ) in all my textbooks recordings is very regular. So is the pronunciation by the Tâi-tiong old lady I know. Well, by regular I mean ch being pronounced as /ts/ and chh as /ts'/. But the speaker from Tâi-lâm seems to pronounce ch as /ts/, but chh as something like /tʃ'/. At least, I saw that occur in thak8-chheh 讀冊 "to study", hèng-chhù 興趣 "interest", chhut-hoat 出發 "departure", and even my name Iu-chhù 優次 (Yuji). Does that happens in any of your dialects too?

This one has puzzled me for a long time. For as long as I have spoken Hokkien and known some basic phonetic and phonological theory, I've always had a mental map that POJ {ch-} and {chh-} are at the same point of articulation, and the former is unaspirated and the later aspirated. However, a friend who also knows some phonetics has insisted for the last 10 years that I have a different articulation point for each member of this pair. IIRC, he claims something similar to what you noticed: that I has an alveolar point of contact for POJ {ch-} but a more palatal one for POJ {chh-}. I never quite believed him, but whenever I said the sounds to myself and tried to work out where my tongue was, I kept coming to different conclusions. Certainly, forcing myself to say [ ts ] and then aspirating it doesn't quite sound like my normal POJ {chh-}.

Obviously, the more alveolar vs. the more palatal point of articulation is not a phonemic difference. So, perhaps some people have [ ts ] vs. [ ts' ], some have [ ts ] vs. [ tʃ' ] (and some might perhaps even have [ tʃ ] vs. [ tʃ' ]).

Perhaps other members could comment on their own usage?

PS. I've also wondered for a long time whether the distinction that Douglas makes between ts- and ch- has something to do with this. It might imply that in the late 19th century the alveolar vs. palatal distinction was phonemic. But perhaps with very low functional load, which caused it eventually to disappear.

[FutureSpy]

However, a friend who also knows some phonetics has insisted for the last 10 years that I have a different articulation point for each member of this pair.

Thanks, Sim! Funny that it's hard for us to realize things about our own languages, and many of them we simply take for granted 'til an outsider say it's not that way

I'm aware my IPA transcriptions are far from accurate. To be honest, whenever I came across the phonology section in a grammar, I'd just skip it. I've always found them to be too dense, but even so phonetic transcriptions and some terminology do appear throughout, so I'm glad now at least some of these stuff stuck in my mind. There are just too many symbols that for me represent the same sound, so I assume it's a difference in articulation or a very slight phonetic difference I'm not aware of. Please bear with my ignorance and lack of criteria. I wish there was a Humanities dept. in my campus, but oh well, I knew it when I made the choice... Anyway, I was really expecting some online Linguistics related courses to appear in Coursera.org, but so far no luck. Even at MIT OpenCourseWare, after so many years no video lectures of Linguistics courses have been uploaded yet. And I'm too lazy to simply get a book and learn

Really, really don't apologize for the questions. People who are interested in Hokkien and wish to promote its use (like us) are only too happy that someone like you has this interest.

Okay, I'll try not to apologize next time. (I didn't say sorry for saying sorry, that's a beginning! )

[amhoanna]

It might imply that in the late 19th century the alveolar vs. palatal distinction was phonemic. But perhaps with very low functional load, which caused it eventually to disappear.

Interesting. Never heard of such a thing in Hoklo, but this is more/less what's happened in Cantonese, and, Sim, maybe U had this in mind. Saigon Cantonese is conservative, and the text on Canto that I bought in VN goes over this, although it says that many spkrs are abandoning the distinction now.

Most sources I have pronounce si as /ɕi/ (or perhaps /ʂi/?), but the Tâi-lâm speaker says /si/ most of the time, although not so often he does say something close to /ɕi/ but not quite it. With which one should I stick?

Probably insignificant. Just copy him every single time. There's a trend toward deeper palatalization in all TW languages, poss. brought on by people wanting to sound like TWese-Californian kids.

The Tâi-lâm speakers pronounce it as something like /gip̚.pai/ but /p/ there is very soft, and if I'm not mistaken, the Tâi-tiong old lady does it as /ɽip̚.pai/ or /ɽib.bai/. Any "rules" for when should I pronounce it that way?

Two important rules are in action here. First, post-clitic (is that the right word?) ·來 often morphs to "·ai" in relaxed speech.

Second, whenever a p/t/k final stop is followed by a vowel or voiced consonant, it becomes voiced; also, if it's followed by a vowel, this now-voiced stop also lengthens. These rules may not apply outside TW, although I think they do apply in inner city Amoy. These rules are key to creating the "smooth" Taiwanese sound.

Maybe you could model yourself on a couple of Taiwanese newscasters

Model, yes, but Taiwanese newscasters, no. Newscasters as a profession have had to undergo an educational system where how far U could go in life depends on how badly U can manage to speak Hoklo. Everything they learned about voice in school was Mando-specific, but not labelled as such. No doubt there are good Hoklo newscasters somewhere out there. Many are horrendous.

- leh x eh

Seems like a lot of people do this. I don't think it's "ê".

- e5 x koan(?)

The orig. sentence sounds better to me. The second one would seem better to me if it had an "·ê" on the end. Caveat: I'm not a native spkr.

- to x lon, bo5 x bo5 ooh8

W/ all due respect, I think your teacher was confused by the presence of kanji on the page, since for most ROC-educated people, the presence of kanji switches their brains into stealth Mando-mode, except when dealing with Nihongo. "To" here means EVEN (NOT EVEN), or, in Spanish, HASTA (NI). The orig. sentence looked fine to me, the amended one no. The ooh8 sentence-final particle is probably fine, though.

Are they complete synonyms or should I still write 讀書 and 讀冊 but pronounce it as thak8-chheh

They are synonyms. All three kanji involved are etymologically correct. 讀冊 is favored in Mainstream TWese. 讀書 is tha̍k-chu, or more often tha̍k-chir with the high-central vowel, since 讀書 seems to have been favored mostly in 泉州 dialects. For some reason I assoc. this word with the city of 新竹 Sintek.

- ma2-chai3-a(?)-khi2

"Bînnáchài" seems to be mî'áchài or mâ'áchài for most spkrs. There was a thread where the Penang crew shared that almost all Penang natives say it the second way. Many TWese do too. The "mâ-" opens the door for some reinterpretation and levelling, since NEXT YEAR is some dialects is "mânî" (mênî in others).

[amhoanna]

W/ all due respect, I think your teacher was confused by the presence of kanji on the page, since for most ROC-educated people, the presence of kanji switches their brains into stealth Mando-mode, except when dealing with Nihongo.

To clarify: for most people in TW now, the link between between kanji and Hoklo elements (syllables) is the corresponding Mandarin element and the meaning of such. There are no direct links, for the most part. To illustrate, the kanji 走 would be assoc'd with Mand. zou3 and the meaning TO WALK. This is in turn assoc'd with TWese kiâⁿ. Lóng = ALL = Mand. dou1 = 都.

[FutureSpy]

Wow... Thanks for all these explanations, amhoanna!

But what's that koan replacing e5? I mean, I remember we went through another sentence ending in e5 and he said absolutely nothing about it.

Any ideas of when bo5 and when bo5 ooh8 should be used? I tried to find another sentence where he'd pronounce it as bo5 ooh8, but after making him read aloud all sentences, that was the only one, and the only slight difference of nuance I see on that sentence compared to the others is that on that one the speaker is trying to confirm something, and the others are more like yes-no questions.

Many TWese do too. The "mâ-" opens the door for some reinterpretation and levelling, since NEXT YEAR is some dialects is "mânî" (mênî in others).

Right, my textbook has 明年 môa-nî, but he does say it as mê-nî... Another thing is that 存年 chûn--nî pronounced by him sounds to me more like chên--nî which that e sounding like 閒 êng. 台文/華文線頂辭典 also has 頂年 téng-nî. I wonder if I misheard it and he really said téng-nî, or his u sounded to me like an i... Just another thing to re-check with him again...

W/ all due respect, I think your teacher was confused by the presence of kanji on the page, since for most ROC-educated people, the presence of kanji switches their brains into stealth Mando-mode, except when dealing with Nihongo.

Yeah, that happened a few times so far with him. For some reason, the partially Japanese educated Tâi-tiong old lady seems to deal better not only with hanji in Hokkien, but also with a romanization system unknown to her such as POJ.

To clarify: for most people in TW now, the link between between kanji and Hoklo elements (syllables) is the corresponding Mandarin element and the meaning of such. There are no direct links, for the most part. To illustrate, the kanji 走 would be assoc'd with Mand. zou3 and the meaning TO WALK. This is in turn assoc'd with TWese kiâⁿ. Lóng = ALL = Mand. dou1 = 都.

That totally explains where he got lóng from!

Newscasters as a profession have had to undergo an educational system where how far U could go in life depends on how badly U can manage to speak Hoklo.

That's seems to be true in many bilingual societies. All languages in Spain do take at some rate Spanish newscasters as a model, which means Spanish prosody and intonation Makes me wonder why they need to sound Spanish to sound like newscasters...

[amhoanna]

Any ideas of when bo5 and when bo5 ooh8 should be used?

The two are totally independent. "Ooh8" is just a sentence final particle used to show surprise while asking a question. I'm 90% sure that it doesn't come from Mandarin.

But what's that koan replacing e5? I mean, I remember we went through another sentence ending in e5 and he said absolutely nothing about it.

These two are totally independent too. "Kâng", sometimes "kāng" for some people, is the basic word in Hoklo meaning THE SAME. It's the root word of sio-kâng, which spawned siâng, which in turn is the root of sio-siâng. Another derived synonym is kângkhoán. (Khoán is a word in its own right, meaning TYPE/KIND.)

Kângkhoán is heavily favored over kâng and siâng now, at least for younger spkrs. Mr. 潘科元 wrote a short piece a few days ago observing how "younger" TWese (under 50?) now are speaking a more verbose form of Hoklo where mono-syllabic Hoklo words are being discarded in favor longer ones, most likely with conditioning from Mandarin. (Mandarin requires the longer words b/c it's Altaicized, and there aren't enough phonological distinctions to support much mono-syllabic vocab.) I think kângkhoán is part of this phenomenon. It's possible that your instructor was also instinctively uncomfortable with stand-alone "kâng".

Many younger TWese are "thinking in Mandarin" when they speak Hoklo. When they say THE SAME, the "deep form" in their mind is bi-syllabic Mand. yi1-yang4 or yi2-yang4. Cognitively it's easier to put out a two-syllable Hoklo word. I hv no "proof" for this, but I know this was true for me -- a native Mandophone -- for many yrs. Two things helped me beat back this tendency: writing in Hoklo, and talking to Hoklophones from other lands, in Hoklo. These are two things that few TWese ever do.

Another thing is that 存年 chûn--nî pronounced by him sounds to me more like chên--nî which that e sounding like 閒 êng. 台文/華文線頂辭典 also has 頂年 téng-nî.

Possibly "chêng ·nî" (前 ·年), which would be yet another Mandarism.

My experience in TW has been that people under a certain age (40?) seem to hesitate, tense up, and pay closer attention to context any time I use the word "chûn ·nî". Generally, it's dropped out of their active vocabulary... It's also the kind of concept where they'll struggle to find a way to say it if they're speaking Hoklo. If their audience is young people, this usually triggers a switch to Mandarin. There are MANY similar examples.

By learning Hoklo and spending time in TW, U will be a force in the opposite direction, however small. B/c they won't be able to switch to Mandarin on U.

For some reason, the partially Japanese educated Tâi-tiong old lady seems to deal better not only with hanji in Hokkien, but also with a romanization system unknown to her...

What disgusts me about ROC education is not that it didn't teach these things, but that it seemed to make people unable to learn these things afterward, on their own. It set up blocks in their minds. I say this in the past tense b/c I don't know if this is true of ROC education post-2000. We'll see when those kids grow up.

So, thanks for asking these questions. Don't push yourself too hard. Stay cool. Don't burn out.

It just occurred to me that one reason why it's good to pay some mind to dialect variations is that it will make it easier for U to understand Hoklo as it's spoken in Malaysia, and at some pt that will be a much better place to put your Hoklo to use, as a beginner, than TW, b/c of the social attitudes. However, M'sians understand TW Hoklo just fine b/c of exposure.

[FutureSpy]

Kângkhoán is heavily favored over kâng and siâng now, at least for younger spkrs. Mr. 潘科元 wrote a short piece a few days ago observing how "younger" TWese (under 50?) now are speaking a more verbose form of Hoklo where mono-syllabic Hoklo words are being discarded in favor longer ones, most likely with conditioning from Mandarin.

Weird... He's over 50. And he seems to speak in Taiwanese most of the time. At least, I never heard him say a word in Mandarin to his wife. His kids seems to speak Taiwanese only too, 'cos once I called them and his daughter got the phone with "oê"...

Anyway, that about longer words in favor of shorter ones perhaps explains some choices on the newer edition of the textbook I'm using right now. The old one was edited in 1995 (エクスプレス台湾語), and re-printed in 2002 replacing the tapes for a CD. The new 2009 edition (ニューエクスプレス台湾語) is actually a completely new book with new dialogues (some of the old ones were adapted to fit the new "story", and they added lots of dialogues with situations a tourist would find [bah!], unlike the old one), but still the same grammar points sorted in another order and additional 2 or 3 patterns that didn't appear in the older edition. Recordings, unlike the old one with two Taipei speakers, have now two speakers from different regions (one from Tâi-pak, and the other one from Tâi-lâm, probably). It's good 'cos often you end up hearing the same word in two different accents. But kâng, for an instance, was completely replaced for khân-khoán, and I see structures like mā for mā-sī (in the other edition, mā-sī was given as an alternative form in the grammar notes, but in the dialogues it was always mā... not sure if it's part of the trend too!), etc. Another thing is that, unlike the older one, which avoided Japanese loans by all means, the new one has àn-nāi and liāu-lí... But that's how they speak, right? So no idea whether it's a good or a bad thing. But the point is that in the older one, the author insisted that with a few adjusts one could make himself understood in parts of Southeast Asia and Southern China, so I guess that's what he had in mind when he wrote it.

Possibly "chêng ·nî" (前 ·年), which would be yet another Mandarism.

Yep, that's how he say it.

Something weird: I'm pretty sure in the past weeks he said boeh 欲, but now he argues he say beh and not boeh. (Well, it's me who insists in saying it -his- way, he always tells me not to worry as if I say it the way the book teaches me I'd be understood as well)

And as for 明仔早起 "tomorrow morning", he really says ma2-chai3-a2-khi2. At least, that was his prompt answer when I asked him how to say "tomorrow morning". Or it's just me and he said something like ma2-cha2-a2-khi2, but I'm pretty sure there was an a before khi2. Weird :S

[quote="amhoanna"So, thanks for asking these questions. Don't push yourself too hard. Stay cool. Don't burn out. [/quote]
Thanks, amhoanna!

It just occurred to me that one reason why it's good to pay some mind to dialect variations is that it will make it easier for U to understand Hoklo as it's spoken in Malaysia, and at some pt that will be a much better place to put your Hoklo to use, as a beginner, than TW, b/c of the social attitudes. However, M'sians understand TW Hoklo just fine b/c of exposure.

Well, that's a positive thing I noticed about having different textbooks. Next time I meet the Tâi-tiong old lady, I'll try to get her to read aloud some of the dialogues on my textbook. But I guess I'll have to hide POJ and furigana so that she'll really read it her way I'd like to know how she speaks, as she was the trigger for me to get interested in Taiwan, find out that Taiwanese = Hokkien and 五月天 sang in Taiwanese too. So I really owe her much more than she can ever imagine

Thanks for the tip about Malaysia. I'm much more likely to visit Southeast Asia in a next future than Taiwan, so that only re-enforces I might find something interesting to do there now =)

PS: Just an off-topic note. 台灣e店 now reply all my English emails in Japanese, so I switched to Japanese with them too. Funny thing that the first time I emailed them over one year ago, I did it in both English and Japanese and they replied in English. Dunno how big the shop is, but I wonder if they change clerks that often...

[amhoanna]

Weird... He's over 50.

Well, I've been laughed at in TW for speaking "akong amá Tâigí". Someone even asked me if my grandparents raised me, tānsī goá ê akong amá bēhiáu kóng Ho̍hló'oē! The 8-year-old kid from Manila that sat next to me on the plane last yr would prob. also be considered as speaking akong amá Tâigí if he went one island north. And his mom too.

Recordings, unlike the old one with two Taipei speakers, have now two speakers from different regions ...

They could've achieved this just by having two speakers from different parts of town in Taipei. I agree it's useful to have both a "Mainstream Southern" speaker and an "Old Taipei" (riverport districts) speaker on the same recording. All of TW is switching to Mainstream Southern, but Old Taihoku puts you a step closer to the main port city dialects of all of SE Asia inc. Amoy.

in the other edition, mā-sī was given as an alternative form in the grammar notes, but in the dialogues it was always mā... not sure if it's part of the trend too!

Interesting. Hokkien sī is mainly used as copula, i.e. TO BE, but sometimes used for a certain kind of emphasis. Copula can often be omitted in Hoklo. This puts it in line w/ most SE Asian languages. Mandarin copula shì 是, likely a cognate, can rarely be omitted. I notice that the Manducated, even ones in their 60s, rarely omit the copula when they write Hoklo -- it just feels incorrect to them.

the new one has àn-nāi and liāu-lí... But that's how they speak, right?

Yes... And these Sino-JPese calque loans don't even feel like loans to most people b/c they fit the phonological and semantic structure of Hoklo so well. It's worth keeping in mind that most of the Sino-JPese calque loans in Taiwanese Hokkien were also calqued into Standard Chinese and Vietnamese during the same era.

台灣e店 now reply all my English emails in Japanese

BTW have U considered signing up for the Tâigúbāng listserve, now a Google Group? https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgr ... orum/taigu
It's one of probably two forums or listserves I've seen where people regularly write in pure and consistent romaji. The other would be one I saw out of Medan, but I haven't been able to find it since the first time.