More words...about 300 I can't track down.

[SimL]

pun-phe ê lâng 分批个儂 "one who distributes letters"

I wouldn't have been able to arrive at this by myself, but having been given it, it sounds quite correct.

3) Mold this one is just kó• 菇 I think, as in hoát-kó• 發菇 or does that just mean "to grow fungus" of any kind?

I can confirm "sEN-kO" as given by Mark. Definitely superior to "hoát-kó•" which I haven't heard used.

5) Noise is there any distinction between "sound" and "noise" ( a loud, annoying sound)?

I would paraphrase it with "luan7" as an adjective: "There was a lot of noise last night": "ca-mE m-chai ha-mi, cin-nia luan" (literally: "last night don't know what, very 亂"). Of course, this only works for loud and continuous noise, i.e. a racket, not for "What's that strange soft noise?". [Oops! Sorry, I noticed that Mark has said exactly this already - leaving my original text in, just to support Mark's assertion.]

To offend tek-chōe 得罪 perhaps.

Definitely. One of the few "intellectual" words I actually know!!! It helped a lot when I came across the Mandarin term, just a few weeks ago.

Mark: Haha! 鬱 was the character with the most number of strokes which I knew prior to this .

[SimL]

Ah-bin wrote:
Mist is this one bū 霧, right?

Absolutely. The morpheme can also be used as an adjective, i.e. 真正霧 tsin1-tsiaⁿ3 bu7.

I agree with Mark.

In my usage, also extended to a number of situations with "blur" or "blurred", even if it's not caused by mist. The most common situation would be where a room is air-conditioned, and condensation forms all over the outside surface of the glass in the window pane (because the air outside is hotter and more humid). The scene outside - viewed from the inside, through the condensation on the glass - would then be described as "bu7". This is obviously very close in image to "misty". Another extension might be viewing a scene through a gauze curtain or translucent plastic curtain - still very close in image to "misty". Then, by extension, if you're short-sighted and haven't got your glasses on, then this would also be, for me, "bu7". I would however hesitate to extend it one more step, say to a printed page, where the printing has gone slightly wrong, and the letters / characters are "blurred". I might use "bu7" for this, but I'd be very unsure if it was appropriate, unlike the first 3 extensions, which I feel to be perfectly appropriate/correct/natural.

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
I would however hesitate to extend it one more step, say to a printed page, where the printing has gone slightly wrong, and the letters / characters are "blurred". I might use "bu7" for this, but I'd be very unsure if it was appropriate, unlike the first 3 extensions, which I feel to be perfectly appropriate/correct/natural.

For the case of things that are ‘visually indistict’ or ‘dim’ (but not necessarily or specifically ‘blurr’ as illustrated by 霧 bu7, I do recall there is another adjective used in Penang Hokkien, which is 朦 bOng5.

I have never consciously given much thought as to how I would use 霧 bu7 or 朦 bOng5 depending on context (with these things, it is usually ‘on-the-fly’), but if I had to differentiate their usage, I would (as you correctly pointed out, Sim) limit 霧 bu7 to things that are visually-obscured by something misty (rendering it ‘translucent’?), whereas 朦 bOng5 would be for things that are themselves inherently dim/unclear (e.g. a page printed by a printer that was low on ink?). Just my thoughts, open for comments.

I recall on the wall of one of the elevators at the Macallum Street Ghaut (五條路 gO7 tiau5 lO7) flats, someone wrote the words “Am Bong Kui” (Romanised). I presume that meant 暗朦鬼 am3-bOng5 kui2, where 暗朦 am3-bOng5 means ‘shady/dodgy’ (in the context of a person’s character, given the 鬼 kui2 suffix!).

[Ah-bin]

Thanks so much again. This is all really great!

We are really racing through these now.

I have also traacked down a whole bunch of words from Raymond Kwok's five books as well. I really must recommend the 閩南話漳腔辭典 (the one with the green cover) it is chock full of words that the other dictionaries seem to miss (Douglas and the 閩南話大辭典). I'll do a thread on these some time soon to see if others know them.

1) Parcel something with pau 包 perhaps?

2) A pattern

3) A payment

4) Permit, licence is this toaⁿ單 or chóa 紙 or jī 字 all of them seem to be used for certificates or permits

5) A pin (with a flat head)

6) Pitcher, jug is that ang?

7) Plain (not fancy)

8 ) Politics 政府个物件 chèng-hú ê míh-kiàⁿ or maybe chèng-tī 政治 (the Amoy/Taiwanese form)? He doesn't like talking about politics (I bo sukah kong cheng-hu e mih-kiaN)?

9) To prevent now for this one I always use "hō• + somebody/something + mài + v." e.g hō• i mài cháu 與伊□走 "prevent him from leaving" or

10) To scrub I was wondering whether this was chhit, but that seems to indicate rubbing rather than scrubbing

[Mark Yong]

This one?



I own a copy of it, too. In my humble opinion, it is an indispensable resource for anyone researching Penang Hokkien’s 漳州 tsiang1 tsiu1 roots, and helping me to ‘standardise’ my pronunciations. I normally refer to it alongside the 閩南方言大詞典.

[Ah-bin]

That's the one. As I say, it has so many words that are not in the other dictionaries that i have found in written Penang Hokkien texts (Johnny Chee, Raymond Kwok, Tan Choon Hoe). I had a list of ten words that were not in Douglas or The 閩南方言大詞典 (I had the title wrong in the previous post) but i found them in this dictionary.

[SimL]

4) Permit, licence is this toaⁿ單 or chóa 紙 or jī 字 all of them seem to be used for certificates or permits

Everyone around me in my youth said "lai3-sEn1" or "lai3-sEn2" (so, 'sandhied' to "lai1-").

5) A pin (with a flat head)

Everyone around me in my youth said "pin3-ciam1" (so, 'sandhied' to "pin1-") (literally: 'pin'-"needle/sharp"). This is one of those "really integrated words" which I think most people didn't perceive as a borrowing any more.

This is a slightly different way of borrowing from English than with "lai3-sEn2", where only the sounds are borrowed. It looks like a similar process to "香檳酒" for "champagne" in Mandarin - borrow the sound, and add one final syllable giving the general type. (I came across a whole list of these for Mandarin, but this is the only one I can think of, off the top of my head.)

6) Pitcher, jug is that ang?

No. I don't know how to say "pitcher". "ang3/7" is (as I'm sure you know) 甕, and it means the same as the Mandarin equivalent. Have a look at these magnificent examples, which I got from Google Image Search using 甕: http://www.google.nl/search?num=10&hl=e ... 5A75mRbLdk

10) To scrub I was wondering whether this was chhit, but that seems to indicate rubbing rather than scrubbing

I would just say "bin2" (= "a brush", "to brush"): "to scrub it clean" = "bin hO i cheng-khi" / "bin kau-ka i cheng-khi", literally "brush give it clean" / "brush until it clean".

I would translate "chhit4" as "to wipe". Wiping with either a wet or a dry cloth would both be "chhit4", exactly as in English, and wiping tables or one's face would both be "chhit4", exactly as in English as well.

[Mark Yong]

Since we are on the topic of ‘scrub’, I thought I would share my personal experience on the various ways to say it in Penang Hokkien (taking into consideration Sim’s extensive descriptions above):

拭 tshit4 – This is the one we know best, i.e. ‘to wipe’ - usually over a relatively wide surface, e.g. tables 拭桌頂 tshit4 toh4-teng2 and floors 拭塗骹 tshit4 thO7-kha1, but also in 拭嘴 tshit4 tshui2 ‘wipe the mouth’.

抿 bin2 – Another common one, i.e. ‘to brush’. Most often heard in 抿牙 bin2 gE5 ‘brush teeth’.

䠈 thut7 – This generally means ‘to rub’. That said, the first time I heard the word, it was in the specific context of using a damp cloth and rubbing away a small stain using just the index finger 用㴷布䠈䠈一下 iong7 tam7-pO3 thut3-thut7 tsit8-E7.

挼 jue5 – This one I always hear in the specific context of 挼目睭 jue5 bak8-tsiu2 ‘rub the eyes’.

[SimL]

Hi Mark,

Wonderful response! Thanks a lot. I absolutely couldn't think of a word for "rub", but the two you supply are absolutely spot on, and very well known to me. Your usage is also identical to mine, though I'll give some additional contexts where I use both.

抿 bin2 – Another common one, i.e. ‘to brush’. Most often heard in 抿牙 bin2 gE5 ‘brush teeth’.

In my family, the fixed expression for brushing teeth was "bin chui-khi" (抿嘴齒) (I seem to vaguely remember seeing that 嘴 is not the correct character for "chui/tshui" = "mouth", but ok...)

䠈 thut7 – This generally means ‘to rub’. That said, the first time I heard the word, it was in the specific context of using a damp cloth and rubbing away a small stain using just the index finger 用㴷布䠈䠈一下 iong7 tam7-pO3 thut3-thut7 tsit8-E7.

Another common use is "thut4-la1-ki2" (= "to rub off the dead skin when you're having a shower / bath" or (more genteely) "self exfoliation". ["la1-ki2" is of course borrowed from Malay "daki", and could be a Baba-ism.]

挼 jue5 – This one I always hear in the specific context of 挼目睭 jue5 bak8-tsiu2 ‘rub the eyes’.

Another use is (sadly) "jue5 hO7-i1 si2" = literally "rub give-it die", idiomatically "squash it to death" (with your thumb or index finger). Used when some people see a small bug crawling along somewhere.

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
In my family, the fixed expression for brushing teeth was "bin chui-khi" (抿嘴齒)

Yup, and in fact 嘴齒 tshui-khi was actually the first way I learnt to say ‘teeth’, before I eventually migrated to 牙 gE5 (mainly a knee-jerk reaction towards ‘over-colloquialism’ in Hokkien at that time!).

SimL wrote:
I seem to vaguely remember seeing that 嘴 is not the correct character for "chui/tshui" = "mouth", but ok...

Actually, Sim, you have a point. A couple of my reference books (many of which Ah-bin no doubt shares) identify 喙 as the correct character for tshui2 instead of 嘴. The only reason I have shied away from 喙 so far is because I cannot yet reconcile the 反切 fanqie reading for it, which would give it an initial h- rather than tsh-. That said, I make no claim that 嘴 is the correct character (as is the case with a number of words I have posted on this thread so far), but rather a provisional compromise.