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

[Mark Yong]

SimL wrote:
...what's the punji for "phah4"? It seems to be commonly written as 打, but this surely must be using the character purely for its meaning, not a punji at all...

I have seen both 拍 and 撲 , but am not sure which is the correct one. I tend to use 拍, but that’s just out of habit.

SimL wrote:
I still need some help with Tâi-kàu-pō͘ ê sû-tián , sorry!

Hi, Sim - I think that would be 臺教部（之）辭典. 臺教部 is a contraction of 臺灣教育部門, i.e. the Taiwan Ministry of Education.

[SimL]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for that. Makes a lot of sense.

Is "kah4" also 教? If so, how come a single morpheme can be both ru-tone ("kah4") and non-ru-tone ("kau3")...?

[Ah-bin]

Now that is an interesting question. I had assumed that Kah with an entering tone was a Penangism, as I have heard it from you and from Bhante Dhammavudho, but not anywhere else. I have just had a look in Douglas and he has two different ways to pronounce it, one kah and the other kà, with two distinct meanings.

kah = to order, to tell to do, to cause a man to do

Kà = to teach, instruct or train

Now in Penang Hokkien I am not sure whether these are kept as distinct words or not. I think Bhante Dhammavudho uses kah for both senses. How about you Sim?

A similar thing happens with the same character in Mandarin where jiāo and jiào mean different things. jiāo is used specifically for the verb "to teach" whereas jiào is the noun meaning a teaching or religion, as well as part of various compounds. In Hokkien the literary reading Kàu seems to be used as the noun for teaching or religion, as well as in the compounds.

As for the same word being entering and non-entering at the same time, I am reminded of 較 which is khah and Kàu in colloquial and literary readings (if it is actually the character for the first word).

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

Thanks for the explanation. Indeed, I even seem to recall this discussion here many, many years ago (I think before you joined the Forum).

I may have said it then, but I'll say it here again.

I have a distinct recollection that when I was young, in Malaysia, I was corrected in my usage by my parents. They explained exactly what you said: "kah4" means "to order someone to", whereas "ka3" means "to teach". At the time, this didn't make much sense to me, and I sort of didn't quite believe them, because this is not what I heard my contempories saying. Among us kids, we didn't use "kah4" to mean "to order someone to". It was just one of those concepts which we didn't have a word for. And we used "kah4" to mean "to teach".

Years later (i.e. long after I was an adult, and some time after I was a member of this Forum), I asked my parents about this distinction again (prompted probably by a discussion on this topic on the Forum). I tried to remind them of the time they had explained the distinction to me, when I was a child. But, they denied all knowledge of this, saying that they'd never heard of this distinction, didn't make it themselves, and so couldn't possibly have explained such a distinction to me .

I attribute this to the fact that they left Malaysia 40 years ago, and what little Hokkien they speak they have mostly spoken to one another all these years. Because I really do remember the discussion in Malaysia, and I can't imagine that I could have imagined or invented this distinction all by myself.

So, the best I can do is ask some uncles and aunts, the next time I speak to them. I shall undertake to do this, and post their answers here in the future.

BTW, I checked with my Dad about the superstition about not walking under women's underwear when it's hung out to dry, and he confirmed this exactly as you described it. It has to be women's underwear (there is no superstition about men's underwear, and no superstition any other sort of women's clothing), and it has to be when it's hung out to dry.

They also confirmed "lo5" for "dozen", but I gather that you were sufficiently confident of that already, and didn't need confirmation.

[Mark Yong]

Ah-bin wrote:
I have just had a look in Douglas and he has two different ways to pronounce it, one kah and the other kà, with two distinct meanings.

kah = to order, to tell to do, to cause a man to do

Kà = to teach, instruct or train

SimL wrote:
I have a distinct recollection that when I was young, in Malaysia, I was corrected in my usage by my parents. They explained exactly what you said: "kah4" means "to order someone to", whereas "ka3" means "to teach".

Hi, Sim,

I believe your recollections are correct. Here is the entry for the character 教 on the 漢典 website:

http://www.zdic.net/zd/zi/ZdicE6Zdic95Zdic99.htm

Paraphrasing the 康熙字典 Khong1-Hi1 Ji7-Tian2 definitions provided, 教 can have several meanings, among them:
1. To teach (this one we are familiar with)
2. To mandate/order (I think this is the one you are referring to)
3. To be subordinate/subject to

The 反切 huan2-tshiat4 readings appear to be different for each of them. I am not savvy enough to work out the differences, so I best defer it to someone else to advise which one(s) has the entering tone and which one(s) does not.

Multiple readings for characters is a feature that occurs in almost all dialects, and Mandarin is no exception. That said, it is interesting to see how Mandarin (and, to a lesser extent, Cantonese) speakers seem less conscious of the different readings for characters, which I think is attributed to the relative lack of preservation of tones and finals making these distinctions less obvious in Mandarin. I used to think that all the voiced consonant finals in the Southern dialects just evolved into the 4th (entering) tone, but that does not appear to be the blanket rule (e.g. 國).

[Ah-bin]

I found a word for bankrupt in one of Tan Choon Hoe's books!

It is:

Tó-tàⁿ 倒擔 which Douglas defines as a pedlar going bankrupt

Here they use the word in a Taiwanese proverb video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzOIifSO-T4

I think they have Hong-hiám 風險 in the meaning of "disaster" there too. Wow, i am so used to Penang Hokkien as my preferred accent now i have a lot of trouble understanding most of that the first time.

[Ah-bin]

Hello again everyone. I've got another list of ten here I hope some of you can help me with!

1) ankle (Malay) I have the Malay loan "tumit" for heel from one of Tan Choon Hoe's books

2) appointment I have iók chi-lê tiám-siaⁿ 約一个點聲 for "make an appointment", but is there a noun for this?

3) atmosphere

4) Banned, to ban I know there's a word Kìm 禁 as in Kìm-chúi 禁水, and that some people use "salah" for illegal or "banned" such as fireworks, gambling, etc. I've also heard "Tióh-ban" 著ban.

5) bath plug or plug for the sink - is this that by any chance?

6) bay oan 灣 perhaps?

7) body weight I was wondering whether "weight" had an abstract noun

cart, wheelbarrow

9) by chance, accidentally - I know Tiâu-tî 超持 for "on purpose" could be negated for a shade of this meaning, and that Bô-sió-sim 無小心 would be accidentally for breaking things or doing something bad, but how about meeting someone or finding something by chance?

10) cardboard Choá-áh 紙盒 is a cardboard box, but I'm sure there must be a word for cardboard other than Choá 紙

Thanks again!

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

I've got very limited Internet access today, so this will be short with no fancy quoting.

Indeed, "to-taN" is very well known to me. I think it could be used for "bankrupt", but for me it has slightly different connotations. For me, "to-taN" means "going out of business", and denotes more the cessation of activities in the operating of the shop / company than things connected with the owner, whereas "bankrupt" denotes more the financial state of the owner (or any other individual).

So one would say:

- "hi(t)-le tiam, teng-pai u cin-nia ce hue, cia-ku bo ha-mi u mih-kiaN liau; wa siauN si be to-taN liau" (= "that shop which used to have lots of goods, nowadays doesn't have much stuff anymore; I think it's about to go out of business").

Or

- "ai-o! ci(t)-le tiam soa(h) to-taN liau - bo lang ti, mui so-tiau, lai bin am-am" (= "Oh dear! This shop's gone out of business - there's no one there, the door is locked, and it's completely dark inside")

Of course, such a shop goes out of business because the owner is bankrupt, and a shop owner going bankrupt usually means that the shop will close, so the two concepts are very closely related. Nevertheless, I feel that "to-taN" lays more emphasis on the shop itself - the day-to-day running, the presence of staff, the replenishing of supplies, etc. For example, a stockbroker or investor going bankrupt would not be described as "to-taN" because their means of earning income / being rich doesn't have the feeling of "operating / running a shop". Even a plantation, or an aircraft manufacturer going out of business hasn't quite got the feel of "to-taN" for me. But any small shop right up to a supermarket chain does have this feeling.

But this feeling of mine could have arisen purely because I only knew the concept of bankruptcy in this context. It's interesting to see that in Penang Hokkien usage, the scope widened from "pedlar" to "any shop or trading business".

[Ah-bin]

Thanks Sim. I still have to find that "bankrupt" then!

I was just thinking, the difference between kah and Kà would be more pronounced in Penang Hokkien than in Taiwanese. In Taiwanese the two words would sandhi to ká, whereas in PGHK they sandhi to káh and ka respectively.

Another thing I was thinking about was the word for "sneeze"
McGowan has

Phah ka-chhiùⁿ

and Douglas has
hah á-chhiùⁿ
hah-chhiùⁿ
he•h-chhiùⁿ
phah ka-chhiùⁿ and
phah khah-chhiùⁿ!!!!

The only one I've heard so far is hah-chhiùⁿ (or perhaps hah-chhiù from a Penangite. It's interesting that the phah is used in some but not in others, and also interesting (if the vowel is in fact nasalised) that the final -iùⁿ does exist in Penang Hokkien.

[SimL]

Multiple readings for characters is a feature that occurs in almost all dialects, and Mandarin is no exception. That said, it is interesting to see how Mandarin (and, to a lesser extent, Cantonese) speakers seem less conscious of the different readings for characters, which I think is attributed to the relative lack of preservation of tones and finals making these distinctions less obvious in Mandarin.

Hi Mark,

Indeed, I seem to recall one of the former regulars here, Aurelio, telling me in a private email that:

1) Many of the characters which nowawadays in standard Mandarin can be read with different tones are in fact a remnant of this; i.e. one tone would be what was traditionally the literary reading and the other would be what was traditionally the colloquial reading.

2) In the standardization of Mandarin which the PRC undertook in the 1950's and 1960's - when they got rid of many 異體字, and standardized the look of the remaining characters (giving rise to 新- and 舊-forms of the same character) - they in fact also eliminated many literary/colloquial-pairs; retaining just one member of each pair "by declaration". As one might expect, usually the more "obscure" of the two pronunciations was "eliminated" (with "obscure" in the sense that that pronunciation was used in only a few compounds).

Apparently, this is one major reason that Mandarin has far fewer literary vs. colloquial readings. Perhaps it historically already had considerably fewer than Hokkien anyway, but with this extra round of formal elimination, there were so few left that the whole concept of literary vs. colloquial readings became irrelevant to Mandarin, their "vestige trace" being "1" above.