An Interesting interview in Hokkien

[ransek]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the books you recommended. I will look them up once I got time. And I read your post on Penang Hokkien. Very interesting and informative.

As for the video clip of 宋慶齡's speech, it is more like a "literary reading" largely in her native Wu but still there was some mixing of non-Wu pronunciation, such as “知識”. I guess that was a common way of making speech in that era, in order to try to make oneself understood by non-Wu speakers. So I would say it is not the kind of Wu people speak in real life. But yes it is easy for me (and I guess for most Wu-speaking people in South Jiangsu, Shanghai and North Zhejiang) to understand.

Also, it is clear that 宋慶齡's Wu is some kind of 上海本地話 ("Shanghai local tongues"), which is not the same as modern Shanghainese. I'm not so familiar with Shanghai local tongues (in fact there are more than 10 of them). But Song's Wu was definitely one of the closest relatives of Shanghainese.

And I look forward to more discussions on the Wu languages in the Wu forum!

[ransek]

Hi Ah-bin,

Thanks for joining the discussion. I look forward to learning more from you!

>>I also wanted to welcome Ransek along. It's so rare and wonderful to find any PRC Chinese who cares much about their local language, let alone the languages of other areas enough to go into a detailed study of them. Actually my own opinion here is based largely on the behaviour of people in Guangxi, who seemed to want their children to learn nothing but Mandarin, even though they themselves often spoke three languages well.

There are actually plenty of Mainland Chinese who care about their mother tongues and the overall linguistic diversity issue. I used to frequent some of the Chinese forums on all kinds of non-Mandarin Chinese languages and I met a lot of young people who spent time to promote and study different Chinese languages.

I'm not sure if you heard about the protests in Guangzhou regarding the rumored reduction of Cantonese language usage on TV. Tens of thousands of Guangzhou residents went on street to defend their mother tongues. And the act received support from Chinese people all over the country. The Wu language activist community, although a lot smaller, also had their voice heard by organizing some public activities.

Regarding the people in Guangxi, I have similar observations. I have met more than 5 individuals from Nanning, Guangxi. 4 of them were from Cantonese-speaking families, but none of them could even say a complete sentence in Cantonese. The remaining one, however, speaks Hakka fluently. It is quite interesting to see that Cantonese, living vibrantly elsewhere in many parts of the world and assimilating many Hakka-speaking communities, is dying in Nanning where it is speaking natively by the majority.

I guess the attitude towards one's language differ greatly in different cities (language loss in China took place mainly in cities). A typical example is how Cantonese is treated as a prestige language in most parts of Guangdong (even in some non-Cantonese-speaking regions) while in Nanning parents somehow decided that they did not want their children to learn Cantonese at all.

In cities like Nanning and Fuzhou, the extent to which language loss has happened was absolutely shocking to me. In Guangzhou and Shanghai, the local language remain strong despite the influx of non-native speakers. In current Guangzhou and pre-1990's Shanghai, almost all children born to immigrants will learn the local language, because the locals are very proud of their languages and make efforts in using them in all domains of life.

[ransek]

Hi SimL,

Glad to know that my post stimulated more discussions in this forum. I am trying read to a few old threads everyday. But frankly speaking my Hokkien isn't up to the level to understand many details, but I do enjoy the high-level discussions and interesting stories you guys told.

Is this the same community as you had in mind? I didn't think there was a second such community, so that part of my example was invented

Yes I was referring to the Xibe people who continue to speak Manchu. Here I'd like to digress a little bit (hope you don't mind). I believe that Mandarin was heavily influenced by Manchurian (and by Khitan and Jurchen in earlier times). This kind of theory was used by many young Chinese netizens to promote Southern Chinese languages as being "true" Chinese (while labeling Mandarin Chinese as 金元虜語). This wasn't the invention of these young people though. A very renowned Chinese scholar 章太炎 coined the term 金元虜語 in early 1900s in order to prevent Mandarin from becoming the national language. Along this direction, there have been a lot of discussions in Chinese forums, many of them becoming politically-charged. I would stop here for now unless there are other people interested in it.

And all this to say that while I acknowledge the point that identity creation can be manipulative and politically driven (and that I would, in many such cases, condemn such manipulation), some of the results can still be viewed as positive.

I completely agree with you on this. In fact, in many cases a sense of cultural identity came into existence when one's culture is being repressed. Without some kind of "creation" process, the culture may disappear without being noticed. Most ordinary people especially in the past would not understand the value of their cultures and in some sense they needed some politicians/intellectuals to help them realize how important their cultures/languages are.

A very interesting observation I had was regarding the Hoisanese/seiyap people. Most Seiyap people I met have a very strong Cantonese identity and claimed that their language were almost the same as Cantonese (while in fact the two were not mutually intellgible). The good side of this is that the (standard) Cantonese community becomes much stronger with all the Seiyap people speaking Cantonese in public and even using Cantonese in their schools. The bad side is that they do not value their true mother tongue that much and therefore the cultural value of Hoisanese has been largely ignored.

Finally, thank you for sharing the very interesting information on the Mandarinization process in the PRC. It was all totally new information to me, and broadened my horizons a lot.

I'm glad that I might be the first who posted the situation in Mainland China. By the way I prefer "Mainland China" (or simply China) because I do not really identify myself with the PRC government, to the extent that I do not like the flag (which symbolizes their revolutionary idea rather than the Chinese culture). But I feel totally fine being referred to as "PRC Chinese" because I know you guys are not trying to convey any political meaning.

And I totally agree with your point that there were more incentives in SEA to teach in Mandarin. But i'd like to add that "teaching in Mandarin" does not necessarily lead to Mandariziation, or the loss of non-Mandarin Chinese languages. As far as I know, Hokkien remained strong in Singapore despite years of Mandarin-medium eduction until the onset of "speak Mandarin campaign". Also, after a decade or so of teaching in Mandarin in major Cantonese cities, Cantonese still dominates in the Pearl River Delta (with the exception of Shenzhen where the ratio of immigrants/natives is around 9:1--yet even in this case the vast majority of young people from Shenzhen, regardless of their background, are able to converse in Cantonese. This exemplifies how strong Cantonese is). The most important thing is still how people value their languages and if they make efforts to retain the usage of the language in family and in the public. Another important thing is media. In Italy, Italian did not become dominant in those non-Italian speaking regions until the rise of television. In the case of Cantonese, having so many TV channels greatly helps the preservation and promotion of the language.

[SimL]

Hi everyone!

I'm a bit busy at the moment, so just a very quick note. Thanks for all responses.

Thanks for posting information on those two books Mark. They're both very interesting, and I have them at home. The Baba one for more than 10 years now, the Penang Chinese one only in the last few years.

I have to admit that I hadn't noticed the dificiencies in the area of language, in the Baba book. Ah-bin: of all the Forum members, I'm the main one (probably the only one) who goes on about Tang-Min and the absence of the f-. The Tang-min stuff I read about in my early 20's already, and it's pretty fundamental to my conception of Hokkien - so, any detailed refutation or further explanation of its incorrectness would be much appreciated. In all probability I indeed learnt of this from R.A.D. Forrest, as this book was available in the State Library of the Northern Territory, when I was living in Darwin. The f-theory I only learnt about from Wikipedia in the last 1-2 years (and I know your reservations about Wikipedia!). Unfortunately, I can't even find that article again now.

I was lucky enough to meet the author of the Penang Chinese book when I was in Penang. He was a very helpful person - a sort of "Old World Gentleman", with an air of kindness and graciousness about him, totally unpretentious. I was seeking help on some background to my grandparents' marriage scroll, but unfortunately he was unable to throw any additional light on it.

I listened with great interest to the 宋慶齡 speech. Pity it was such a short fragment, but fascinating nevertheless. Many thanks, and I encourage all readers to post other such similar things in the future - and not to have any concerns about such things being "off-topic"!

I'll write/post more when I have more time.

[amhoanna]

I guess part of the reasons that Malacca Baba speaks Malay natively might be that they lived longer in MSia and intermarried more with Malays. Is my guess somewhat correct?

I think so, but to add to this, they arrived or began arriving in the area before Dutch and Anglo rule, which seems to have been the start of separation between "Chinese" and "Malay".

We hear a lot about 閩粵人 emigrating south during the Ming and the Ching, but I've been to many parts and many ports of SEA... Pretty much every single person I've ever spoken to here in a Sino language was the child or grandchild of people who emigrated in ROC times. I've never had the satisfaction of someone telling me in Hokkien or Cantonese that their people arrived in Ching times. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people who could pass for locals in modern-day 閩粵 and typically claim some or full Chinese ancestry, yet speak no Sino languages and don't have much of a Chinese identity. This suggests that ROC-era 閩粵 emigrants saw themselves in a starkly different way, poss. b/c of ROC-era nationalistic thought and propaganda, which the PRC has 発揚光大'd.

I was about to mention the 明鄉 and 清人, but maybe I already have.

In fact, one could even ask oneself if it is appropriate to use the term "Baba" to cover the "nativized Chinese" of all 3 cities (and other parts of Indonesia).

Very interesting pt. As for the "facts", I've a feeling most of the info on the web is actually mis-info.

So do Baba Hokkien and Sinkheh Hokkien somehow "converge" into today's Penang Hokkien?

I believe so. I've heard it's common for Penangites to speak "mainstream" Penang Hokkien when out and about, but switch to a slightly different dialect at home -- usually b/c the grandparents were born in Hokkien and speak a homeland dialect.

from Malacca who speaks fluent Hokkien and told me the opposite (that Hokkien was widely spoken there). His Hokkien is quite different from Taiwanese or Singapore Hokkien though.

I was there once. Didn't find the Hokkien to be too different, but I may've been talking to sinkheh. I knew someone from Muar whose pronunciation of 汝 had the central vowel. One time she mentioned that her mother also says "lí", like the TWese, but that in Muar this is regarded as a "country" pronunciation. And her mother came from somewhere in the countryside outside Muar.

[amhoanna]

In my previous work-life, I spent a bit of time in-and-out of Shanghai, and have always been very fascinated with the 吳 Wu dialect - to the extent that I even purchased 湯志祥’s books/CD's on 上海閒話 Zanhe Eiwo.

Mark, I've got to recommend as well a book published in HK that teaches Shanghaian from Cantonese. I found it in KL at a major non-chain Chinese-language bookstore on a major street right next to one of the stops on the KL "skytrain". I can't remember the names of any of this stuff, but U prob. know which store I mean!

What I want to say is that the Mandarinization of China is quite different from that of Taiwan and Singapore.

Absolutely. They're converging now, though. The most striking difference is that in China, "local power" generally speaks a local language while in TW even "local power" speaks Mandarin. In S'pore, power speaks English.

Very typical example is how the government of France, a country labels herself as the role model of human liberty and equality, has continued to brutally oppress non-French languages within its border for the past few centuries, even to this day.

Nice and ironic.

A very renowned Chinese scholar 章太炎 coined the term 金元虜語 in early 1900s in order to prevent Mandarin from becoming the national language.

This implies that Sino languages are somehow inherently superior to Tungusic languages. I'd also support any "retroactive prevention" of Mandarin becoming THE national language of China, but not b/c it somehow went to seed after being Tungusicized. That kind of reasoning is "mentally challenged".

It is sad to see that so many Wu people have given up our mother tongue, both in and out of the Wu region. May I ask which part of Wu you family are from?

浦江, 餘姚, 無錫. The latter two "elements" (my maternals) converged in Shanghai very early, c. late 19th cen. My parents were born on "the islands". My father never spoke 浦江 at any level, but my mother can speak Shanghaian at a higher level than she realizes. I find it easy to understand a lot of Shanghaian. I assumed it was b/c it was close to Mandarin, but friends w/o the heritage have told me they find it no easier than understanding Cantonese. This really surprised me. Early exposure does work wonders. I can't understand 浦江 at all. It's like a twilight zone when I go there.

I've toyed with learning Shanghaian and 浦江 on many occasions, but the pull hasn't been strong enough. The first factor against is that the languages have no currency outside lower 江南道, as I like to call it -- the diaspora is thin, and the young folks speak Mandarin (or Canto.) by default. Second, they seem too similar to Mandarin to be worth the effort -- even 浦江. If I had the time, though, I'd still like to learn Northern Wo, pref. Ningbo as it seems rough, ready and manly.

And did you grow up speaking Mandarin at home? If so, how did you pick up Taiwanese and become so good at it?

Yes. I must say that I speak Hoklo quite badly, but since so many Hoklo people my age speak it even worse than me, people are willing to overlook this. I started before I knew much about the linguistics of it. Orig. I assumed it would be a snap. It was a surprise to find how different the two languages were, and how much of a non-Sino element lurked in Hoklo. This last part fascinated me and really drew me in, since it resonated with my forming identity. As a young person coming of age, seduced by the peaks and deep seas of Mother Taiwan, conscious of my lost "Wo" identity, I more or less adopted Hoklo has my "new" tribal tongue. The goal I had in mind was to improve my Hoklo to the then-level of my Mandarin. I didn't think it was really possible, but I think I may be close to that goal, although my Mandarin has improved too and remains two steps ahead.

I went about learning Hoklo in the dumbest ways at first, but I got here anyway b/c I never quit. Usually in language learning, U hit stretches where U lose interest. This never happened for me with Hoklo. I'd say I've put in the 10,000 hrs required to become a fully fluent spkr. Meanwhile, for learning other languages, I seek and exploit shortcuts to the fullest. May U learn Hoklo more efficiently than I did.

In fact, the similarities between Wu and Hokkien are more noticeable from a very "shallow" perspective. one example is that both have voiced plosives and nasalization. Of course these might be merely coincidence.

That's an iceberg U've got there. The Sinitic underpinnings of Hoklo, Hokciu, etc. are derived from an old "江東" Sino language or complex of languages. Poss. even some of the non-Sino underpinnings of Hoklo came down the coast the same way. The deep similarities are certainly there, it's just that very few of us are equipped to go find them.

Recently the issue of how to say 大閘蟹 in Hoklo came up on a forum on Facebook. A gentleman on the China side found out that the "閘" is actually a 假借 usage that came into Written Chinese via a Wo language where it represented an etymon meaning TO BOIL, most likely cognate to Hoklo "sah8", TO BOIL. Notice that these cognates are quite poss. non-Sino.

As for "reading Chinese texts in Wu", I have to confess that I am not able to do that. Before 1980s, education is largely done in Wu; So people who went to school then would have no problem speaking Wu in any scenario. The Mandarin-educated generations, however, have lost such ability.

My mother was born in TW and "Manducated" throughout. She learned Mandarin and Shanghaian side by side and most likely spoke Mandarin much better by the time she was 7. One time I called her to ask her how to pronounce 越 in Shanghaian. As expected, she said she didn't know. Then, five seconds later, she remembered and told me.

Five minutes later, she called back to tell me the other pronunciation of 越 in Shanghaian that she'd also just remembered. I was amazed at how deep her Shanghaian was despite non-use. She hasn't spoken it since HER grandmother passed away.

that there exist a large Hokkien community (~1.5 million people) in Southern Wu region!

Yet another linguistic Balkans. I spent some time there once, in 龍港 of 温州. I found their Hoklo quite difficult to eavesdrop on, and they didn't find it easy to understand me either. There seems to have been major convergence in the three major and two minor tongues of the land even before the Mandarin era. Here is our old thread: http://hakkadictionary.com/forums/viewt ... 2e3ef673dd

The 蛮話 language in the area seemed the most fascinating to me -- one of the hill languages, poss. with clear non-Sino roots and not really falling into any of the well-known Sino language groups.

[Mark Yong]

amhoanna wrote:
Mark, I've got to recommend as well a book published in HK that teaches Shanghaian from Cantonese. I found it in KL at a major non-chain Chinese-language bookstore on a major street right next to one of the stops on the KL "skytrain". I can't remember the names of any of this stuff, but U prob. know which store I mean!

If it is a ‘major non-chain Chinese-language shop’ (which immediately excludes Popular Bookstore 大衆書局 and Mentor Bookstore 大將書局) and just off the train line, then I am guessing that you are referring to 學林書局 (is there a McDonald’s a couple of doors to the left, and did you have to go up a dodgy flight of stairs to get to it?). It’s quite popular with the students from the nearby 尊孔獨立中學. I picked up my copies of the 「 閩南話漳腔辭典」, 「閩南方言大辭典」 and the blue paper-back 「廈門方言誌」 from there.

Anyway, if you can flick the book title and/or author’s name across to me, finding it should be a piece of cake! Ironically, the majority of my Chinese-language book purchases in the last 12 months have been by mail-order from Taiwan’s 三民書局 (given my penchant for 繁體字-only books)

[ransek]

This implies that Sino languages are somehow inherently superior to Tungusic languages. I'd also support any "retroactive prevention" of Mandarin becoming THE national language of China, but not b/c it somehow went to seed after being Tungusicized. That kind of reasoning is "mentally challenged".

I think 章太炎's argument was not based on the "superiority of Sino languages". It would be clear if you have the context. Anyway what he meant was that the phonology of Beijing dialect was too different from traditional Chinese phonology and therefore it was not "qualified" to become the national language.

Chinese intellectuals in the old times valued phonology (esp. tones and rhymes) a lot, mainly for literary purpose (e.g. 平仄，押韻）. As many of you must be aware of, although Southern Chinese languages are very different with one another, they generally have good correspondence with traditional phonology. But in Mandarin the traditional tones and rhymes are mixed with one another, often without any clear rule.

My grandma started to write poems in the 1980s. Although all the poems she wrote was to be read in Mandarin only, she still followed traditional phonology books. And often times she needed to read the characters in Wu to check if the poems agree with the phonological rules.

I find it easy to understand a lot of Shanghaian. I assumed it was b/c it was close to Mandarin, but friends w/o the heritage have told me they find it no easier than understanding Cantonese..... Second, they seem too similar to Mandarin to be worth the effort -- even 浦江.

This can be a controversial topic. I agree that Shanghai Wu is in some way closer to Mandarin due to its simplified nature and the fact that it was in fact developed during a time when Mandarin already gained prestige and even much popularity. However, I don't think Northern Wu in general is closer to Mandarin than Cantonese. I've been trying to teach my Mandophone girlfriend both Suzhou Wu and Cantonese, and she clearly pick up Cantonese much more quickly. To her, Suzhou Wu sounded much more bizarre and she couldn't even make out the word boundaries. Northern Wu tends to treat a whole sentence as a unit---the pace is a lot higher (because of simplified rhymes) and Wu has a complex tone sandhi system which is sentence-based. From a phonetic point of view, I think Wu is more distant from Mandarin than Cantonese. The "similar" parts might come from modern vocabularies and literary reading.
However, I agree that Hokkien (and in general the Min languages) is much more distance from Mandarin than Wu.

Here is a video in modern Suzhou Wu with subtitles (and you can see the way junior high students speak it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ773bA2WFg

That's an iceberg U've got there. The Sinitic underpinnings of Hoklo, Hokciu, etc. are derived from an old "江東" Sino language or complex of languages. Poss. even some of the non-Sino underpinnings of Hoklo came down the coast the same way. The deep similarities are certainly there, it's just that very few of us are equipped to go find them.

I'm aware of the deep similarities, which is why I'm so fascinated by Hokkien. I will try to discuss more when I have time.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, ransek,

Quite an interesting series of posts. I really do not know where or how to slot in, so I thought I’d just give a brief overview of my background in relation to my interest in 閩南語.

I am a 4th generation Chinese Malaysian, born and raised in Kuala Lumpur. My ancestral dialect is 惠州話, but I cannot speak much of it (though, through exposure to the older generation during my formative years, I can understand it well when heard). Cantonese is my strongest Chinese dialect, given my KL upbringing.

As to how I encountered Hokkien, it was when I moved up north to Penang to work in the electronics industry for six years. I picked up the dialect partly out of necessity and convenience (everyone speaks it, from company suppliers to street vendors), but it was mainly because I was just fascinated by the dialect, and wanted to learn it. I picked up enough to function on the streets within six months, and was fairly conversant at it within three years. It also helped that I spent my weekends hanging around in places where ‘purer’ varieties of the dialect was spoken (e.g. martial arts academies, coffee shops, car workshops). And because of my passion (obsession?) towards the study of 本字, this further supplemented my learning.

amhoanna raised an interesting point about the Shanghai dialect being somewhat geographically-limited to the 吳 region (which is not to say that it makes me less interested to learn it!). What I mean is that, in contrast, what I find fascinating about the Hokkien dialect is that it is truly a diaspora dialect (although Cantonese can also claim to have a diaspora status, it has the advantage of Hong Kong both as a geographical anchor and having an environment that has always supported the dialect). Speakers of the various varieties of 閩南語, descendents of the migrants across the last two centuries or so, can be found across the Taiwanese Straits and South-East Asia. Within this Minnan Forum, we have representation hailing from Taiwan, Penang, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines (though, not all are active at any given time).

After reading through the old Forum threads, you will probably start to identify some of the more regular members, each bringing different perspectives and areas of emphasis (as illustrated by the recurring themes in their posts). I shall let the other Forumers introduce themselves and their respective interests, but as for me (and the older Forumers will probably attest to this), my primary interest in 閩南語 is in its Sinitic roots, and seeking out the 本字 for many of the unique words in its vocabulary that originate from Old Chinese and have fallen out of general use in the younger dialects such as Mandarin.

[SimL]

Sorry, I'm incredibly busy at the moment, so can't post much more. There are so many interesting issues raised by everyone. I hope to have more time next week. I'll just squeeze this in now.

We hear a lot about 閩粵人 emigrating south during the Ming and the Ching, but I've been to many parts and many ports of SEA... Pretty much every single person I've ever spoken to here in a Sino language was the child or grandchild of people who emigrated in ROC times. I've never had the satisfaction of someone telling me in Hokkien or Cantonese that their people arrived in Ching times.

Right, here goes: "wa e tsO-kong (kui-na e, m-si ka-liau) si u-iaN ti tsheng-tiau e si lai kau ma-lai-a e." (That was my attempt at telling you in Hokkien that some of my ancestors really did arrive in Malaya in Ching times ).

The following link is a photograph of the grave inscription of one of my great-great-grandmothers. The far right column reads "光緒戊寅年孟冬", which I've translated as "[Died] 1878, first month of Winter (10th lunar month)".

This photo might already have been posted on this Forum earlier, when I was getting help from Forum members for doing the translation of the whole thing. The grave itself is in the Mount Erskine Cemetry in Penang.



I'm not totally sure that she was born in Malaya - I can ask an uncle who has done a lot of research into that aspect of the family - but even if she wasn't, this would appear to prove that she had migrated to Malaya in Qing times. But in all probability, I think she was born in Malaya. IIRC, even her parents were born in Malaya.