hokkien language courses?

[ni betti]

I am a ang mo lang, currently in Europe and interested in learning some Hokkien. Do you know of any language teaching books etc. ? On the net I only found the course "Amoy Hokkien" by spokenlanguages. Any experiences with this language course, or comments on it? It is quite expensive, so I would prefer some comments on it before I order it...
thank you.

[Yeo Boon Hong]

U could also pick up Taiwanese Hokkien by visiting the following sites:

www.taiguo.com

www.edutech.org.tw

www.daiwanway.dynip.com & links

www.hoklo.org

Best regards.

[Keith]

Could someone please explain to me how the 'tongyong pinyin' system works? How is it different to Hanyupinyin?

Also shouldn't Hokkien be taught using characters with the romanizations as a supplement rather than a replacement? I find it sad that most 'Hokkienlang' have to resort to using romanizations to express themselves in Hokkien rather than using characters.

Thankyou

[James Campbell]

Download taigi lomaji for typing here:

http://home.kimo.com.tw/kiatgak/

Join the forum:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Taigi-Lomaji

[KDLim]

Romanization of Hokkien would facilitate the learning of the language by those who are educated in roman characters especially Westerners including the Hokkiens who are English-educated and encounter difficulty in writing as well as memorizing the Chinese characters.

[lim bei]

i wonder if there are more sites that offer online hokkien lessons for freee other thn those given above??

[Aurelio]

Hi Betti:

I bought 'Amoy Hokkien' some time ago. It has a lot of impressive features: Lots of dialogue with a broad vocabulary and a very thorough treatment of the phonetics of hokkien - the transcription system is very readable (romanisation of hokkien is a notorious problem), the tones/ tonal shifts are explained very well and even the sentence melody/ stress patterns (difference between question and statement etc.) are indicated. It's definitely worth the money.

Although the course is called Amoy hokkien, the scene is set in Malaysia. More precisely Malaysia/ Singapore of fifty years ago. Hard to say whether this should be considered an advantage or a disadvantage: My S'porean/ Malaysian friends were quite amused when I knew more about 'rice ration cards' and other objects from the anticommunist war than they did ...

Downsides: If you do not know any Hokkien speaker you would want to have the tapes which are pretty pricey (cin gui!). If you do know a hokkien speaker be prepared to hear that what the book says is no 'how we say it'. Depending on where people come from, there is quite some variety in vocabulary and tonal patterns (it's still reasonably close).

If you are serious about learning Hokkien, this might be the best book available in the West. I have found only few teaching materials in Singapore/ Malaysia, as Hokkien is not taught in schools. Unfortunately, I haven't made it to Taiwan yet: As the Taiwanese variant of Minnan (which is very close to the Hokkien of Malaysia) is gaining more and more ground, there must be more and more teaching materials available there. If you know Mandarin and have a chinese language internet browser you might be able to find something on the homepages of Taiwanese bookstores.

Best regards,
Aurelio

[Chris]

Hmm, yeah I've seen that "Amoy Hokkien" by Spoken Language Services, and it is VERY expensive ^_^;

I'm not THAT desperate to learn Hokkien, but I can't find any courses in my local area, so it looks like audio tapes / books are the only way to go. I have found two other apparently "standard" books for English-speakers wanting to learn Hokkien:-

"Spoken Amoy Hokkien" by Nicholas C. Bodman
http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/8349.htm

"Basic Hokkien" by Soh Say Peng
http://www.netstoreusa.com/labooks/981/9813019220.shtml

However, both of these are also somewhat pricey, so can anyone tell me if they've had any experience with either? Thanks.

Chris

[BHYeo]

Tapes/books on basic Hokkien which are currently available in leading book stores in Malaysia are as follows:

(i) Elementary Hokkien Conversation
(ii) Everyday Hokkien Conversation

Each book contains 109 pages and is supplied with a audio tape. Both books are edited by S.Y.Tan and published by Intellectual Publishing Co., 16-D & 17-D, Block 1, Kallang Way, Singapore 1334. These books are not at all pricey and would be useful to those who are interested to pick up only basic Hokkien.

By the way, I have in my collection learning materials and tapes on 'The Hokkien Course' prepared in 1977 by Innovational Secretarial Centre (Pte) Ltd.. Suite 434, Peace Centre (Rear Block), 4th Floor, No. 1, Sophia Road, Singapore 9. This course is useful for those English-speakers who are serious in picking up Hokkien. However, I am not sure whether it is still available.

I also have in my collection Books on Hokkien (Amoy) for Beginners, Book 1, 2 & 3 and English-Hokkien Dictionary by Chiang Ker Chiu published by the Chin Fen Book Store , 9, Oxley Rise, Singapore 9 Tel. 379118 (?). I think these books are no longer available in book stores.

Best regards,

[James Campbell]

If you come to Taiwan, there's tons of materials. Most of it's in Chinese and quite good if you know Chinese. Not much in English. The only one I have is an old one by Bodman called Taiwanese Hokkien. There's no explanation as to the romanization or anything, and I couldn't use it as a beginner's, but after learning a bit and coming back to it, it is very useful and has lots of conversations and wide use of vocabulary. The dialogues are old and some Taiwanese say these are things that were said a long time ago, or something only their grandma would say. You can also see that their conversations on prices of things are very outdated. Anyhow, it was very useful, but only recommended to an intermediate student. Tone changes are already written into the script, which helps a lot for reading aloud straight from the book.