Sim:
Yes, I had corrected what I noticed as typograpical errors before I posted the list. There are some others that haven't been corrected, such as:
臣 sing5 should be sin5
西門 se1 hun5 should be se1 bun5
etc...(will try to check all list later)
As in other 'dialect' groups, surely there are some surnames commonly found among Hokkiens and some are rarely found. But I don't know if there are surnames only used by Hokkiens and vice versa. Majority of Hokkien people in my hometown had surname 洪 Ang5 hence I thought that it was the biggest surname among Hokkiens. Later I knew that actually there were more 陳 Tan5, 林 Lim5, 李 Li2, 蔡 Chua3, 張 Tiu*1, etc. My surname is not so common among Hokkiens but should be more common among Cantonese as it (Leung) is often used in Hongkong movies. I also have a Hokkien friend with surname 闕 Khuat4. He told me that his family was the only Khuat4 family in Singapore.
Aurelio:
I'm really glad and touched to know your passion for Hokkien language, far exceeding most people who were Hokkien by birth. I really look forward to visit your Hokkien webpage.
I totally agree with you that Hokkien needs a standard writing system and that Chinese characters are more suitable. Of course we need standard romanization too. Of course the way to standard writing system & romanization for Hokkien is not easy, yet not impossible. Hopefully it may come true soon.
Personally I regard the Taiwanese Han Character Edition of The Holy Bible as an important milestone in forming standard written Hokkien. I bought it last year and have been using it joyfully. Of course it's not a perfect work but indeed it's remarkable, using Han/Chinese characters for the entire Hokkien Bible (some characters are followed by Church Romanization in brackets to indicate the correct pronunciation).
聖經 - 台語漢字本 The Holy Bible - Taiwanese Han Character Edition
根據巴克禮牧師 (The Rev. Thomas Barclay A.D. 1849-1935)
廈門音羅馬字聖經 (Amoy Romanized Bible 1933) 改寫成漢字
中華民國聖經公會版權所有 1996.1
The Bible Society in the R.O.C. (Taiwan) 1996.1
ISBN 957-99771-4-3 & ISBN 957-99771-5-1 (may be different cover/format)
The address of the publisher:
中華民國聖經公會
台灣台北市106仁愛路三段29號4樓
The Bible Society in the R.O.C.
4th Floor 29 Jen-Ai Road, Section 3
Taipei 106 Taiwan.
About the 5th tone, you use 甜 as a sample - [thi"5] (sweet), is it particular to certain accent? We pronounce it as [ti"1].
Dylan:
There is a Hokkien romanization called Church Romanization or 白話字 Peh8 Oe7 Ji7 (pe8 ue7 ji7), designed by missionaries in 19th century. The term Hokkien here refers to the language/'dialect' of Cuanciu (Quanzhou), E-mng (Xiamen) and Ciangciu (Zhangzhou), not including Hokciu (Fuzhou) and Tiociu (Chaozhou). The romanization is used in Dictionary of the Vernacular of Amoy by Rev. Carstairs Douglas in 1873, also in The Amoy Romanized Bible. It may not be widely known but it's still in use. Here is a website on Pehoeji: http://www.de-han.org/pehoeji/ . Btw, I don't agree with the de-sinification as advocated by the site.
Church Romanization is very useful and simple. Yet it may need some improvement, e.g. why use "ch" & "chh" if we can use "c" & "ch"?
[%sig%]
Surnames in Hokkien
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Aurelio
Re: Surnames in Hokkien
Niuc:
Yes, I stand corrected. It's always [tiⁿ1] or [tiam1].
BTW: Church Romanization is actually very common on Taiwanese webpages. Ever come across the 'Taigubang' mailing list?
Dylan:
Yes, from that point of view, English is the most horrible example I could pick. What I meant was the degree of standardization, not so much the actual implementation. English spelling is not much better than Chinese characters: In both cases you - sort of - can guess the pronunciation
This precise feature, however, allows people to have a very different pronunciation in different parts of the world while sharing the same written standard - which would also apply to the variants of Hokkien.
Regards,
Aurelio
Yes, I stand corrected. It's always [tiⁿ1] or [tiam1].
BTW: Church Romanization is actually very common on Taiwanese webpages. Ever come across the 'Taigubang' mailing list?
Dylan:
Yes, from that point of view, English is the most horrible example I could pick. What I meant was the degree of standardization, not so much the actual implementation. English spelling is not much better than Chinese characters: In both cases you - sort of - can guess the pronunciation
This precise feature, however, allows people to have a very different pronunciation in different parts of the world while sharing the same written standard - which would also apply to the variants of Hokkien.Regards,
Aurelio
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Dylan Sung
Re: Surnames in Hokkien
Oops, cough should be /khOf/ not /cOf/.
Niuc, thanks. Church romanisation, I forgot about that, as I've visited Mike Wright's site on the subject,
http://www.coastalfog.net/languages/xiarom.html
Aurelio, yes, a common romanisation does engender some unity amongst its speakers. I was thinking in another thread if there was a Holo character list with pronunciation.
I was thinking, if you split the 13000 characters in Big5 into say 20 parts, 650 characters would be a manageable portion for a a collection of people to find the character sounds to. That averages to around 20 odd characters a day over a month, so quite possibly it would be possible to get an annotator for it within say a month and a half after collating and checking the input!
Dyl.
Niuc, thanks. Church romanisation, I forgot about that, as I've visited Mike Wright's site on the subject,
http://www.coastalfog.net/languages/xiarom.html
Aurelio, yes, a common romanisation does engender some unity amongst its speakers. I was thinking in another thread if there was a Holo character list with pronunciation.
I was thinking, if you split the 13000 characters in Big5 into say 20 parts, 650 characters would be a manageable portion for a a collection of people to find the character sounds to. That averages to around 20 odd characters a day over a month, so quite possibly it would be possible to get an annotator for it within say a month and a half after collating and checking the input!
Dyl.