"Busybody" in Hokkien

[Niuc]

Hi Andrew,

Congratulation for your Douglas-Barclay dictionary Although the version (of yours & mine) doesn't have ‘hanji’ in its main section, nonetheless it's very very helpful.

You are correct that 家 is also kE in Ciangciu dialect, the dictionary says so. Your suggestion (i.e. 閨婆) may be indeed is the proper ‘hanji’. Somehow the main section (Douglas’) doesn’t have it (閨) in ‘ke’ entries but only in ‘kui’; the supplement (Barclay’s) has it in both ‘ke’ & ‘kui’ entries.

Personally I don’t find any differences between Douglas’ ch & ts; for me both are just ‘c’. In my dialect, the 3rd & 7th tones are very different and distinctive. Their sandhi tones are also very different: the 7th tone’s sandhi is the 3rd tone; the 3rd tone’s sandhi is the 8th tone. I prefer not to use capital letters (e.g. N for nasal, E vs e, O vs o) because the usage will be confusing if we are writing in uppercase (e.g. PIAN2 -> piaN2 or pian2???, KE1 -> ke1 or kE1???...). That’s why I prefer to use * for nasal, o vs ou. But I have no idea how to write E vs e. Any idea?

[%sig%]

[Andrew Yong]

Douglas also mentions that 3rd and 7th tone in Changchew are impossible to tell apart, except in sandhi form.

I prefer to use o/O and e/E because they are easy to read. I like your * for the nasal.

I find that Singaporeans will normally say ts (pinyin z) where Penangites say ch (pinyin j)


andrew

[Casey]

Niuc and Andrew

The word "闺“is pronounced as "ke1" in "厦门话" indeed, like "闺女"-- "ke1 lu2", or "闺房"--"ke1 pang5"; in "漳州话" it should be "kE1".

One way to express the sound "-E" in lower case letters is using "-ae" as in German.

In "漳州话" the 3rd tone and 7th tone are quite distinctive, but the 5th tone pronounced in a lower tone quite close to the 3rd tone except with a slight rising tone. If the 3rd tone is described as "1-" as in "do-o" (long "do") in music, then the 5th tone in "漳州话" is "1-2" or "do-re".

As a Singaporean, I find that there is no difference in "tz" and "ch".

[Sim]

Oh Andrew,

I'm so glad to see this posting of yours. Specifically, I'm referring to this:

>> Also, the tones 3 and 7 are indistinguishable except in sandhi form.

I've been struggling with this for ages.

[ Background. ] I believe I speak Penang Hokkien natively. Although my mother's dialect is Amoy-like (from Seremban, Malaysia), my father was born and bred in Penang, from a family which has been there for many generations. My mother has a good ear for languages and learnt to speak Penang Hokkien - as far as I can tell- (near-)natively, living with my father and bringing her family up Penang. So, as I grew up (more or less) in Penang, I don't think that any deficiencies in my accent are a result of influences from her non-native Penang Hokkien (though of course they could be).

Now to come to my point.

Try as I may, I haven't been able to distinguish more than 4 tones in my Hokkien. Now, these correspond more or less to the 4 tones that I was taught for Mandarin (in all my futile childhood attempts at Mandarin classes), so undoubtedly this may have some influence on my own perception of my Hokkien tones. Nevertheless, I have basic training in linguistics (specifically 1st year linguistics at university, with a lot more reading afterwards), and I speak English, German, and Dutch quite well (and a smattering of Danish!), so I'm not "linguistically naive".

I have lately begun to suspect that of the 7 tones which Hokkien is said to have:
#) 1 of them is a ru-tone tone anyway, which I would just consider to be one of the other tones, with a consonant at the end.
#) 1 of them has indeed collapsed with another in Penang Hokkien.
#) 1 of them is actually slightly different from the remaining 4, but I don't make the distinction (i.e. am not 100% native speaker competent).

Andrew, this is where you come in .

The whole discussion only makes sense if we pin it down to concrete words. In the next few weeks, I'll try and draw up a list of words, and try and set out the tonal system of my idiolect, and see what you (as a native Penang Hokkien speaker) think of it.

This will take quite a lot of analysing on my part (plus the fact that my Hokkien vocabulary is quite limited, so I can't always get as many contrastive words - e.g. same sound in x different tones - as I would like).

Anyway, I look forward to presenting this all, and hope you will be willing and able to give me a bit of help on it. It would finally clear up the mystery for me of, on the one hand, all the experts saying that Hokkien has 7 tones, and, on the other hand, of my only ever perceiving 4 in my idiolect. [ I once even wrote to a Chinese dialectologist in the US, who confirmed to me that it was (in her opinion) extremely unlikely that Penang Hokkien had undergone such massive tonal collapse that there would be only 4 tones. ]

I'll start a new topic for this, when I get it all together.

Cheers,
Sim.

[%sig%]

[Andrew Yong]

Another feature of Penang Hokkien tones is that what Douglas calls 'enclitics', i.e. words at the end of certain phrases losing their tone, don't really occur in Penang. Maybe this is what people mean when they say Penang Hokkien is very "sing-song". Where my KL relatives would say peh4--khi2-lai5 (pronounced 8 0 0), in Penang it would be peh4 khi2-lai5 (4 1 5).

[Andrew Yong]

> #) 1 of them is a ru-tone tone anyway, which I would just
> consider to be one of the other tones, with a consonant at the
> end.

Well, two of them are ru-sheng tones


> #) 1 of them has indeed collapsed with another in Penang
> Hokkien.

And Douglas says the difference is not well marked in Changchew either, although Casey disputes this.

The Penang tones differ from the Changchew tones in that the ru-sheng tones are conventional. According to Douglas:

"The e-jip or lower fourth tone [8] is the one on which the greatest change takes place. It may be described as almost exactly the e-pia* [5] tone cut short at the end, that is to say, the voice first falls very low and then ends in a sharp abrupt upward jerk, somewhat like the English "What?" pronounced not as a mere interrogation, but with a strongly marked tone of great surprise and astonishment. Occasionally this tone is so pronounced that it is not easily distinguished from the e-pia* [5]."

Glossika.com gives the Amoy and Changchew tones as (in 15 2 37 48 order)

44 24 53 11 33 32 4
44 12 53 21 22 32 12

As you can see in Changchew 3 and 7 are very similar but not identical. But 8 is completely abnormal. This abnormality does not exist in Penang.


> The whole discussion only makes sense if we pin it down to
> concrete words. In the next few weeks, I'll try and draw up a
> list of words, and try and set out the tonal system of my
> idiolect, and see what you (as a native Penang Hokkien speaker)
> think of it.

I'm sure there are other Penangites here whose Hokkien is better. I have never spoken the language to any great extent; I have merely absorbed some of it from my surrounding environment.

The seven tones do exist, and this is clear by their sandhi form. It's just that some sound almost identical.

[Niuc]

Andrew: Did you find any differences on how Penang people say ch & Singaporean ts? Actually I also don't know what's the differences between Pinyin 'z' & 'j', I think 'j' here = 'z' + 'i'/'u'(with two dots above).
Thanks for the info on "enclitics". Last time I found it (e.g. peh4 khi2-lai5 ) a bit unnatural because I was used to the one with neutral tone (e.g. peh4 khi0-lai0).

Casey: Thanks a lot for 'ae'. It seems very practical! You have impressive knowledge on Ciangciu dialect. Btw, if 閨 is kae1 (kE1) in Ciangciu, then what's the hanji for 'ke1 pou5'??

Sim: You are linguistically genius. German seems very difficult to me, and you know more (Dutch, Dansk)!

[%sig%]

[Andrew Yong]

Pinyin j is [tS], where S is like English sh, except with the tongue higher and more forward in the mouth (the passage of air through the mouth being thus more constricted). And obviously without aspiration, otherwise it would be q.

Pinyin z is [ts].

See http://www.wfu.edu/~moran/z_GIF_images/ ... Sounds.gif

In general Penang ch is like pinyin j. Singapore ch is like z.

I don't like ae for E, as makes me think of ei/ay or the IPA symbol for the sound in English 'cat'. I think it is better if single vowel sounds are represented by one letter, and digraphs reserved for diphthongs. As far as I can tell, in Hokkien o, O, e, E, a, i, are single vowel sounds.

Douglas never shows the sandhi form: enclitics are shown by a double hyphen: peh4--khi2-lai5, the words after the -- have the zero tone.

andrew

[Andrew Yong]

Another way of putting it, j = t + x , z = t + s.

x is Wade-Giles hs, the sort of sound dry-nurses make when getting children to pee.


andrew

[Casey]

Hi, Niuc!

Thanks for your kind compliments about my Zhangzhou accent. I just happened to know it a little better because my mother used it. I also admire your Tong'an accent which is distinctively pleasant especially words like "pr1" (to fly) and "ly2" (you) which are quite different from the Xiamen accent. Generally speaking, I find the Quanzhou accent (inclusive of Tong'an accent more musical than Xiamen or Zhangzhou accents.

About Hanzi in "ke1 pou5", I happened to come across, at a friend's place, a dictionary entitled "普通话闽南方言词典" (Putong Hua Minnan Dialect Dictionary) published by "三联书店" (Sanlian Book Store) in October, 1982. The editor group is from "the Han Language Dialect Research Department, Chinese Language and Literature Research Institute, Xiamen University ( 厦门大学中国语言文学研究所汉语方言研究室). This dictionary has a listing of "ke1 pou5" under "家婆” and I quote:
"家婆": 管家婆. 泛指多管闲事或多管闲事的人"
("ke1 pou5": Housekeeper. In a broader sense, it means getting involved in everything or the person who likes to get invovled in everything.)
I am glad that this confirms what I stated before.

Btw, my friend told me that he bought this dictionary in the Sanlian Book Store, Hong Kong Branch some years ago during the 80's. It is quite big in size measuring 27x19x5 cm. On the back cover, the price was stated to be HK$120. The introduction on the cover stated that it contains more than 50,000 listings of Putong Hua and more than 70,000 listings of Minnan dialect.
The listings are in alphabetical order of Hanyu Pinyin. If one wishes to check anything from Minnan dialect, one must use the so-called "15 rhymes" (十五韵) in the index. This I find it very tedious. Another drawback is that it does not have the consonant "j". It does not distinguish the consonant "j" from "l". All the words starting with "j" are listed under "l", e.g., "仁" instead of "jin5" it is pronounced as "lin5", “入" (jip8) as "lip8", etc.
Nevertheless, it is an excellent reference for checking Minnan dialect words and terms and it is more up-to-date compared to those dictionaries published a century or nearly a century ago. Moreover, it is edited by Chinese, not by "Ang-Mohs".