龍????

[aokh1979]

Yes, that's correct. I meant Tiong Guan, which is the North Region. People migrated from there to Tsuan Tsiu. I know Baiyue or Guyue lived in Min region long time ago, some of them around Tsuan Tsiu area, not so much 2000 years ago but during Tang Dynasty, if I remember correctly.

I heard about Tsiang Tsiu and Tio Tsiu's connection from some old people here. Frankly, I don't think there's any "pure" or "mixed" Han, it's really hard to identify and we don't really care. Do we ? My ancestor's from Hok Tsiu, I think I have Baiyue or Guyue blood in my body. Ha. Ha.

I heard from someone from a forum before, that the "peak" of Best Hokkien is the mastery of both Xiamen and Tsiang Tsiu variant, you basically can understand every other variant if you manage to speak the 2 variants well. I have colleagues from Tsiang Tsiu who actually talk just like a Xiamen local when he chats with Xiamen people. Then on the phone when they talk to family, you can hear very obvious Tsiang Tsiu words and pronunciations.....

[SimL]

Hi Sim & Hohomi

Personally I don't think it is Teochew influence, i.e. those Hokkien words were "king, sing, hing" then due to the influence became "keng, seng, heng" in Penang variant. ...

Hi niuc,

Yes, thanks for focussing my thoughts clearly on this topic. When a set of words rhyme in one variant and the same set rhyme in another variant, but with a different rhyme, then this is generally an indication that they all started with the same rhyme, and one dialect (or both) shifted the vowel. Borrowed words stand out because they don't fit this pattern.

[hohomi]

actually talk just like a Xiamen local when he chats with Xiamen people

I can do that, too.

Xiamenese is the easiest to learn in all the variants.
Unlike Zhangzhouese who like to learn Xiamenese(I heard that they used Xiamenese on some of their broadcast), Quanzhouese are proud of their own variant.
Quanzhouese consider their own variant as the "standard". Instead of learning to speak just like Xiamen local, they talk to Xiamen local in Quanzhouese.

[SimL]

Instead of learning to speak just like Xiamen local, they talk to Xiamen local in Quanzhouese.

This can work quite well. My Penang Hokkien paternal relatives and my more Amoy-like maternal relatives always spoke their own variant when meeting one another. It was quite amusing to listen to. Up to the 1990's, it was quite normal for Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians to just speak their own language when meeting up with any of the other two. THAT was very interesting to listen to. Sadly, this practice seems to have died away, because nowadays most Scandinavians speak English very well, and (as far as I can tell), they prefer to speak to one another in English, where there are fewer misunderstandings from "false friends" (like "rolig" meaning "quiet" in Danish, but "exciting" in Swedish (or something like that, my Scandinavian languages are a bit rusty!)).

On a related note, do any of the older members of this Forum know the TV comedy series which used to be broadcast in Malaysia in the 1960's and 70's? I think the name in Hokkien was 汝苦無我苦 "li khO bo gua khO" (would that be: "you have a hard time, not me"?). It was an amusing series because it featured 4 friends, each speaking his own dialect. I suppose that must have been Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and one other.

[hohomi]

Tsuan Tsiu is on the north. Tsiang Tsiu at the middle, cross the border towards south, it will be Tio Tsiu. If I understand correctly, 1st batch of Han people went from Tiong Guan (Zhong Yuan) to Tsuan Tsiu, inter-marriage with many local ethnic groups. Then the 2nd batch went to Tsiang Tsiu.

Tsiang-Tsiu was the last to be established. That was because there were barbarians living in the area between Tsuan-Tsiu and Tio-Tsiu. The central government sent an army from Henan(河南) to supress the barbarian "rebel". After that, the central government decided to set up a Tsiu(州) there.

There are still many connections between tsuan-tsiu variant and Teochew. For example:
風 has a vernacular reading "huang" that can be found in tsuan-tsiu and tio-tsiu.
猪、箸、汝、去、师、处、除 have a "ɯ" final in Quanzhouese and Teochew.
卵、算、光、软 have "ng" final in Quanzhouese and Teochew.
These similarities are not shared by Zhangzhou.

[xng]

On a related note, do any of the older members of this Forum know the TV comedy series which used to be broadcast in Malaysia in the 1960's and 70's? I think the name in Hokkien was 汝苦無我苦 "li khO bo gua khO" (would that be: "you have a hard time, not me"?). It was an amusing series because it featured 4 friends, each speaking his own dialect. I suppose that must have been Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, and one other.

It is named '4 friends' or 'Empat sekawan'.

Mandarin is NOT the mother tongue of any malaysians/singaporeans at that time so mandarin was left out.
Let me remember the dialect and the actors.

1. Lai Ming - Hakka
2. petite lady - Cantonese
3. dead man - Hokkien
4. another man - Kwong Sai. (which is Ping language)

TV series is different from real life. If you ask a HK guy to listen to hokkien, they will say 'what are you saying'. I used to have many HK friends.

[aokh1979]

This is great info ! I have been looking for the same thing. I remember my grandmother always said Li Khoo Bo Wa Khoo. I never got to watch it, I was born in 1979. Do you know where can we download or buy it ? I tried Youtube but nothing.

[xng]

There are still many connections between tsuan-tsiu variant and Teochew. For example:
風 has a vernacular reading "huang" that can be found in tsuan-tsiu and tio-tsiu.
猪、箸、汝、去、师、处、除 have a "ɯ" final in Quanzhouese and Teochew.
卵、算、光、软 have "ng" final in Quanzhouese and Teochew.
These similarities are not shared by Zhangzhou.

I always thought that teociu is closer to cuanciu but aokh said its the other way around.

what about chicken, small etc ? i think its the same as cuanciu ie. Kue, Sue ?

[xng]

This is great info ! I have been looking for the same thing. I remember my grandmother always said Li Khoo Bo Wa Khoo. I never got to watch it, I was born in 1979. Do you know where can we download or buy it ? I tried Youtube but nothing.

That was like 40 years ago during the time that VCD was not even invented, so nobody recorded them and upload.

No, you can't buy it in commercial places but if you go to RTM, maybe you can copy it from their archives. RTM has copyright to it.

I think the 4 main dialects at that time were hokkien, hakka, cantonese and gwongsai.

gwongsai is quite rare in Malaysia but it sounds like 'crooked cantonese' to me. It actually belongs to Ping language.

[SimL]

It is named '4 friends' or 'Empat sekawan'.

Thanks for supplying this, and the additional information about which "dialects" were used. I was in my early teens at the time, and didn't speak any of the other languages, so I never really watched it, but my non-Penang Hokkien grandparents would watch it on TV whenever they stayed with us, which is how I knew about it.

Wow! How much the world has changed: that there could have been such a program and Mandarin wasn't even included as one of the variant languages!