Hong-hiam 風險

[SimL]

wa suka chiah liu-lian, bo suka chiah iu-a!

ROTFL!!!

[SimL]

Wow, of course I knew that "manek" was borrowed from Malay, but I never realised that it wouldn't be familiar to non-Penang Hokkien speakers (shows my ignorance!). What is the original Hokkien word for "bead"?

[niuc]

On a slightly different question "Hanji" 漢字 for "Chinese characters" I know is used in Taiwan and Amoy nowadays, where it has replaced an older "Tiong-kok-ji" 中國字, but isn't the generally used Hokkien word in Malaysia "Tng-lang-ji" 唐人字 - or does no-one say that any more?

Thanks! This reminds me of the most natural and original way to say it in my variant i.e. "Tng-lang-ji" 唐人字

siang-ka wa suka chiah liu-lian, bo suka chiah iu-a!

What is "iu-a" here? Is it pomelo 柚?

Wow, of course I knew that "manek" was borrowed from Malay, but I never realised that it wouldn't be familiar to non-Penang Hokkien speakers (shows my ignorance!). What is the original Hokkien word for "bead"?

I know "manek" because it is "manik" in Indonesian, but it is true that many non-Penang Hokkien speakers do not understand that term. In my variant it is 'cu1' 珠.

[Ah-bin]

What is "iu-a" here? Is it pomelo 柚?

Indeed it is. The first word I learnt for it in Hokkien was actually nui-a 卵仔 (just using the first character phonetically) which is the ordinary Chiang-chiu way to say it. The first time I ate one of these was in the campus of Amoy university, and a friend of a friend of a mine (who happened to be from Chiang-chiu) brought one along and showed me how to eat it.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Sim,

As always, a highly insightful reply from you. Apologies for the delay in response, as I figured such a well thought-out response deserves something better than just a quick reply.

I agree with you to quite a large extent that I am a prescriptivist, in the sense that I strive very hard to 'pull' Penang Hokkien as far back as possible to its Sinitic roots. But in that sense, I would not be a pure prescriptivist, because equally, I respect that Penang Hokkien is not 100% 漳州 Chiang Chiu, but has minor intrusions of 廈門 Amoy, 泉州[/size] Chuan Chiu and Malay. And I would not expect Penang Hokkien speakers to force themselves into an artificial language environment of emulating the 漳州 Chiang Chiu, because then there would be no difference between Penang Hokkien and 漳州 Chiang Chiu.

Admittedly, my stance in adopting Chinese characters as a basis for writing in Hokkien is a knee-jerk reaction to having come across far too many younger-generation Penangites who have lapsed into that mindset that the Hokkien dialect is totally in-congruent with written Chinese. True, the nature of the Minnan dialect is that there will be a significant number of words where it is just not possible to write using hanji, and this I have slowly come to accept. But where possible, the prescriptivist side of me tries to remind others that despite the glaring differences in lexicon and grammar, Hokkien is Sinitically not so far away from its Mandarin and Cantonese cousins, and that we still share common words like 風險 hong-hiam / fung-heem / feng-xian (I have taken this 'spirit of hanji brotherliness' even to the extent of actively seeking out lexical parallels with Japanese and Korean!).

I have little issue with Penang Hokkien speakers saying batu, jari or tapi - as long as they also remember that the actual Hokkien equivalents chiok-th'au 石頭, ch'iu-chai 手指 and tan-si 但是 exist, especially when speaking to counterparts from Xiamen, Taiwan, etc. (by the same token, it would be improper for an Englishman to lapse from universal Queen's English into Cockney when speaking to an American). You may recall in a previous post, I expressed my annoyance at how some young Penangites today tend to say jit-pair instead of jit-siang 一雙 - which I deem as injudicious substitution.

xng just started a new thread, proposing the standardisation of the Minnan dialect, preferably to the Amoy variant. While I acknowledge the merits of standardisation as a means of simplifying the codification of the language, I have to say that quite frankly, I am not in favour of it. The reason being, it is the Minnan dialect group's highly-differentiated nature that gives it so much colour.

If it were just a matter of pronunciation (e.g. 短 te/ter/tue, 轉 tng/tuiN), I may begrudgingly agree to standardisation (but even then, I still feel that differences in pronunciation can be managed, as exemplified by today's Minnan dictionaries providing the various pronunciations for words). But it does not stop there! You will find unique terminologies here and there that are characteristic of one sub-dialect of Minnan, but not the other. I would not expect a native Chiang Chiu speaker to switch from nor-tau 兩搗 to nng-pai 兩擺 in the name of standardisation, just because the more prestigious 廈門 Amoy dialect uses it.

If one wants to go down the road of absolute standardisation, then I feel that the concept of dialect preservation (which is what this Forum stands for) becomes somewhat of a moot point, because then, we may as well go the whole hog a'la Lee Kuan Yew, and abolish all other dialects in favour of the Mandarin standard. Now, I realise that what xng is calling for is standardisation only within the ring-fence of the Minnan dialect group. I suppose this is a matter of where each individual's comfort level is. For me, I would - it I had to define my comfort level - choose to retain the distinction between the three major sub-dialects 廈門 Amoy, 漳州 Chiang Chiu and 泉州 Chuan Chiu, and will tolerate standardisation within those groups (which is what the dictionaries tend to do). I respect, and even appreciate how - over the centuries - even the Minnan dialect has diverged and differentiated within itself, and I would be sad to see that variety go away in the name of an artificially-imposed standardisation process. I guess that makes me a descriptivist of sorts, huh?

I'll write more as I gather more thoughts and steam.

[Andrew]

Wow, of course I knew that "manek" was borrowed from Malay, but I never realised that it wouldn't be familiar to non-Penang Hokkien speakers (shows my ignorance!). What is the original Hokkien word for "bead"?

I used it as an example, because the manek-e5 is a typical piece of Baba/Nyonya traditional culture ...

[Andrew]

What is "iu-a" here? Is it pomelo 柚?

Indeed it is. The first word I learnt for it in Hokkien was actually nui-a 卵仔 (just using the first character phonetically) which is the ordinary Chiang-chiu way to say it. The first time I ate one of these was in the campus of Amoy university, and a friend of a friend of a mine (who happened to be from Chiang-chiu) brought one along and showed me how to eat it.

I have always heard it as i-wa, but iu-a makes more sense.

[Andrew]

On a slightly different question "Hanji" 漢字 for "Chinese characters" I know is used in Taiwan and Amoy nowadays, where it has replaced an older "Tiong-kok-ji" 中國字, but isn't the generally used Hokkien word in Malaysia "Tng-lang-ji" 唐人字 - or does no-one say that any more?

I am feeling in a prescriptive mood this morning so on little more than pure gut instinct I'm going to accuse "hanji" of being a Mandarinism!

For me it is more a Japanicism/Koreanicism from kanji/hanja as opposed to kana/hangul/peh-oe-ji - in Chinese it would just be 字. Hokkien did use 漢文 to refer to the reading of literary Chinese in 讀書音.

[SimL]

What is "iu-a" here? Is it pomelo 柚?

Indeed it is. The first word I learnt for it in Hokkien was actually nui-a 卵仔 (just using the first character phonetically) which is the ordinary Chiang-chiu way to say it. The first time I ate one of these was in the campus of Amoy university, and a friend of a friend of a mine (who happened to be from Chiang-chiu) brought one along and showed me how to eat it.

I have always heard it as i-wa, but iu-a makes more sense.

Haha! I had a very similar experience. Until about 1-2 years ago, I always thought that a candle was a "che-ga" (without ever bothering to think about what the two syllables might have meant). It was quite a revelation to realise that it's "chek-a" (when I started learning Mandarin as an adult, and learnt the character 烛). Even further back, I remember as a 12 or 13 year old suddenly realising one day that the corner provision shop was a "chhai-tiam-a", and not a "chhai-tia-ma"!

[Andrew]

Manek si ha-mih i-su a?

I would say "... ha-mih mih-kia*?" or "... ha-mih lai?" rather than "ha-mih su?"