Hokkien word for 'one'

[niuc]

Hi Mark

May be just your typo, but 'cit8' ("tsit8" = one) is different from 'jit8' (sun). Initial 'c-' is like 'z-' in Mandarin pinyin, while 'j-' is like 'j-' in English "jam". Initial 'j-' is often read as 'd-' or 'l-' in many variants (including mine).

Strictly speaking "it ji sam sy ngo` liok chit pat kiu sip" is not the ordinal but literary reading of "it ji sa* si go` lak chit pue kau cap". From "sa*/sam" to "cap/sip" can be both ordinal and cardinal. By itself (not in combination), "it, ji" are used as ordinal and "cit, nng" as cardinal.

However, "it, ji" can be used at the end of cardinal:
e.g. 222 間厝 "nng pa ji cap ji king chu"
or this exception: 20 "ji cap" never "nng cap" but two tens is "nng e cap" not "ji e cap"
"te7-ji7-e5-cap8" = the second ten, but "te7-ji7-e5 cap8" (e5 in standing tone) = the second is ten (="te7-ji7-e5 si7-cap8")
200/2000/20000... "nng pa/ching/ban..." never "ji pa/ching/ban..."

In this strict sense, "it & ji" have same literary and colloquial reading. I am not sure if "cit" is replaced with "it" in literary reading for cardinal, but in spoken Hokkien it is not. The literary reading for "nng7" is "liong2".

My variant does keep both literary and colloquial readings of number. However, we always recite telephone numbers in colloquial. Literary set is used in combination as the examples you mentioned, here are some more:
兩岸 liong2-gan7
三藏 sam1-cong7 (from 西遊記)
四物 sy3-but8, 六味 liok8-bi7, 八珍 pat8-tin1, 十全 sip8-cuan5 (tonic)

[xng]

xng,

To clarify: The cit you are referring to as a contraction of 之一 is the Hokkien word for the demonstrative particle 'this'. I am referring to the character for the cardinal number 'one'. Besides, both cit 'this' and cit 'one' have different tones - the former is high-flat, and the latter is low-flat. Try saying cit-ciak-gu 'this cow' and cit-ciak-gu 'a cow', and you'll see what I mean.

I've been rethinking about what you said.

Maybe I am confused about the Cit, I always thought they are the same, but you're pointing out that they are different characters because they are of different tones and usage. I must admit min language is quite confusing, this needs more research.

I think for the meaning of 'this', 之一 is undisputable for 'Cit'.

[xng]

7. 'He is eating rice'. Mandarin 他在吃飯, Cantonese 渠食緊飯, Hokkien 伊佇食飯. As simple as a four-word sentence can possibly get - yet across the three dialects under consideration, you have three different 3rd person pronouns (他, 渠, 伊) and three different temporal particles (在, 緊, 佇). And none of them correspond to the Classical Chinese lexicon (Classical Chinese does not have a specific word for the 3rd person pronoun, but has quite a variety for the 1st and 2nd).

The original character for 渠 is 其 (maybe I should start a cantonese benzi thread ) which means 'his, her, its, their; that'

The vowel has changed slightly and so do the tone but it is still recognisable because the sounds are close to each other. It is just like 來 'Lei' has changed to 'Lai' in HK cantonese.

I used to listen to Sam Hui song, his lyrics has 伊, it is used in classical chinese to mean 'He/She'.

[Mark Yong]

I agree that 渠 is quite likely derived from 其. The Hakka dialect seems to retain the closest pronunciation to 其, i.e. k'i.

That said, the following references cite specifically that 渠 has been used as the 3rd person subject pronoun, dating back quite a few centuries.
1. 《集韻•魚韻》: "𠍲,吳人呼彼稱, 通作渠" (for those whose PC's cannot display the character, it is 亻+渠).
2. 《新方言•釋詞》: "今吳楚皆謂彼曰渠."
3. 《寶山縣志》: "俗呼他人曰渠."

[xng]

I agree that 渠 is quite likely derived from 其. The Hakka dialect seems to retain the closest pronunciation to 其, i.e. k'i.

That said, the following references cite specifically that 渠 has been used as the 3rd person subject pronoun, dating back quite a few centuries.
2. 《新方言•釋詞》: "今吳楚皆謂彼曰渠."
3. 《寶山縣志》: "俗呼他人曰渠."

From my understanding of these classical chinese words, 吳楚 means the ancient kingdom of Wu and Chu uses 'he/she' as 渠 because they can't find the original or suitable character for it. The character 渠 was borrowed for its sound and NOT the meaning when I looked at no. 2 and 3. above. In ancient china, I doubt they can write latin characters eg. K'ui.

The modern dictionary shows 渠 as having the meaning "ditch, canal, channel, gutter". Let us look at the ancient meaning ,this character has the radical water also points out that it has something to do with water and also another character wood. So wood to drain water ? therefore, referring to a gutter. So the ancient and modern meaning matches.

Furthermore, the ideogram doesn't have anything that can point to a 'person' radical like 他 or 倚 which can refer to a third person. We must thank god that chinese characters have a meaning by looking at the individual components of the character.

其 is more logical as in 其他 (the meaning is exact although the vowel has changed slightly). If 其 isn't the original character, then it is most likely non sinitic.

[Mark Yong]

xng,

Agreed, and I think it is pretty clear and few dispute that 渠 is a 假借字 borrowed character. What I meant was that the citations show that this (like many Chinese characters) has been a borrowed character for quite a long time.

(By the way, when I first submitted the citations, I made a mistake with two characters in citation #1, which I have corrected in my own post. Appreciate it if you can do the same in your extract (believe you quoted it before I made the correction), to avoid confusion among the readers. Thanks.)

[SimL]

Strictly speaking "it ji sam sy ngo` liok chit pat kiu sip" is not the ordinal but literary reading of "it ji sa* si go` lak chit pue kau cap". From "sa*/sam" to "cap/sip" can be both ordinal and cardinal. By itself (not in combination), "it, ji" are used as ordinal and "cit, nng" as cardinal.

Hi Niuc,

I agree with you. The issue of literary vs colloquial reading of the characters for the numbers is a separate issue from the issue of the cardinal vs ordinal ("cit" vs "it" and "nO" vs "ji") distinction. You have explained the two issues well in the quote above.

Looking back at all the contributions to this thread since 2003, it would seem that yet a third issue is what characters to use to write "cit"/"it" and "nO"/"ji". I'm not sure if any definitive conclusion was arrived at about "cit" vs "it". From the phonetic resemblance of Hokkien "it" to Mandarin "yi", Cantonese "yat", I imagine that "it" is 一, and I suppose people are still arguing about the best character for "cit". There seems to be more agreement about 兩 for "nO"/"nng" and 二 for "ji". Have I understood this correctly?

When I was young, my elders told me that there are simply two different ways to count in Hokkien: "cit, nO, saN, si, ..." and "it, ji, saN, si, ...". Nobody bothered to explain that one was cardinals and the other was ordinals. But the rule (as explained to me) was clear: "If you start with 'cit', then you have to say 'nO', and if you start with 'it', then you have to say 'ji'. It was only in my mid-20's that I understood the underlying reason; namely exactly as you explained it: the first is the cardinal series, and the second is the ordinal.

Sim.

P.S. I've always felt a bit "awkward" about calling these the "cardinal" and "ordinal" series, because they only differ in the first two numbers! Perhaps there should just be a single series of counting numbers, with two exceptional ordinals for the first two numbers. Otherwise, we could say that Mandarin has two series too, the "cardinal" yi, liang, san, si, ... and the "ordinal" yi, er, san, si, ..., which seems a bit of an odd way of putting it, if you see what I mean. Also, one would then have to tell people that Mandarin, unlike many other languages, counts (=recites numbers aloud) using the ordinal series... I think it's simpler just to say that Mandarin has the counting series "yi, er, san, si, ...", with a special ordinal "liang" for two (with a similar argument for Hokkien numbers).

[SimL]

Oh, I got side-tracked from my initial reason for posting to this thread!

The subject of the literary vs colloquial pronunciation of the numbers has always interested me. I'm preparing quite a major posting on it, but it still has to be double-checked this weekend. I'll post it on Monday. WATCH THIS SPACE.

[Ah-bin]

Those numbers Sim's parents taught him are still used in Taiwan and Amoy when giving telephone numbers, as far as I know.

Some more proof that literary readings have nothing to do with "ordinal" numbers is the title Sam Kok (三國), that is definitely "three" nothing to do with "third"

It is quite common for Taiwanese to think that 二 is read nO, and they don't necessarily associate it with 兩 I think this is because children were taught to count "it, nO, saN" (一,兩,三) instead of "yi, er, san" or "yat, i, saam" (一,二,三) as in Mandarin and Cantonese.

This also reminds me of a sign in Taiwan on a street corner in Ko-hiong 高雄

B2-------Chewing Gum Made in Taiwan---------B2

The B2 was a little pun on bin-nng (betel nuts)! Apparently it was too cryptic for betel nut fans and they changed the name two months later.

[niuc]

Hi Sim

But the rule (as explained to me) was clear: "If you start with 'cit', then you have to say 'nO', and if you start with 'it', then you have to say 'ji'. It was only in my mid-20's that I understood the underlying reason; namely exactly as you explained it: the first is the cardinal series, and the second is the ordinal.

Yes, I also didn't realize about this as a child. It just felt not right to say 'nng7-tiam2-pua*3' for half past two (二點半 'ji7-tiam2-pua*3'; interestingly it indeed is 兩點半 "liang2 dian3 ban4" in Mandarin) or 'te7-nng7-e5' for the second one (第二个 'te7-ji7-e5') or 'ji7-tiam2-cing1' for two hours ('nng7-tiam2-cing1' 兩點鐘). Only when I learned English then I knew the terms "Ordinal" & "Cardinal". Although Indonesian does have both (satu, dua, tiga, empat, lima ... & pertama, kedua, ketiga, keempat, kelima ...), in fact until now I don't know the proper terms for "Ordinal" & "Cardinal" in Bahasa Indonesia.

Perhaps there should just be a single series of counting numbers, with two exceptional ordinals for the first two numbers. Otherwise, we could say that Mandarin has two series too, the "cardinal" yi, liang, san, si, ... and the "ordinal" yi, er, san, si, ..., which seems a bit of an odd way of putting it, if you see what I mean. Also, one would then have to tell people that Mandarin, unlike many other languages, counts (=recites numbers aloud) using the ordinal series... I think it's simpler just to say that Mandarin has the counting series "yi, er, san, si, ...", with a special ordinal "liang" for two (with a similar argument for Hokkien numbers).

Agree. Although mostly paralel, it seems that in certain cases (e.g. 2 o'clock) Mandarin usage is different from Hokkien.

The subject of the literary vs colloquial pronunciation of the numbers has always interested me. I'm preparing quite a major posting on it, but it still has to be double-checked this weekend. I'll post it on Monday. WATCH THIS SPACE.

Looking forward to that!

It is quite common for Taiwanese to think that 二 is read nO, and they don't necessarily associate it with 兩 I think this is because children were taught to count "it, nO, saN" (一,兩,三) instead of "yi, er, san" or "yat, i, saam" (一,二,三) as in Mandarin and Cantonese.

Hi Ah-bin, it is interesting that in Taiwan children were taught that way. It is considered incorrect in my variant. I wonder if any other variants also count that way.