My books
one of the above books www.savefile.com/files/338186
I just bought this book 漳州童谣 $28.00 ，In this book zhangzhou should say 欲 beh not bueh.
www.xmnn.cn/xwzx/bmkx/200610/t20061011_32513.htm
www.xmnn.cn/xwzx/bmkx/200610/t20061011_32513.htm
Does it mean that 'beh'/'bueh' is the 白讀 baidu for 欲 (文讀 wendu is 'iok')? In most of the books I encountered, 'beh'/'bueh' is either not assigned a 漢字 hanzi, or is provisionally assigned 卜 (which, of course, is not the correct 本字 benzi).
Also, my copy of 廈門方言誌 writes 'bo' (don't have) as 毛 (俗讀). Is this correct?
Also, my copy of 廈門方言誌 writes 'bo' (don't have) as 毛 (俗讀). Is this correct?
It should be berh,boh for quanzhou ,beh for xiamen and bueh for zhangzhou but the latest zhangzhou dict say zhangzhou use beh for want ,ect .Bueh is only used for question in zhangzhou.
I had mentioned a few benzi for this which isn't the same for the meanings in 2005 or 2006.I am not interested to repeat it.
I don't think 毛 is correct for bo.I agree with an scholar that 莫 is the benzi。
I had mentioned a few benzi for this which isn't the same for the meanings in 2005 or 2006.I am not interested to repeat it.
I don't think 毛 is correct for bo.I agree with an scholar that 莫 is the benzi。
Re: My books
Andrew posted this in 2006. I came across a copy of this dictionary in a bookshop in Amsterdam Chinatown last weekend. It was only 14 euros, so I bought it. As Andrew says, it's strange (and quite a nuisance) that the entries in the main dictionary are arranged in "rhyme"-order instead of in alphabetical order. I get a sort of time-warp feeling, like: "Don't these people know that there have been massive advances in Chinese lexicography in the course of the whole of the 20th century?!?!".Andrew wrote:2. 林宝卿，《闽南方言与古汉语同源词典》2002 Amoy University Press, 28¥- Chinese (simplified with traditional characters in brackets). Good for finding benzi, and the links between Hokkien and Classical Chinese usages. Not very user-friendly in that it arranges by rhyme instead of alphabetically.
Below, I've written a little bit of a description of this dictionary. Hopefully it will be of interest to other Forum members.
Ordering / Sorting
The syllables (i.e. 字) are listed in sound order (as opposed to radical-stroke order), but the order of the sounds is not the alphabetical one of a,b,c,... Instead, all syllables are first grouped together by "rhyme" (all syllables with "-a-" are grouped together, all syllables with "-o-" are grouped together, all syllables with "-ai-" are grouped together, all syllables with "-an" are grouped together, etc). The order of these rhyme-groups is:
a oo o e i u ao ai ia io iu iao ua uai ue ui m am im iam an in ian uan un ng ang ong ing iang iong a~ oo~ e~ i~ ai~ ia~ iu~ ua~ uai~ ap ip iap at it iat uat ut ak ok ik iak iok ah oh eh ih uh aoh iah ioh iuh uah ueh uih ah~ ih~
Then, within each group, the syllables are ordered by their initial sound, and here again, the order is not alphabetical. The order within each group is:
b- p- bb- d- t- l- z- c- s- g- k- gg- h- 0 (= no initial).
I really find it difficult to use this system for finding anything!
There is an index with the syllables in alphabetical order at the end of the dictionary, but this index is of the Mandarin pronunciation of the characters (in pinyin). So, in the case where one knows the equivalent pronunciation of a character in Mandarin, one can find the entry relatively quickly. It seems to me that it would have been very simple to provide another such index using the Hokkien pronunciations as well, even if one wanted to retain the "rhyme"-order in the dictionary itself. Just providing such an index alone would have made this dictionary considerably more easy to use.
Now some comments on the orthographic system used.
Consonants
The ordering above shows one feature of this dictionary's orthographic system for consonants. For the b-/p-/ph-, -/t-/th-, g-/k-/kh- of POJ, it uses bb-/b-/p-, -/d-/t-, gg-/g-/k- respectively (i.e. this convention parallels pinyin b-/p-, d-/t-, g-/k- for Mandarin).
Similarly for POJ ch-/chh- it uses z-/c- (again, paralleling pinyin for Mandarin). POJ j- seems to have been collapsed with l-, as "入" is written "lip".
Vowels
There are three aspects which stand out in this dictionary's orthographic system for vowels:
1. A nasalized vowel is written using with an n- before the vowel (in a similar way to that of the book "Penang Hokkien Dialect").
e.g. sia~ (= "sound, voice") is written snia
This creates the problem of what to do when a nasalized syllable doesn't have an initial consonant. Writing "n-" before the vowel would make it indistinguishable from a word with a normal initial "n-".
Well, they solve this by writing 'n, with the apostrophe showing that the "n-" is a nasalization, not a real initial "n-".
e.g. iu~ (= "goat, sheep") is written 'niu
2. The vowels generally match the POJ vowels. The major difference is that POJ "au" is written "ao", and, conversely, POJ "oa" is written "ua". (Also, POJ "o•" is written "oo")
The "ao/ua" convention initially struck me as strange. I thought at first that if one is designing yet another orthography for Hokkien (which I don't begrudge them the right to do), why not standardize on either "au/ua" or "ao/oa"? However, on further reflection I realised that "ao" and "ua" again parallel the pinyin convention for Mandarin.
3. As in pinyin, initial i- and u- are written y- and w-.
This means than POJ "i" is written "yi", and POJ "u" is written as "wu"; "in" is written "yin", and POJ "un" is written as "wun"; etc. Personally, I find this very ugly and quite unnecessary for Hokkien, but perhaps it's easier and more natural for people familiar with pinyin.
Tone
The principle is very similar to POJ, with diacritics to indicate the tones. A slightly larger set of diacritics is used, but where they are similar to POJ diacritics, they have different values (i.e. represent different tones and tone-contours).
One principle difference is that this dictionary has a diacritic for 陽上 (tone-6), whereas POJ doesn't because it is considered to be merged with 陰上. I can imagine that it could be useful to recognize and mark tone-6, for Hokkien variants where this tone is distinct.
Another small difference is that this dictionary marks all tones (i.e. every tone has a diacritic), unlike POJ, which leaves tone-1 and tone-4 unmarked. I can imagine that this is useful in the sense that neutral tones can then be unmarked.
Coverage
I haven't used this dictionary much yet, but my initial impression is that the coverage is much smaller than Douglas. For example (ignoring tone) Douglas has 17 different entries for "ban", whereas this dictionary has 2 for "bban" (the same syllable). Another example: Douglas has 21 different entries for "siuN", whereas this dictionary has 3. Similarly, Douglas has 6 entries for "iok", whereas this dictionary has none. To be fair, Douglas is a 600+ page dictionary, and this one a 450+ page one, and the size of each page is only slightly larger than 1/2 of that of Douglas, so it's simply a much smaller dictionary.
One other point is that - as far as I know - some people in Taiwan who regularly write Hokkien in characters resort to Roman letters for a significant portion of the vocabulary (i.e. for the syllables which have no Chinese character equivalent, or for which the Chinese character equivalent is not well standardized). I think I've seen estimates of this proportion as anything from 2% to 10% (depending on the type of text, and how one counts too, of course - i.e. whether one counts only distinct morphemes per text, or one counts the repetitions - each time a morpheme occurs). My point here is that in this dictionary, every entry corresponds to a Chinese character, so I presume this dictionary doesn't cover that 2%-10% of the Hokkien vocabulary.
Appendices
There are a number of interesting appendices. There's an appendix giving many (small) tables which show comparisons of the sound-correspondences between the usage in 廈門, 漳州, and 泉州. There's an appendix with a (small) table of words borrowed from English, and a (small) table of words borrowed from Malay. Finally, there's an appendix giving a (small) table with literary and colloquial readings of characters.
Summary
Despite a number of unfamiliar aspects, I'm very pleased to have such a dictionary, and look forward to using it in the future. As the examples and explanations are in Chinese characters (which I am unable to read), I'll be using it primarily to find out how to write syllables which I already know as spoken words, rather than as a method of finding out the meaning of syllables I don't know.
-
Andrew
Re: My books
I am currently in Penang, and have been given a book written by an Angmo' living in Jesselton Heights: Luc de Gijzel, English-Penang Hokkien Pocket dictionary / Eng-kok-ua - Pinang-su Hok-kien-ua chhiu ji-tien (George Town: Areca Books, 2009) ISBN 978-983-44646-0-8.
The dictionary is about 200pp. and is written in Peh-Oe-Ji. There is an introduction at the beginning explaining Penang Hokkien, the romanisation and the tones, and at the back there is a very brief phrase book. Unfortunately, however, the dictionary does not have any indication of the tones of words. This means that the dictionary is useful when you are trying to remember a word or phrase you might already know, but very little use if you have no other way of finding out how to pronounce it.
The dictionary is fairly comprehensive and well-organised. E.g.:
light (fire) hoe
(in weight) khin
(in colour) chhien
>to switch on the light > khui hoe
to light (ignite) tiam
lighter phah-hoe-ki
lightning sih-na
The dictionary is about 200pp. and is written in Peh-Oe-Ji. There is an introduction at the beginning explaining Penang Hokkien, the romanisation and the tones, and at the back there is a very brief phrase book. Unfortunately, however, the dictionary does not have any indication of the tones of words. This means that the dictionary is useful when you are trying to remember a word or phrase you might already know, but very little use if you have no other way of finding out how to pronounce it.
The dictionary is fairly comprehensive and well-organised. E.g.:
light (fire) hoe
(in weight) khin
(in colour) chhien
>to switch on the light > khui hoe
to light (ignite) tiam
lighter phah-hoe-ki
lightning sih-na
Re: My books
Wow, great. Thanks for sharing that with us.
I'll see if it's buyable on the net.
I'll see if it's buyable on the net.
Re: My books
Here's a brief description of the background to the book.
http://www.arecabooks.com/webpages/books17b.html
http://www.arecabooks.com/webpages/books17b.html