"Busybody" in Hokkien

[yisheng]

According to my grandmother, la3 gia5 has a small body but with very long legs, I'm assuming what she was describing to me is an insect or arachnid known as Daddy-long-legs. ti3 tu1 is used to describe all types of spiders, so I think that is the general term.

Interestingly, in my family, we use lai3 gia5, which I think is a mispronounciation of the term la3 gia5 but that's another point.

yisheng

[Andrew Yong]

Sim: well, it's close enough for distinguishing 3/7.


andrew

[Niuc]

For grasshopper, 'chau2 ni2' is also used but usually we say 'chau2 ni2 kong1 a1', similar to Sim's.

'la3 gia5' (sandhi) indeed is the long legs spider, but usually I just use 'ti1 tu1' for all kind of spider.

We also use the same name i.e. 'thai2 ko1 kam1' for that kind of citrus.

[%sig%]

[Casey]

Andrew

About the sandhi form of tone 8. Wouldn't it be 8->3 with a glottal stop? For example: white colour, be8 sik4 (or bE8 si@k4 in Penang Hokkien) in sandhi form beh3 sik4, or poison, dok8 ioh8 -> dok3 ioh8.

[kaiah]

Hi, Casey
That is real pronounciation(8->3), but 8<->4 is easy to remember.
In Taiwan:
1->7->3->2->1

5->3 (Cuanciu accent) or 7(Ciangciu accent)

Rusheng:
4<->8
real form: 8->3(-h-p-t-k). and 4->2(-h)/4->1(-p-t-k)

tone pitch:
1: 44/55, 2: 53/51, 3: 11, 4: 21/32,
5: 12/24/35, 7: 22/33, 8: 4/5

[%sig%]

[Casey]

Spider:
In my family, "ti1 tu1" is a general term for all spiders. For the larger ones with long thin legs, some with hairy legs, they are called "la7 gia5" (sandhi, interestingly this sandhi form is different from that mentioned by Sim and Yisheng, may be there is a difference between cuan2 ciu1 and ciang1 ciu1 accents as explained by Kaiah. Also i hope some one could up with the Hanzi for this term). As for the smaller ones that can jump, we called them "ho5 sin5 ho2" (fly tiger, it was believed that this small spider was fast enough to jump and catch a fly). There is also another kind of spider, green in colour, which we used to catch in the wild for fighting purpose during our childhood days.

Hi, Kaiah!
Thank you for your explanation regarding the tone changes.

[Andrew Yong]

Kaiah: Interesting; I always took the 4<->8 for granted.

Casey: colour in Penang is sek4, not si@k4.

It is interesting how we have about 5 or 6 individual romanisation systems operating on this forum alone! I assume your bE8 is actually pE8.


andrew

[Casey]

Andrew
Yes, we really have too many individual romanisation systems. I was trying to follow some of the systems used in this forum but actually get confused. Thanks for the correction. So white colour in Penang Hokkien should be written as: pE8 sek4.

[Niuc]

Hi All

Thanks for sharing about tone & sandhi.

In our accent, from my amateur observation (proximity):
tone pitch:
1: 55 , 2: 21 , 3: 11, 4: 21
5: 13 , 7: 22 , 8: 53
0: 1 (neutral)

sandhi:
1 -> 7 -> 3 -> [8/1]
4 -> 8 -> 3
5 -> 3
2 -> a new tone: 25

Anybody with similar pitch here?

[%sig%]

[Casey]

Niuc
Just curious. If both your tone 2 and tone 4 are pronounced as 21 (i.e., the same), how do you differentiate them?