Benzi/Original character

[SimL]

Xng: my usage of "han7" might be just plain wrong (as in, only used by me or my family), so I won't make any comments about it until I've asked a few other Penang Hokkien speakers who are not relatives. The fact that Mark and Andrew don't recognize it, and you never heard it in one year of living in Penang, makes it extremely suspicious.

character enthusiast/fanatic: thank you for your explanations from Jiyun . I can't even read modern Chinese, let alone classical, so I'm very grateful that someone on this Forum can, and takes the trouble to read and think about the issues . Great explanation, and very nice to know that it explicitly glosses this as paddy field.

[niuc]

Thanks to all for the information. Not to be stubborn , but just to highlight that 莆田 (Putian city) is pronounced as 'pho`5-chan5' in Hokkien. So even if 田 is not the correct character for 'chan5', it is commonly accepted as a (not the) proper hanji for 'chan5'.

[xng]

of deciphering 伊人 for i-lang/in (contracted) as the 3rd person pronoun, rather than a local contraction such as 亻+因 or something.

True ! Many people were baffled by 'Bay', 'In', 'Gun', 'Siang' etc, until they realise they are actually contractions and NOT foreign words.

It is silly to invent a character just for these because after a few centuries, people forgot the original characters.

Eg. Taiwanese has forgotten that 'Siang' is the original pronounciation and now they speak a corrupted version ie. 'Kang' instead of 'Sio Tang'.

[Mark Yong]

xng wrote:
Eg. Taiwanese has forgotten that 'Siang' is the original pronounciation and not they speak a corrupted version ie. 'Kang' instead of 'Sio Tang'.

To clarify: Do you mean that siang is a contraction of 相同 sio-tang (now commonly written with 相 on top of 同)?

(BTW, the 'post' by kuppan that you quoted is actually spam. It was copied from my earlier post on this thread.)

[SimL]

(BTW, the 'post' by kuppan that you quoted is actually spam. It was copied from my earlier post on this thread.)

Yes, this spammer uses this trick quite often. Perhaps it's quite an effective technique, as it isn't immediately obvious that it's spam. I find it rather irritating, to see my own words used as if he has said them. This is the second time in the recent past that someone has responded to "his" posting. Oh well, I suppose the advantage is that some topics keep getting revived, if they've been idle for a while .

[SimL]

I've never heard of 'Han' in Taiwan or Msia/Singapore hokkien. The proper minnan word is 'Pik'.

I asked my parents about this. Apparently, "han7" is not Penang Hokkien at all. My father knows and uses this word, but thinks he may have learnt it from my mother. She says her Amoy-speaking relatives use "han7" quite normally for "to force". However, when I asked them about "pik", they both also knew it very well, even if they didn't use it actively. In Penang Hokkien, it's "pek4", and in Amoy Hokkien it's "piək4".

[xng]

To clarify: Do you mean that siang is a contraction of 相同 sio-tang (now commonly written with 相 on top of 同)?

Wasn't this already in the list on the first post ? Why ? Do you have any arguments on this ?

It seems that even the taiwanese doesn't know the original characters and they pronounce it as 'Kang' whereas Msian/Singaporean preserved the pronounciation as 'Siang'.

So this is a very good example that the consonant can change from the original consonant.

Another contraction that I heard is a contraction of 'Sia Lang' 口舍人 'Siang' (who). Is this common in all dialects or some dialects only ?

[xng]

In Penang Hokkien, it's "pek4", and in Amoy Hokkien it's "piək4".

There will always be minor differences in the vowel between the different dialects. No need to be so exact here.

On to another topic.

The age of the various languages are as follows:

Min (Old man) -> Cantonese (Middle age man) -> Mandarin (Young man)

Thus, Min and Cantonese has much in common eg. Mm (Not), C'ui (Mouth) (debatable by some people) which are not commonly used in mandarin anymore.

The list in the first post are those characters that are not even used or NOT obvious in Cantonese anymore.

[SimL]

There will always be minor differences in the vowel between the different dialects. No need to be so exact here.

Oh, so sorry to have gone beyond the bounds of what you consider to be significant detail.

[xng]

6. Another favourite of mine from Minnan: Man and woman. 男 and 女. Again, two very basic words. And still you end up with the di-syllabic compounds ta-pO and cha-bO. One is supposedly a highly-convoluted pronunciation of 丈夫 and the other cannot even be correctly written using Chinese characters (in my more linguistically-naive days, I postulated 少婦, but quickly rescinded it).

I haven't really found any suitable character for Ta Po and Ca Boh as you can see it is missing from my list. There's no way that Ta Po is 丈夫 as the sounds are too far away. These words could be the ancient Minyue words.

As for the Bo in 'Ca Bo', it is highly likely (though I'm not sure) that it is the same character as wife which in ancient chinese means old woman. Since Boh has the same sound and tone as wife.(correct me if I am wrong) See my first post.