What's the word

[CheeTiong]

Hi,

Can any one help to provide the Hokkien words for soap and soap powder?. In Malaysia, the Hokkien words used are 'sabun' and 'sabun-hun' respectively. I believe there are borrowed from Malay.

Thanks and Regards

CT

[Aurelio]

Hi!

I always thought that sapbun is universal. Douglas (1873) has a word pui5-tso7 "a sort of black soap (v. pui5 肥)". For sap4bun5 he simply writes: "soap", which makes me think that sap4bun5 was the standard 廈門 term in those days already.

Going to the Taiwanese internet dictionary at
http://daiwanway.dynip.com/cgi/tdict.acgi

雪文 [sad/vun]:
soap 香皂

雪文粉 [sad_vunhun]:
soap powder, laundry detergent 肥皂粉,洗衣粉

芳皂 [=pang/zeo]:
bathing soap 香皂

香皂 [=hiong/zeo]:
bathing soap 香皂

OBS: "v" = and "eo" = [o] as opposed to the o-sound in tiger.

廈門方言词典 explains for 雪文: 外來詞, 印尼文 saboen 的音譯. But I think it's ultimately a word of Germanic origin, signifying a mixture of animal fat and ashes used mainly for dying the hair red before going into battle (German Seife, English soap). The Romans borrowed the term as sapo and from there it went around the world (French savon, It. sapone, Sp. jabon). I guess that Malay/ Indonesian has it from the Portuguese Sabao.

Regards,
Aurelio

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