Hokkien in the Bisayas (Philippines Hokkien)

[amhoanna]

Kinnájịt tữ Iloilo. Stepped into a general store to buy toilet paper.

Now moments earlier I'd gone into several other stores on the same street to buy a nail clipper / cutter. Apparently English has not embedded itself as deeply in Iloilo as it has on Luzon. I had trouble making myself understood, but, in one store, I heard the thâuke·niû say to her daughter something like, "Oh, zhijiajian" (指甲剪, Mandarin).

So in this other store, I went inside and found a very Tnglang-looking lady behind the counter. It's not just in the physical traits -- it's in the facial expression. I asked her, "Lín kám ũ te' boẹ oẹsengcoá?" She didn't understand me, so I said, "Toilet paper." She still didn't understand me, but she said, "Boẹ saⁿ'?" Now I knew I was dealing with a Hoklophone. I tried other ways to say what I was looking for. When she asked me if I was looking for 電綫 tiạnsoàⁿ, with a high-falling "soàⁿ", I realized it was a tone thing. Then I said I needed coá, with a high-level tone, and she asked me if I needed soacoá (SANDPAPER). I said I needed oẹsengcoá with the high-level coá. Her pronunciation was more like oẹsngcoá. They didn't carry that, but it was an interesting dialog, so I thanked her.

It seems that although "Hokkiens" came to these islands came from all over Bảnlảm, the Hoklo spoken here has evolved into one main stream, much like what's gone on in Taiwan. Here the mainstream is an Amoy / Cìnkang-type dialect.

The commercial center of Iloilo is a mix of general stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, auto-related shops, drugstores, pawn shops, money wiring spots, and chain eateries. "Country town" meets the poverty economy.

[siamiwako]

Head back to that shop tomorrow and say "di wu de boe c'e so coa bo?"

c'e so coa = 廁所紙

We hardly say 衛生紙. Wei seng = sanitation (eg 驚死人，正無衛生=kia si lang, jia bo wei seng)

[Ah-bin]

Wait a minute, how come you didn't you just explain what you wanted? I'm sure your descriptive powers in Hokkien are better than mine, if they didn't understand my particular word for it I would have just explained around it with:

"Lâng páng-sái liáu iōng ê án-ne-khoán ê chóa"

or

"Pàng-sái liáu chhit kha-chhuiⁿ ê chóa"

Or perhaps you didn't want to say "sái"?

[amhoanna]

Ah, right, my bad. I forgot to use the magic word, sái. I did try to say, "Tĩ piạnsó· iọng ẻ coá," but this was a doomed effort from the start, since BATHROOM is another one of many "lacuna" in "general Hoklo", i.e. words that vary from dialect to dialect. After I left the shop, I was thinking to myself that maybe I should've said chiangcuíkeng 沖水間 instead for BATHROOM. ... So the Pinoy word is "chesó·", mid-level on che, high-level on só·? Or high-level chè?

As for going back to that shop, I'm afraid I won't be needing chèsó·coá for a while. Nor soacoá.

[siamiwako]

C'e - same tone as paper (coa)

Hak (音學，學習) c'e coa
Hak c'e = toilet

[AndrewAndrew]

I would have just said pang sai coa.

[SimL]

Me, being a Baba would say "jam2-man5-cua2".

[niuc]

In Bagansiapiapi we used to use 粗紙 cho·cuá that was made of 粟糠 chik'khng. Sometimes we also called it diámgâncuá (parallel to Sim's usage). Now toilet paper is a kind of tissue paper, so nowadays we usually just call it 'tisu' (ti1-su1, just like any other tissue paper). If clarification is needed, we can say taīpiàn ê tisu or diámgân ê tisu.

[SimL]

Hi niuc,

Thanks for your input. It also gives the historical development of the usage, which I found particularly interesting. One of my parents also spoke of the term "chO1 cua2" - a very rough type of toilet paper. I notice that in Australia, the toilet paper tends to be the same "very fine, soft, high quality" paper you describe (many of them with different floral designs even!), whereas in the Netherlands, it still tends to be on the rougher side (with no floral designs). To me, the Dutch approach makes more sense!

What also impressed me in your usage is that your "Malay" equivalent has exactly the same tones as mine!

[perezkelly]

Hi all,
I have a question about Hokkien in the Bisayas which I tried to post as a separate topic but it didn't seem to work. I am not a Hokkien speaker but I am studying the origin of set of Visayan words. Visayan is spoken by about 20 million people in the southern Philippines.

On of the Visayan words I'm interested in is paypay (pronounced pie pie) which means 'fan'. Could this be a Hokkien word?

I have no real reason to assume this, but I thought it might be possible considering that Hokkien speakers were trading with the Philippines long before Spanish colonisation in the 16th century and that fans could have been an article of trade.

Many thanks,

Piers