I recently read Khoo Joo Ee's book "The Straits Chinese" - a detailed account on the history and culture of the Peranakans in Malaya. One of the chapters in the book deals with Batu Gantong (the pen name for Chan Kim Boon), who, in the 19th century, translated Chinese novels such as "Journey to the West" and "Three Kingdoms" into Baba Malay.
While the books are written in Baba Malay, my interest (which is more relevant to this Minnan forum) is how Chan Kim Boon would have read a Chinese book written in what was then known as "guan1 hua2" (not very different from Mandarin today), during the pre-modern era when Mandarin was not yet the standard Chinese language and Chinese texts were read in the native dialect. Chan must have read it in Hokkien before translating it into Baba Malay, underpinning the case for Mandarin being readable in Hokkien in the same way Cantonese is in Hong Kong. (This is related to my previous thread on how a Mandarin text can be fully read using Hokkien pronunciation.)
Today's Penang children will have missed out on their parents' generation, when such tales were told by their grandparents in Hokkien (not Mandarin), with the heroes' names in Hokkien - where 孫悟空 was Sun Ngo K'ong, 豬八戒 was Tu Pat Kai, 沙僧 was Sua Ceng and the abbot 陳玄奘 was Tan Hian Cong (or Tong Tai Chu - haven't read the book, so I don't know the Hanzi)... in the great tale known as Se Iu Ki 西遊記.
By the way, I have to disagree with Khoo's account that Penang Hokkien is of so-called "T'ang Min" origin (according to her, Forrest's phonetic table shows that Penang Hokkien's pronunciations are T'ang Min-influenced). I think there is already sufficient evidence on the Chiang Chew origins of Penang Hokkien (with, of course, hints of other sub-groups).
Batu Gantong's Baba Malay translations of Chinese classics
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hong
Mark,
There are no area called tangmin for chuanchiu or xiamen.What he meant was same with China's min langauge?You still haven't figured out which area in China is chuanchiu or chiangchiu,that is why you don't know your friend was using the wrong hanzi for nan an.
It is not true young kids cannot hear this story in minnan because we have online xiamen language story for classic like 紅樓夢,etc.
There are no area called tangmin for chuanchiu or xiamen.What he meant was same with China's min langauge?You still haven't figured out which area in China is chuanchiu or chiangchiu,that is why you don't know your friend was using the wrong hanzi for nan an.
It is not true young kids cannot hear this story in minnan because we have online xiamen language story for classic like 紅樓夢,etc.
Hi, Hong,
Khoo Joo Ee's book was written in English with no Chinese chracters included. However, she said Tang Min translates as "Chinese people" (she could be mistaken, I don't know), so my guess is that it is 唐民. I know there is no such place as Tang Min in Fujian. What she meant was that Tang Min was an external influence.
Yep, my geographical knowledge of Fujian is very limited at the moment, so please kindly bear with me.
I have no doubt that the classics are available online in Amoy for listening pleasure. But the fact is, not many local Malaysian/Singaporean children (or even people in general) nowadays will take the trouble to listen to it. As you know, these kind of stories are normally passed on to us orally from our elders, which I am sure does not happen so often anymore. That was my point. Take a look at all the Penang/Malaccan/Singaporean Hokkien children born after 1980. Chances are, their given names are Romanised in Mandarin (since their parents are not familiar with Minnan wendu/baidu), and they speak only Mandarin and not Hokkien.
Khoo Joo Ee's book was written in English with no Chinese chracters included. However, she said Tang Min translates as "Chinese people" (she could be mistaken, I don't know), so my guess is that it is 唐民. I know there is no such place as Tang Min in Fujian. What she meant was that Tang Min was an external influence.
Yep, my geographical knowledge of Fujian is very limited at the moment, so please kindly bear with me.
I have no doubt that the classics are available online in Amoy for listening pleasure. But the fact is, not many local Malaysian/Singaporean children (or even people in general) nowadays will take the trouble to listen to it. As you know, these kind of stories are normally passed on to us orally from our elders, which I am sure does not happen so often anymore. That was my point. Take a look at all the Penang/Malaccan/Singaporean Hokkien children born after 1980. Chances are, their given names are Romanised in Mandarin (since their parents are not familiar with Minnan wendu/baidu), and they speak only Mandarin and not Hokkien.
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hong
I think you should say most parents are very poor in dialect and mandarin .I have a father whose minnan name is completely wrong in passaport and his father was from China.No such things as tones or better vocabulary knowledge from them.
In china very few parents know about benzi ,sandhi and tones,they just know it natually.
The problem for people in South east asia is we can't learn proper chinese dialects from our parents.How can we learn 5 kinds of Fuzhou /teochew/hainan from them?Also putian and xianyou?
Prof.Lirulong(born 1936) took a long time to find out what is the correct sound for the word 雞 (chicken)around chuanchiu area. It shows how hard to learn correct sound even you are born in China.If you are Putian,you still have to buy 仙游方言志to learn their dialect.
In china very few parents know about benzi ,sandhi and tones,they just know it natually.
The problem for people in South east asia is we can't learn proper chinese dialects from our parents.How can we learn 5 kinds of Fuzhou /teochew/hainan from them?Also putian and xianyou?
Prof.Lirulong(born 1936) took a long time to find out what is the correct sound for the word 雞 (chicken)around chuanchiu area. It shows how hard to learn correct sound even you are born in China.If you are Putian,you still have to buy 仙游方言志to learn their dialect.
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Guest
Hi Mark,Mark Yong wrote:I recently read Khoo Joo Ee's book "The Straits Chinese" - a detailed account on the history and culture of the Peranakans in Malaya. ... By the way, I have to disagree with Khoo's account that Penang Hokkien is of so-called "T'ang Min" origin (according to her, Forrest's phonetic table shows that Penang Hokkien's pronunciations are T'ang Min-influenced). I think there is already sufficient evidence on the Chiang Chew origins of Penang Hokkien (with, of course, hints of other sub-groups).
I read the book a long time ago. I was very taken by it because that is precisely my cultural background - I'm from a Penang Baba family which has been there for many generations.
Regarding Khoo Joo Ee's assertion about the T'ang Min influences on Penang Hokkien... I haven't located the reference (I would be grateful if you could give me a page (and perhaps even a line) number in the book). Nevertheless, I would venture to throw some light on the statement.
I believe she is (informally) speaking about the b-, d-/j-/l-, g- consonants in Hokkien. These appear to have been "de-nasalized" from corresponding words which were pronounced *m-, *n-, and *ng (the asterisk indicates that these are re-constructed forms) in Ancient Chinese (or Middle Chinese? I don't know the details). As you probably know, that's why there are correspondences between "bE2" (Hokkien) vs. "ma3" (Mandarin) for "horse", "bu2" (Hokkien) vs. "mu3" (Mandarin) for "mother"; "gua2" (Hokkien) vs. "ngO1" (Cantonese) for "I/me", "gO7" (Hokkien) vs. "ng1" (Cantonese) for "five"; etc. This process is (in English-speaking Chinese Linguistics circles) called the "Tang-Min denasalization", because it is thought to have occurred in the Min languages during the Tang Dynasty.
As such, "Tang-Min" does not mean a place, but a linguistic feature/process. So, when Khoo Joo Ee says that Penang Hokkien has "T'ang Min" influences, I venture to suggest that this is what she means (even if she might not be aware of the linguistic background to the term).
Of course, this "Tang-Min"-ness of Penang Hokkien is not special to Penang Hokkien, but applies to all the Min (perhaps Minnan only?, this is where my lack of knowledge shows up yet again) languages. But, as Khoo Joo Ee is probably not literate in Chinese, nor is she familiar with Chinese Linguistics, in particular Southern Chinese Dialect Linguistics, she might just make this assertion (which is, in itself, true) - having heard it from some authoritative source - without realising that it's slightly inaccurate (because of its not being unique to Penang Hokkien).
Anyway, that's just a bit of speculation on my part.
Regards,
Sim.
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Sim
Hi, it's me again (the last reply too, but I forgot to fill in the "username" box, as is so often the case).
This idea interests me too.
The paternal side of my family is Baba, but my maternal side is "sin-kheh". My maternal grandfather was born in 1900 and came in his early- to mid-teens from Fujian province to "lam iu*"/ "nan yang". According to his daughter (i.e. my mother), the medium of instruction in Fujian in my grandfather's youth was Hokkien, and they all read out formal Chinese written prose in Hokkien.
I remember her telling me that where the Mandarin morphemes didn't match the Hokkien ones, Hokkien morphemes were substituted "in real time", while reading.
It even (apparently) went so far that if the standard written (compound-) word or phrase was (say) 3 syllables and the Hokkien equivalent was (say) 2 (perhaps totally different and unrelated) syllables, then the reader would just read out (or say in his/her own mind) the Hokkien equivalent. In such a case, then one of the written "zi" would be sort of "suppressed".
Conversely, if the normal written (compound-) word or phrase was (say) 2 syllables and the Hokkien equivalent was (say) 3 (perhaps totally different and unrelated) syllables, then an extra syllable would be pronounced (either out loud or in the reader's mind) - a syllable which did not correspond to any "zi" in the text.
The same process in reverse occurred when writing something which a person had in his/her mind. If the Hokkien (compound-)word or phrase had a different number of syllables than the standard written equivalent, the latter (i.e. "Mandarin" / "guan hua") phrase would STILL be written, with the consequent "creation of an additional zi" (or "suppression" of a Hokkien syllable"), depending on whether the "standard" had more (or less) syllables than the Hokkien equivalent (respectively).
This whole phenomenon has always intrigued me. Unfortunately, my grandfather is long since dead (he died in the mid 1970's), so I cannot ask him if my mother's account is accurate, nor (if he said yes) can I ask him to actually demonstrate this method of handling the discrepancy between the "standard written form" and Hokkien usage.
Just thought you might find this account of my mother's to be interesting.
Regards,
Sim.
Hi Mark,Mark Yong wrote:... Chan must have read it in Hokkien before translating it into Baba Malay, underpinning the case for Mandarin being readable in Hokkien in the same way Cantonese is in Hong Kong. (This is related to my previous thread on how a Mandarin text can be fully read using Hokkien pronunciation.)
This idea interests me too.
The paternal side of my family is Baba, but my maternal side is "sin-kheh". My maternal grandfather was born in 1900 and came in his early- to mid-teens from Fujian province to "lam iu*"/ "nan yang". According to his daughter (i.e. my mother), the medium of instruction in Fujian in my grandfather's youth was Hokkien, and they all read out formal Chinese written prose in Hokkien.
I remember her telling me that where the Mandarin morphemes didn't match the Hokkien ones, Hokkien morphemes were substituted "in real time", while reading.
It even (apparently) went so far that if the standard written (compound-) word or phrase was (say) 3 syllables and the Hokkien equivalent was (say) 2 (perhaps totally different and unrelated) syllables, then the reader would just read out (or say in his/her own mind) the Hokkien equivalent. In such a case, then one of the written "zi" would be sort of "suppressed".
Conversely, if the normal written (compound-) word or phrase was (say) 2 syllables and the Hokkien equivalent was (say) 3 (perhaps totally different and unrelated) syllables, then an extra syllable would be pronounced (either out loud or in the reader's mind) - a syllable which did not correspond to any "zi" in the text.
The same process in reverse occurred when writing something which a person had in his/her mind. If the Hokkien (compound-)word or phrase had a different number of syllables than the standard written equivalent, the latter (i.e. "Mandarin" / "guan hua") phrase would STILL be written, with the consequent "creation of an additional zi" (or "suppression" of a Hokkien syllable"), depending on whether the "standard" had more (or less) syllables than the Hokkien equivalent (respectively).
This whole phenomenon has always intrigued me. Unfortunately, my grandfather is long since dead (he died in the mid 1970's), so I cannot ask him if my mother's account is accurate, nor (if he said yes) can I ask him to actually demonstrate this method of handling the discrepancy between the "standard written form" and Hokkien usage.
Just thought you might find this account of my mother's to be interesting.
Regards,
Sim.
Hi, Sim,Sim wrote: Regarding Khoo Joo Ee's assertion about the T'ang Min influences on Penang Hokkien... I haven't located the reference (I would be grateful if you could give me a page (and perhaps even a line) number in the book).
The relevant section in Khoo Joo Ee's book is Pg. 112, Paragraphs 3 and 4 (under Chapter 3 "Everyday Life"). The R.A.D. Forrest reference used is "The Chinese Language" (1948), Pgs. 232-240.
Quote: "As explained by Forrest (1948:232-240), some varieties of Amoy vernacular speech or Hokkien with certain features were termed Tang Min because of the influence on them of northern Chinese speakers during the Tang Dynasy (618-906). Tang Min is essentially Hokkien modified by ancient Chinese of the Tang period. It can be seen from the phonetic table of Forrest, that the Baba Hokkien in Penang is closer to this Tang Min than is the type of Hokkien spoken by the Sinkhek, who use the standard Amo variety."
Khoo states in the paragraph preceding the above that "...the term 'Min' ...now means simply 'people' in general...", but goes further to state that there are two groups of Min - northern and southern. I have a feeling she mixed up Min 民 (people) and Min 閩 (the dialect group).
Hi, Sim,
Very interesting account you provided on reading Chinese texts in Hokkien during your grandparents' time! I, too, no longer have the benefit of asking my late grandparents (who were Hakka) how they read Chinese - though I speculate that the method would have been similar to your grandparents'. For instance, even in writing, they used the word 飲 for 'drinking' rather than 喝.
I suspect there would be two general instances when "on the fly" substitution occurs. You have identified the first one, where certain 'zi' are either added ot suppresed in reading. (One instance I can think of where suppression would occur very frequently in most Southern Chinese dialect readings of Mandarin texts, is Mandarin's propensity of adding the suffix 子 to most nouns.)
The other instance is substituting a word for its synonym which is more frequently used in the reader's dialect. For instance, 回 (to return) would most likely be transposed to 'tui/tng' 轉 on the fly when reading in Hokkien (or to 'fan' 返 in Cantonese). The only exception would probably be when 回 occurs as the couplet 來回.
To give an example: I have been chided by my Penang Hokkien friends whenever I read the phrase 早去早回 (early-go-early-return) in Hokkien as "ca k'i ca hue". They often correct me by saying "No, Mark - it's 'ca k'i ca tui'". And then I argue back by saying, "No, I disagree. I would use the word 'tui' if I were speaking... but I am not speaking right this moment, I am READING. And the word 回 is NOT read as 'tui' - you don't say 'lai tui' for 來回, do you? You say 'lai hue'!"
Cantonese readers of Mandarin-grammar texts probably have less problems due to the relative closeness in grammar and morphemes between the two dialects.
Actually (as an aside), from what I understand of Classical Chinese, none of the above are the proper word for "a person returning somewhere" not even the Mandarin 回. 回 is used in the context of "turning around" (as in 回頭), 轉 means to literally turn/twist/spin, and 返 means to backtrack. That is why in writing, I normally use 歸 (you can see my partiality to wenyan starting to creep from the shadows!
).
For the reasons above, I sometimes wonder if my attempts at coaxing out a way to read Mandarin texts in Hokkien ad-verbatim the same way the Hong Kong-ers do with Cantonese (notice how even obviously native Mandarin experessions like 怎麼 is read ad-verbatim by Cantonese as "zham-mor"?), is taking things a bit too far. It may have worked for the more neutral and unchanging wenyan, but Mandarin may have evolved too far from Hokkien to allow for much congruence - like trying to read French in Italian, on the basis of them being of Romance origin (okay, poor example, but you get the point!).
Regards,
Mark
Very interesting account you provided on reading Chinese texts in Hokkien during your grandparents' time! I, too, no longer have the benefit of asking my late grandparents (who were Hakka) how they read Chinese - though I speculate that the method would have been similar to your grandparents'. For instance, even in writing, they used the word 飲 for 'drinking' rather than 喝.
I suspect there would be two general instances when "on the fly" substitution occurs. You have identified the first one, where certain 'zi' are either added ot suppresed in reading. (One instance I can think of where suppression would occur very frequently in most Southern Chinese dialect readings of Mandarin texts, is Mandarin's propensity of adding the suffix 子 to most nouns.)
The other instance is substituting a word for its synonym which is more frequently used in the reader's dialect. For instance, 回 (to return) would most likely be transposed to 'tui/tng' 轉 on the fly when reading in Hokkien (or to 'fan' 返 in Cantonese). The only exception would probably be when 回 occurs as the couplet 來回.
To give an example: I have been chided by my Penang Hokkien friends whenever I read the phrase 早去早回 (early-go-early-return) in Hokkien as "ca k'i ca hue". They often correct me by saying "No, Mark - it's 'ca k'i ca tui'". And then I argue back by saying, "No, I disagree. I would use the word 'tui' if I were speaking... but I am not speaking right this moment, I am READING. And the word 回 is NOT read as 'tui' - you don't say 'lai tui' for 來回, do you? You say 'lai hue'!"
Cantonese readers of Mandarin-grammar texts probably have less problems due to the relative closeness in grammar and morphemes between the two dialects.
Actually (as an aside), from what I understand of Classical Chinese, none of the above are the proper word for "a person returning somewhere" not even the Mandarin 回. 回 is used in the context of "turning around" (as in 回頭), 轉 means to literally turn/twist/spin, and 返 means to backtrack. That is why in writing, I normally use 歸 (you can see my partiality to wenyan starting to creep from the shadows!
).For the reasons above, I sometimes wonder if my attempts at coaxing out a way to read Mandarin texts in Hokkien ad-verbatim the same way the Hong Kong-ers do with Cantonese (notice how even obviously native Mandarin experessions like 怎麼 is read ad-verbatim by Cantonese as "zham-mor"?), is taking things a bit too far. It may have worked for the more neutral and unchanging wenyan, but Mandarin may have evolved too far from Hokkien to allow for much congruence - like trying to read French in Italian, on the basis of them being of Romance origin (okay, poor example, but you get the point!).
Regards,
Mark
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hong
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Casey
Sim
On expansion and contraction of syllables when reading a Chinese passage in Hokkien, you have given a very good example yourself in this forum. You have mentioned " 最 " pronounced in Hokkien as "te7 it4". In this example, one syllable is expanded into two syllables. As for contraction of syllables, the following example may illustrate it. For example, very clever " 很 聪 明 ", you may say "cin1 gau5", from three syllables to two.
I think this is what you are talking about.
On expansion and contraction of syllables when reading a Chinese passage in Hokkien, you have given a very good example yourself in this forum. You have mentioned " 最 " pronounced in Hokkien as "te7 it4". In this example, one syllable is expanded into two syllables. As for contraction of syllables, the following example may illustrate it. For example, very clever " 很 聪 明 ", you may say "cin1 gau5", from three syllables to two.
I think this is what you are talking about.