HO̍KLÓ, HO̍HLÓ, HŌLÓ

[amhoanna]

Definitely interesting. This guy first showed up on Tâigúbāng in the late '90s, and back then he was already using his unique style of peh'oeji. Now he mostly uses hanji.

Prince of HoLoh 河洛王子
http://blog.xuite.net/princeofholoh/blog/28256702

[amhoanna]

Random post from the same guy, last yr

B"o DzunDiong NaEAn?

正是! 民族議題 互相尊重爾也

河洛民族 全東亞真主 全球救主 將由本殿 台灣 府城出身 河洛王子 在 2029 加州 帝國谷Imperial Valley, Imperial, 加利福尼亞 92233 復國

請廣宣之

Holok Nation, true lords of East Asia, saviors of the world...
To be resurrected in 2029 in the Imperial Valley, California 92233...
By the Holok Prince, born in Husiann (Tailam), Taiwan...
Please spread the word.

[Ah-bin]

Sounds like that book I saw for sale in Chungking South Road about Taiwanese being descended from Egyptians! Haha.

Doesn't it sound so much better than the more likely explanation 福佬?

[SimL]

Sounds like that book I saw for sale in Chungking South Road about Taiwanese being descended from Egyptians!

Well, one of our regular posters was convinced that Hokkien was related to Old Norse. And before that, we had someone who believed that Hokkien was the only pure form of Chinese, Mandarin being just a bastardized sinitic underlayer, completely overwhelmed by (Mongolian, etc) invasive elements from the North and North-west.

The thing about theories which "very few other people believe" is that once in a while, they actually turn out to be true (= "a revolution in that area of science" / "paradigm change"), and there is often no way to know, in advance, whether a particular idea falls in the latter category, or is just a "crackpot theory"...

[amhoanna]

Another "clue". I was talking to a Teochew graduate student who studies language education at a college in Swatow. Some semesters she teaches Mandarin to foreign students from Morocco, India, esp., but the biggest contingent of foreign students are Teochews from Thailand. So the topic of language learning came up. I mentioned that for me, learning "Mẳnlàmwá" (= Banlamese; the dialog was in Cantonese) has been much tougher than learning Cantonese. She acknowledged that most people felt that Banlamese/Teochew was harder to learn than Canto, adding: "And that's why my Teochew students from Thailand call Teochew 'Họklỏuwá', because U've gotta start young and họk tõu lỏu (学到老)." (boldface emphasis mine)

[niuc]

Amhoanna, 讚啊 cán ä!

In Singapore, most people think of Hokkien as rude and unrefined, but that's because they are mostly only exposed to a kind of "shallow" variant/creole. There was a Sgp Hokkien ex-colleague, upon hearing me talking to my mom on the phone, commented that my Hokkien sounded like Hakka to her. I was surprised, as I had heard some Hakka conversations of my Hakka friends in Indonesia and also on Taiwanese tv programs, and personally I felt that the way it was spoken was very different. May be she gave that comment because she couldn't understand much of it, and she knew that it was not Singapore Hokkien-Teochew or Cantonese. Some who were more exposed to Taiwanese Hokkien commented that my variant sounded like Taiwanese. So, although many people think of Hokkien as rude and unrefined, actually if we are willing to learn, we indeed may 学到老. And I myself enjoy the process very much, particularly from all of you in this forum!

Btw, it is interesting that Thai Teochews use the term Họklỏu. I have never heard this term used by Hokkiens in Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore. I wonder if SEAsia Cantonese or Hakka refer to Hokkien and/or Teochew (both or only one of them) as Hoklo?

[Ah-bin]

In Singapore, most people think of Hokkien as rude and unrefined, but that's because they are mostly only exposed to a kind of "shallow" variant/creole.

Wasn't it also because they have been taught and told constantly that "dialects" are inferior to the "language" Mandarin? I know Harry Lee definitely said this.

[SimL]

In Singapore, most people think of Hokkien as rude and unrefined, but that's because they are mostly only exposed to a kind of "shallow" variant/creole.

Wasn't it also because they have been taught and told constantly that "dialects" are inferior to the "language" Mandarin? I know Harry Lee definitely said this.

I very much agree with this - not the opinion that it's rude and unrefined, of course, but that it is (partly) due to LKY. But I think it's a vicious circle, really. Educated people start having this opinion, so they stop speaking it, and that leaves less educated people / more rough people speaking it, which reinforces the opinion, making yet other educated people (or people who want to come across as educated) stop speaking it, etc, etc.

This is one of the major advantages that Penang Hokkien has in Penang. Practically all Chinese residents speak it, and people don't think of it as being "lower class". They enjoy speaking it to family members, friends, and strangers. They realise their limitations in speaking it, and know that they often have to resort to English words etc, but they still don't think of it as a "lower class" language.

[niuc]

Hi Ah-bin & Sim

Yes, surely it's also because they have been taught and told constantly that "dialects" are inferior to the "language" Mandarin; that the latter is the standard, elegant, learned, etc, while the former are lowly, rude, bumpkinish, and so on. No doubt Singapore government has been doing that kind of propaganda to promote Mandarin, suppressing "dialects" usage on free-to-air tv programs and public events - except during political campaigns before general election, where suddenly we hear the MPs speaking in "dialects". However, Mandarin propaganda here is not as extreme as it was in Taiwan (I saw that on movies, not sure how true). Students here have never been fined or punished for speaking "dialects", according to my native Singaporean friends. LKY himself shut down Chinese (Mandarin) schools because they were pro-PRC, and he even had a private Hokkien teacher so he could campaign in Hokkien. However, later he began to see the importance of Chinese (read: Mandarin) and started to campaign for it as the "mother tongue" of all Chinese. I think he wanted to use it as a tool to unify Singaporean Chinese, yet regretably at the expense of other existing and older Chinese languages.

Although surely he is partly responsible for demise of the "dialects" here, he is far from being the pioneer. Nevertheless given his position and full support by the whole government, the impact has been really big. To be fair, Singaporean Chinese had been campaigning for Mandarin through Chinese schools long before the republic came into existence. It was also the case in Bagansiapiapi. My parents went to Chinese (Mandarin) schools during 1940s - 1950s, one Nationalist school, the other Communist, and neither had Hokkien lessons. The generations before them, if rich enough, were the ones who learned to read Chinese in Hokkien, but through private lessons (私塾 si•-siòk) and not in public Chinese schools. I suspect this was the case for Malaysia also, except for Cantonese may be? I wonder if Hokkien was ever taught in Chinese schools in Penang? The only SEAsia country I heard of having Hokkien in Chinese schools was the Philippines. So IMHO, the vicious circle as explained by Sim had been started long ago by some (or most) of the educated Chinese, and that became much worse with later official position.

It is great that Penang Hokkien is well alive, and hopefully will be preserved that way. I think Penang-lâng should request for Penang Hokkien to be taught as a subject of choice (may be to be chosen among other Chinese languages or even Thai, etc) in schools. I have some Penang friends in Singapore, and while they may not think of Hokkien as being "lower class", nevertheless even from them I subjectively perceive a subtle sense of Mandarin being the standard and (sometimes Cantonese also being a) better Chinese. Hopefully I am mistaken.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Niuc,
Sorry, you are right. Among us youngsters, Hokkien is indeed perceived as a lower class, vulgar language. Girls speaking Hokkien were considered 'subconsciously' as being rude and disgraceful. I guess the reason Cantonese and Mandarin are politer than Hokkien, is because they have lesser voiced consonants, while Hokkien is just full of them. And, I think voiced consonants increases the possibility of spitting saliva. Haha. Makes sense in a very strange way, I think.

[SimL]

Hi niuc,

Yes, I agree very much with you that this process wasn't started and finished by LKW - we shouldn't blame the guy for *everything* connected with the poor state of Hokkien in Singapore.

It's true that his "Speak Mandarin" campaign certainly played a large part in killing Hokkien off, as did other measures he took, such as legislation which banned the screening of "dialect" films on TV and in cinemas, and the broadcasting of "dialect"-based radio programs. I read in one of the reviews that even the "888/Papaya Sisters" film that I am so enthusiastic about had X% Hokkien where X = "the highest possible amount, without going over the legal amount". Thank goodness X is quite a high figure nowadays (my very rough guess would be perhaps even 20-30%, from what I see of the film).

So yes, his actions played quite an important part, but the process had already begun long ago, and has roots far more widespread than just LKY or Singapore. The replacement of "local" language with a more widespread variety is in any case a very well known phenomenon throughout the word (German or Dutch dialects being replaced by standard German or Dutch, major European languages of the smaller countries having some of their role being encroached on by English, etc). I guess that this is inevitable, but that (and this has been pointed out before) the "mistake" in this process is to assume that the wider language should replace the local language. There's no reason why the two shouldn't live side by side, so that undoubted benefits of both can be experienced: the wider language for ease of communication and exchange of ideas with other regions or countries, and the local language for a feeling of roots and historical continuity.

[SimL]

Niuc,
Sorry, you are right. Among us youngsters, Hokkien is indeed perceived as a lower class, vulgar language. Girls speaking Hokkien were considered 'subconsciously' as being rude and disgraceful.

Yeleixingfeng, I'm sad to hear this. Are you from Penang? If so, Penang has changed a lot in the 40 years since I left.

[Mark Yong]

I remember during my high school days in Singapore in the early-1990’s, virtually all my Chinese schoolmates were indoctrinated with the concept that “Chinese = Mandarin only” and that the “dialects” (as if Mandarin was not one itself!) were some sort of pariah spoken Chinese creole that bore no relation to Chinese characters.

Cantonese has managed to survive the onslaught (so far, at least) for a few reasons. Top of the list would be Hong Kong’s unique political history insulating it from Beijing’s language policy across the bulk of the 20th century. Another factor is that lexically and grammatically, the 粵 Yue dialect is relatively closer to Mandarin than the 閩 Min dialects (ref. Jerry Norman Chinese, 1988). The bulk of Hong Kong’s inhabitants were Cantonese-speaking, which made standardisation and assimilation easier. The adoption of Modern Standard Chinese as the written standard in Hong Kong meant that Cantonese could keep abreast with the development of Mandarin, and standardise much of the later-developed techno-commercial terminologies. Hong Kong’s large population density and strong economic position in Asia gave it the muscle to assert its local language as a regional standard. And finally, there is the media.

The 閩南 Minnan dialects, regrettably, did not share the same advantages as Cantonese. They are lexically and grammatically much further removed from Mandarin. There is no one single numerically-large and economically-powerful 閩南 Minnan-speaking community (Singapore could possibly have been it, but we all know the story). All the other East Asian Chinese communities other than Hong Kong went the way of Big Brother Mandarin. Without parallel development, the 閩南 Minnan dialects struggled (failed?) to keep up with language evolution and development. Only recently has the media started to play a role in its revival, but it lags far behind Cantonese. It is almost the same with Shanghainese, though the language has managed to acquire some degree of development by absorption of some Modern Standard Chinese terminology (ref. Tang Zhixiang's 3-volume texts of Spoken Shanghainese).

The end result is that in the minds of most of today's Mandarin-educated (read: indoctrinated) generation, there is no congruence between read/written Chinese and 閩南 Minnan. That is the reason why, inasmuch as I do occasionally use generally-accepted Malay loanwords when I speak Penang Hokkien, I try to be as lexically and grammatically accurate, i.e. I aim to use proper Hokkien words (i.e. if the Hokkien term exists, I will avoid using the Modern Standard Chinese equivalent pronounced in Hokkien), by way of keeping the literal aspect of the language alive.

In answer to niuc’s question, I have read somewhere that the early Chinese 私塾 su-siòk schools in Penang did teach in Hokkien, with teachers recruited directly from China (apologies, I cannot recall the source, but will let you know once I locate it).

[Yeleixingfeng]

Yeah, I am from Penang. Just my little bio, though I am quite sure I introduced myself in another post..:
17 years old. SMJK Heng Ee. SPM November. Aiming for JPA scholarship - 8A+ (Chinese is damn hard! Bio too. So, there goes my two subjects.) Exposed to Mandarin by 6 years old - before, my whole family spoke English. My dad is a fluent Hokkien-speaker, my mum a fluent Hainanese-speaker - I inherited none. Detested everything Chinese until Form 2 (14 years old) when a devoted Christian 'advised' (= very mild term) me to be baptised, by telling me everything Chinese is cursed and damned to hell. (He himself is a Chinese.) That ignited my love of everything Chinese.
Currently, I am trying to recollect my roots - Hokkien. Hence, here I am. ^^

SimL,
40 years..? I bet a lot has changed..

Mark Yong,
Teachers imported from China? That is in the History Textbook - Form 3 I think.
Besides, in Form 5 Malay Literature, there is a poem called Dirgahayu Bahasa. (Written Bahasa Melayu (baku) is the standard with unchallenged daulat) The Bahasa Melayu teacher (a Chinese) compared the situation to Hokkien and Mandarin. She said, Hokkien is just a dialect - a small unimportant language, that its vocabulary was so insufficient that it has to loan so many words from Chinese. It has no script, no official standardisation. When I stood up and refuted her (yeah, I am recklessly brave when it comes to raising awareness of Hokkien-is-a-proper-language-too ideology, even if that means offending the teacher and risking your grades) by writing 桌頂 for toh-teng - a random request of the teacher, she snorted by saying that is Chinese, not Hokkien. She wants me to represent Hokkien in "Hokkien script". And, I admit I am a little bit VERY rude, I proceed to writing: 先生無相信福建會用唐人字寫，當今我用唐人字寫… I didn't have the time to finish it - I was called off.
Anyway, the main aim of this narration, is that Hokkien is now very despised - even by the Malay teacher, not the Chinese teacher. The image of Hokkien is greatly degraded, especially since vulgarities often creep in its speech. Cantonese-speaking communities, I supposed, don't curse that often, or they curse in Hokkien. That is why, I am trying to correct this image amongst my friends - still to no avail. I think Hokkien needs a new grammar system. Maybe the grammar of Classical could be fully used to construct this new polite language. For example, using 矣 instead of 了. Hokkien is already lexically so close to Classical, why hesitate?
By the way, Mark, why do you say that the grammar of Hokkien is more different from Mandarin than Cantonese?

[SimL]

Hi Yeleixingfeng,

Thanks for your short biography. Very interesting. And VERY impressive that you got to the stage your got to, from a basically English-speaking background, with only exposure to Mandarin at 6, and only real positive feelings about Chinese culture from 14, until your present age of 17. Wonderful!

Indeed, things have changed a lot in 40 years. When we left, the whole of Gurney Drive consisted only of the beach, the road, and on the non-beach side of the road, some houses. In the middle bit, there were fully built up houses (max 2 storey = ground and 1st floor), like pretty "urban", and at the "town/harbour" end there were only about 10 mansions (2-storey rich people's bungalows, hidden behind lots of tall trees). The Tanjong Tokong end had only Malay village huts. The condoniums and shopping plazas of today would have been unimaginable to me then (as perhaps the semi-rural nature of Gurney drive in my youth to you now)!

And of course, the change in attitudes towards Penang Hokkien are pretty dismaying to hear about . Good that you stood up to your teacher - we never dared stand up to teachers in my youth (and probably, lots of your classmates might still be quite docile today).

We have quiet different backgrounds (and very different takes on Hokkien), but I'm absolutely delighted to have you here on the Forum. It's very rare to have someone as interested and passionate about Hokkien as you are (well, there's us, but that's about it, I think!).