Ang-Mor Knee

Discussions on the Hokkien (Minnan) language.
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Mark
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Ang-Mor Knee

Post by Mark »

Ah Lian went to the Emporium to look for knee-high stockings and approached a salesgirl.

Ah Lian: Loo ooh buay stocking kao knee boh?

Salesgirl: Kao nee? Kao yeo, ooh. Boh kao nee eh!

Ah Lian, realising her mistake, quickly corrected herself: Mm si tng nang eh 'nee'... si ang-mor eh 'knee'!

(note: this is meant to take place in a multilingual society where most people know English to some extent and many people know Hokkien)
Mark
Posts: 134
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:53 pm
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Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by Mark »

Reply-reply please! Specially' Yeo Boon Hong and Co.!
BHYeo

Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by BHYeo »

Hi Mark!

I appreciate your "ang mo knee" dialogue but don't know how to reply.
By the way, your name sounds more "ang mo". Lu si ang-mo lang a-si hokkian lang?

Best regards.
James Campbell

Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by James Campbell »

I can't figure out what romanization you're using. I think I'm confused over your double ee and double oo (plus h, is it a stop?), where these have different readings depending on the different romanizations that exist. I also don't know how to pronounce your 'kao' and 'yeo'. Maybe 'Yeo' Boon Hong could help me with that.
BHYeo

Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by BHYeo »

Dear James,


'Yeo' which is my surname is pronounced as 'yang' in Mandarin and is different from what Mark meant in his joke. I think the 'yeo' used by Mark should be 'u' as in 'kha-thau-u' which means knee in Amoy romanization. On the other hand, 'kao' should be 'kau' and 'nee' should be 'ni' in Amoy romanization. 'Ooh' means have. I also can't figure out what romanization Mark is using but reading the pun as a whole it should not be difficult to comprehend what he meant. Perhaps Mark can clarify further on this.
Mark
Posts: 134
Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:53 pm
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Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by Mark »

I didn't use a specific romanisation as I did not transcribe it, I recieved it from a Singaporean friend in this format and decided to pass it on as both a pun and a linguistic treasure of how Hokkiens in Singapore romanise their language most often.

Generally, I've seen these sorts of romanisations used a lot by Hokkiens in Singapore and Malaysia who spell Hokkien in romanisation how they think it would be spelled in English, and that's the reason for the "ee" and "ooh" "yeo" "kao" etc.

Offhand I think "i" is used for the "ee" sound as in "bee" more in English, but I haven't thought about it much, also "e" instead of "eh" or "a" or "ey" or "ay" etc. but people around the world seem to think "ee" "oo" and that if they add an "h" to the end it makes vowels long or serves to clarify the preceeding sound (if you have an "a", to many people that means "e" [as in Japanese romanisation], but if you add "h" to make "ah" that makes it "a")

This generally doesn't fit romanisations used by Taiwanese people interested in romanising their speech for whatever reason (usually because they find it hard to fit Hokkien to hanzi, or there are certain Hokkien syllables that don't seem to correspond to hanzi, so certain conventions for such things exist), and it's interesting because instead of being a more linguistically-minded romanisation, it's been developed by people who are used to using the Roman alphabet only for English (and sometimes Malay), so they spell things how they would be spelled in English.

this post sounds sort of strange, but that's because I just sort of blurted it out and I think I've repeated a lot of things here... :/
PPK

Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by PPK »

the 'kao' i think is 'reach', my pronouciation of that word is 'gao'('gou' in mandarin, meaning 'enough'). 'yeo' is the minnan pronouciation for 'waist', or 'yao' in mandarin.
Mark
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Joined: Thu Feb 03, 2005 3:53 pm
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Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by Mark »

阿蓮: 有袂stocking到knee無?
店女: 到胸? 到腰, 有. 無到胸ㄟ!
阿蓮: 毋是通nangㄟ'胸'... 是紅魔ㄟ'knee'!

(胸=ni, not sure of correct hanzi here)

couldn't find hanzi for nang, used ㄟ for e (often written in romanisation on all-hanzi wepsite)

I wonder how 阿店 would respond...? :p
KDLim

Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by KDLim »

I think the salegirl would give almost the same response because whether it is tng-lang eh ni or ang-mo eh 'knee' still sounds the same 'ni' to her unless it is backed by some form of action to indicate the difference.
PPK

Re: Ang-Mor Knee

Post by PPK »

then the knee should be 'nai'(奶) in chinese, meaning chest or breast.
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