Hokkien culture better preserved in Malaysia than China

[yeobh2]

Would like to share an interesting article in the Malaysian Star Newspaper which stated that the Hokkien culture and language are better preserved in Malaysia than in China. Please log on to the following website for more information.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/2/6/nation/10684526&sec=nation

Best regards,

[SimL]

Hi yeobh,

Thanks a lot for posting this. Very heart-warming news indeed! It will also be good for more Malaysians to know about this, so that they can start increasing (or even just developing!) some (more) pride in Hokkien language and culture.

In fact, I think it would even be good for more Taiwanese to know about this. It all contributes to a positive feeling about Hokkien. Ever since my youth, I've felt that Taiwan is "special" because they speak a form of Hokkien, but I get the feeling that Taiwanese (even those who might be positive and proud about Taiwanese) have not really felt that there was anything "special" about Penang or Singapore (and the Philippines), as Hokkien-speaking areas. An article such as the one you posted a link to helps to create this awareness and feeling.

[Ah-bin]

Thanks so much for posting this.

From my own observation this is the case too. It's amazing to me how some Malaysian Chinese talk themselves down and see themselves as culturally and linguistically inferior to the Hokkiens in China. Half the time they have no idea that many kids in Amoy can't even speak or understand Hokkien, or that many people in Amoy have never even seen thiau-tang or been to a temple. It's nice to have someone remind them of what they do have sometimes.

I found this a bit ridiculous though:

She believes the Hokkien to be the most ancient of the various Chinese communities.

A good anthropologist maybe, but not a good historian or linguist. Sounds like she picked that idea up from an informant, rather than any historical research on the subject.

How can Chiangchiu Hokkien culture be so "ancient" when there were only 蠻獠 (man-lao, a pejorative term for "barbarians") living there until the seventh century?

"Most ancient" makes no sense at all. Isn't it the case that "Hokkien" as a community only came into existence when foreigners started classifying people by their provincial origins in Southeast Asia, old chinese records (Sung, Ming, Ch'ing) just refer to people's chiu 州 as what kind of person they are and when they use the term 閩人 (Fukienese) they use it for all kinds of people from everywhere in Fukien, Hokchias, Hokchius, Henghoas included. The 18th and 19th century Chiang-chiu and Choan-chiu people certainly didn't think of themselves as a single "Hokkien" community in Taiwan. In Lok-kang on the west coast of Taiwan they had to build a wall between the two groups to stop them fighting with and killing each other....no community feeling there.

[curt]

My question would be what number of young Malaysians speak Hokkien. It seems that in China the 00's generation children are losing Hokkien ability in large numbers with probably very low rates of transmission down to children eight and under. Is there anywhere in the Sinosphere where Min and Wu dialects are not endangered?

[amhoanna]

Well, touché. But science (evidence) always had a hard time 隻秋 with religion.

[amhoanna]

In reply to Sim. TWese Hoklos tend to take it for granted when foreign Hokkiens speak Hoklo, although they refuse to accommodate far-out dialects. (They also take it for granted when foreigners don't spk Hoklo.) Do U remember the 張曼玉 movie where she drives a cab in San Francisco to make a living? One time she picks up a monolingual (!) Hoklophone couple from Taiwan. After much driving, she can't figure out where they wanna go, so she drops them back off where she picked them up. Unfazed, the couple steps back onto the pavement. A reporter ask them something and they reply, "Goán sī Tâi'oân lâng. Heⁿh, Tâi'oân lâng." Completely unruffled. Business as usual. Leave it to HK people to capture a TWese stereotype perfectly.

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin and amhoanna,

Excellent points made by you both. Looks like there's a bit more activity on the Forum again, which can only be considered "a good thing" .

[niuc]

Ah-bin, would it be (more) correct if we say Min (including Hokkien) is the most ancient among current Chinese languages? I ever read and see the diagram that Min separated with other Chinese earlier than Cantonese, Hakka and most (or all?) existing Chinese languages. Surely Hokkien and other Min have been changing and also absorbing new loanwords. But is true that Min group retains most of ancient Chinese compared to other groups? And how Hokkien fares inside the group, the most "ancient", middle, most modern etc? It'd be great to hear your & other's views! Thanks!

[Ah-bin]

if they all sprang from the same root then all Chinese languages are just as ancient as each other. Is is just that some have changed more than others. Mandarin has diverged more from its ancestral language than Hokkien has, that's all. if Mandarin had actually developed from Hokkien, then you could say that it was more ancient, but that is not how Hokkien developed.

It is more accurate to say, I think, that Hokkien preserves more features of Middle Chinese than other varieties but even this is debatable since it has merged many of the old initials and (in the Amoy variety) no longer has a distinct 陰上 and 陽上 like Cantonese does. The tree I have in 臺灣的客家話 actually puts the Wu dialects first, since they preserve the most initial sounds. They have simplified all entering tone endings to a glottal stop, but then again, so did Hokkien, until it began to borrow words from the Chinese of the T'ang capital.

Then, what do we count as the stability of sounds over time? Hokkien has lost the voicing in the initial [p] in 飯, where Soochow has kept the voicing (old feature) but made it a fricative [vE]. In Hokkien the sound became the same as that of 分 [pun] when the initials were distinct in Old Chinese. They are still distinct in Soochow (分 has an [f] initial). So do we count the distinction in Soochow as the older feature or the lack of a fricative in Hokkien as the older feature?

[niuc]

Thanks, Ah-bin, for your reply!

if they all sprang from the same root then all Chinese languages are just as ancient as each other. Is is just that some have changed more than others. Mandarin has diverged more from its ancestral language than Hokkien has, that's all. if Mandarin had actually developed from Hokkien, then you could say that it was more ancient, but that is not how Hokkien developed.

Agree. I think no one would say that Mandarin had developed from Hokkien, but most probably they mean that Hokkien preserves more "ancient" features. But even this is debatable, as you have explained.

It is more accurate to say, I think, that Hokkien preserves more features of Middle Chinese than other varieties but even this is debatable since it has merged many of the old initials and (in the Amoy variety) no longer has a distinct 陰上 and 陽上 like Cantonese does.

Agree also. I think many Sinitic languages preserve certain aspects of Ancient/Old/Middle (etc) Chinese. Hokkien preserves ancient terms like 有身 (ūsin) for "pregnant" and pronunciation of 滑 (kùt) is still very similar to 骨 (kut), but has lost many of old initials and some of the tones. This should be true for many other Sinitic languages, e.g. Cantonese preserves the tones. Is it more accurate to say so?

The tree I have in 臺灣的客家話 actually puts the Wu dialects first, since they preserve the most initial sounds. They have simplified all entering tone endings to a glottal stop, but then again, so did Hokkien, until it began to borrow words from the Chinese of the T'ang capital.

Wow, that's enlightening! So without borrowing words (pronunciations) from T'ang capital et al, Hokkien would have been much more similar to Wu! Any particular reasons why Wu could resist such borrowings?

Then, what do we count as the stability of sounds over time? Hokkien has lost the voicing in the initial [p] in 飯, where Soochow has kept the voicing (old feature) but made it a fricative [vE]. In Hokkien the sound became the same as that of 分 [pun] when the initials were distinct in Old Chinese. They are still distinct in Soochow (分 has an [f] initial). So do we count the distinction in Soochow as the older feature or the lack of a fricative in Hokkien as the older feature?

That makes linguistics interesting!

[Ah-bin]

It might have been that the T'ang finals were actually in the Wu dialects, and became reduced to glottal stops at a later period. Or perhaps the speakers of old Hokkien were very conscious about getting things correct when they read out texts (the origin of the literary stratum) because they felt a bit rustic and had a need to emulate the cultured behaviour of the capital, whereas people who lived close to the old Capital saw themselves as cultured people to begin with, and expected the provinces to follow their fashion, if they thought of it at all. Kind of like Malaysian Cantonese getting obsessed with talking like people from Hong Kong, even though HK people get their n's and l's mixed up and drop ng's all over the place. In Hong Kong hardly anyone seems to get obsessed about speaking correct Cantonese, in Malaysia....well we all know someone who can't accept that there are differences in Hokkien, and I've seen similar posts of his about Cantonese too.

Anyway, that is pure speculation about the finals, but it is the sort of thing that happens sometimes.

[niuc]

Or perhaps the speakers of old Hokkien were very conscious about getting things correct when they read out texts (the origin of the literary stratum) because they felt a bit rustic and had a need to emulate the cultured behaviour of the capital, whereas people who lived close to the old Capital saw themselves as cultured people to begin with, and expected the provinces to follow their fashion, if they thought of it at all. Kind of like Malaysian Cantonese getting obsessed with talking like people from Hong Kong, even though HK people get their n's and l's mixed up and drop ng's all over the place. In Hong Kong hardly anyone seems to get obsessed about speaking correct Cantonese

Ah, I can relate to that in someway! Unlike many other capital cities, Jakarta people do not speak standard variant of its national language, but a slang version. Last time in Bagansiapiapi we all learned Bahasa Indonesia baku (standard) and used standard vocabularies (albeit with Hokkien influenced accent ), until we started to watch dramas from Jakarta. [It's kind of strange (but logical) that we used to watch Malaysian tv channels and almost never managed to get Jakarta's channels in 1980s, due to our proximity to West Malaysia, especially Malacca.] Then we started to imitate (with not much success) Jakarta's accent and slang words because things from the capital was of course considered cool!

in Malaysia....well we all know someone who can't accept that there are differences in Hokkien, and I've seen similar posts of his about Cantonese too.

[SimL]

Ah-bin, would it be (more) correct if we say Min (including Hokkien) is the most ancient among current Chinese languages?

Hi niuc,

Great to see you posting here regularly again .

I was going to write a long and elaborate answer, but I was away from Amsterdam at the time and couldn't. Then Ah-bin wrote such a succinct but well thought-out and clearly expressed reply that there wasn't any need to after that!

I think I've posted (possibly even twice) on this Forum a link to a Wikipedia article which indicates an earlier branching off of Hokkien than all the other Sinitic languages; i.e. (with time going downwards):

Code: Select all

 Proto-Sinitic
 |
 .
 .
 .
 |
 +
 |\
 | \
 | Hokkien
 |
 All other Sinitic languages


In that article, it claims that that is why all other Sinitic languages have an initial f-, but Hokkien doesn't.

That article does address in part the initial question you posted (taking into account all the ifs-and-buts and qualifications to the "meaning" of such a question/answer that Ah-bin has now so clearly explained).

I'm frustrated that I can't find the article again. I know that I stumbled across it every now and again in the past, when just browsing on the subject of Hokkien in Wikipedia, but this time it seems to be really gone.