An obcure variety of Hokkien?

[the judge]

>> Anyway, to answer your question, as far as I can rememb
>> it should be '-io'. i am not sure if it is the same as the '-iau'
>> you are refering to, but i don't think it is '-iu'. I remembered
>> elephant is called 'chio'. The 'o' in '-io' is more like the 'o' in
>> the English word 'Forum', and please note that it is NOT like
>> the 'o' in saying 'bridge' - 'gio'.

Well, yet a third pronunciation! I understand what you are trying to convey Nokko.

>> distinguish the two 'o' pronunciation in Hokkien

Yes, the inadequacies of Roman (ASCII) vowel symbols is a real pain when trying to transcribe Hokkien. Hokkien has two different ?o-type??sounds which in phonetics are called the ?closed-o??(as in English ?go?? ?so??, and the ?open-o??(as in English ?got?? ?rot??(and, as you say, ?forum??).

In IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), the first is transcribed as a ?normal??o - a complete circle - and the second one as an o which is not complete - the left side is left uncompleted, making it look a bit like an upside-down ?c?? So, in IPA, it is very easy to distinguish between these two sounds.

Because IPA can?t be typed using a standard keyboard (e.g. for newsgroups and in primitive emails), people have invented some conventions where regular ASCII letters are used to represent IPA. This is called (logically enough) ASCII IPA. In ASCII IPA, the ?closed-o??is written ?o??(lowercase o) and the ?open-o??is written ?O??(uppercase o).

The same problem was encountered by the missionaries trying to transcribe Hokkien in the early 19th(?) century in China. In the system of spelling they invented, called peh-oe-ji (I think this is ?bai2 hua4 ci2??in Mandarin), the ?closed-o??is written ?o??(lowercase o) and the ?open-o??is written as ?o.??(lowercase o with a dot after it). [ Actually, the dot is not at the bottom, but at the top - i.e. it is the ?top dot??of a colon, not the bottom one, but again, I can?t type that in ASCII, so I can?t illustrate it here. ]

In Malaysia, the ?informal spelling??(sometimes) tries to indicate ?closed-o??as ?o??(lowercase o) and the ?open-o??as ?or??(because it?s a bit like English, as in ?boring?? ?core??etc). That?s why I said in my initial posting that wife was ?bor??rather than ?bo??in the informal spelling. [ This is rather unsatisfactory, because there is no ?r??sound after the vowel in Hokkien. ]

So, in your form of Hokkien Nokko, your word ?elephant??would be: (in ASCII IPA) ?ts<h>iO~??(the <h> shows that the ?ts??is aspirated, i.e. pronounced with a strong puff of air), (in peh-oe-ji) ?chhio.n??(the ?n??at the end of this word is written smaller and higher, i.e. as a superscript). The ?~??and superscript-n indicate ?nasalization??(see next paragraph).

I feel it?s quite important to mark the nasalization of Hokkien vowels. In ASCII IPA, it is done using the ?~??symbol after the vowel, and in peh-oe-ji, it is done using a superscript-n (again, this is difficult to do using a regular keyboard). Hokkien distinguishes nasalized from unnasalized vowels, so:

"si" ?to be" or "four" "si~" "fan" or "to salt"
"pi" "to compare" or "to point" "pi~" "flat"
"i" "maternal aunt" "i~" "round"
"ka" "to churn" or "to grind" "ka~" "to dare"
"ui" "to surround" "ui~" "yellow"
"kia" "to send" "kia~" "mirror"
"ua" "language" "ua~" "late"
"tiau" "long thing "tiau~" "uncle by marriage"
e.g.. piece of string??br />
In the Malaysian ?informal spelling?? they sometimes try to indicate this by writing an ?n??*before* the vowel, so ?pi~?? ?kia~??might be spelt ?pni?? ?knia?? There are 3 objections to this practice: a) It looks funny (but this is only a minor objection - one can get used to any convention, if it works properly), b) It doesn?t actually indicate what?s going on because there isn?t really a ?full-n??before the vowel (this may be a slightly more valid objection, linguistically speaking, but in practical terms it doesn?t matter *that* much either, as Hokkien doesn?t have the sound-combinations like ?pn-?? ?kn-??anyway, so there is no danger of confusion, c) It doesn?t work if there is no initial consonant in the word - e.g. for ?round??and ?yellow??above, one cannot write ?ni?? ?nui?? because that *can* cause a lot of confusion (this is a valid objection which makes this solution very poor indeed).

So, that?s why I always indicate nasalization in Hokkien words, using ?~??

So, you are quite right in saying that a lot of words in Mandarin ending in ??ing??match Hokkien words ending in ??iau~??(my variant) or ?iO~??(your variant). This is a well known linguistic phenomenon where full-nasals (??m?? ??n?? ??ng?? after a vowel get ?blurred??so that they just become a nasalization of the vowel. French did the same thing, in evolving from Latin, so that ?nom??is pronounced ?nO~?? ?mont??is pronounced ?mO~?? and ?rang??is pronounced ??[ra~].

So, with your good knowledge of Mandarin, you should be able to see that most (all?) of Mandarin forms of the words in column 1 above will not end in ??n??or ??ng?? whereas most (all?) of the Mandarin forms of the words in column 2 above will end in ??n??or ??ng??

Nokko, one question...

How come you spell the name of your home state ?Terengganu?? Is that the modern/standard Malay spelling? When I was young I think we spelt it ?Trengganu?? I was born in Alor Setar, but in those days we spelt that as ?Alor Star?? Perhaps it?s because (officially), ?tr-??and ?st-??don?t exist as combinations of consonants in Malay, but that is just how ?ter+<vowel>??and ?set+<vowel>??sounded to English ears when said quickly...


Happy New Year to you too dirty Jews and coward Ethnic Chinese Turk!!

ref. www.drlee.com/mongol
Sim.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear Sim Lee,

I am able to view all three of your postings correctly by selecting Unicode (UTF-8) encoding from Internet Explorer's View menu.

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.

[Sim Lee]

Thanks for this info. I hope it helps Nokko! .

Sim

[xxxx]

a word on sabun..... yes i think Spanish and (maybe Portuguese) has the same word for soap too...

[NG ML]

Try finding out from the older generation.

Actually the obscure version of Hokkien you refer to is also spoken in Kelantan (Kota Bharu) and Kuching, with their respective variations. Take for instance, my surname, which means 'yellow'. Its Ooi in Penang, Wee in both Kelantan and Kuching. Incidentally, these places had Chinese settlements earlier than the other inland places in Malaysia.

I am incline to conclude therefore that the later arrivals speak the more original version of Hokkien, close to the Taiwanese and Mainland Minnan, but the Malaysian coastal Hokkiens have been influenced by the Babas who also came from the same province, but hundred of years earlier. This I can attest to as I used to deal with an old Penang contractor who was born in China, Lim Kah Bee, years ago who spoke the Penang version.

But when he realised I spoke Hokkien, he switched with ease to the common version.

[Sim Lee]

Yes, indeed.

I have since revised my views. What I have called "Penang Hokkien" all my life, and thought of as something totally unique to this island, I have now discovered on this forum (and by writing to some academics) that 1) it is spoken in Northern Sumatra and Northern Peninsular Malaysia, 2) it is spoken in various districts on Mainland China.

BTW, can someone fix one of the postings? It makes some corruption so that I cannot see all the threads at one, but have to go to "older thread" one at a time.

[ppk]

i think 'sabun' is either a mutant from dutch or portuguese, or one of the colonial countries.

[JCampbell]

Now come to think of it, I think it really must be a borrowing from Spanish or Portuguese. In Spanish they say 'jabon' (that /s/ became a /h/ at some point), and in Portuguese, it's sabao~, and if you know anything about Portuguese, the ao~ endings are equivalent to -on, such as in English -tion ending words. And not to mention the Italian is 'sapone', which definitely must be closer to the original Latin root.

But I heard that Taiwanese 'satbun' came from the indigenous Formosan languages on the island. Although these languages have words very similar to the Philippines and Indonesia, if 'soap' is a loan-word, then the colonists definitely had strong influence to get all the peoples on different islands to start using the same word.

And why does Mandarin say 'fei-zao'? That doesn't even feel like a Chinese word to me either. Maybe it's a borrowing too. I can't think of any other instance where that character zao 皂 occurs in the language.

[jmh]

Thought I'd add that my mother's family was from the Alor Star area of Kedah and they speak Hokkien which is very similar to what I've heard in Penang. Perhaps this variety of Hokkien is particular to northern Malaysia and not Penang in general?

Cheers,
jmh

[Andrew Yong]

Looking through the Rev Carstair Douglas's Chinese-English Dictionary of the Spoken Language or Vernacular of Amoy, which lists the Amoy, Chinchew, Changchew and Tongan variations, it seems that all the differences which characterise Penang Hokkien are also found in the Hokkien spoken in the Changchew prefecture (although the closest to "ha-mi" I can find is Changchew "sa-mi")

e.g.
Amoy Changchew
png


andrew