18th Century Batavian Hokkien records

[Ah-bin]

Finally got hold of a copy of the Minutes of the Board Meetings of the Chinese Council of Batavia (Chineesche Raad) 公安簿 to peruse, the first volume deals with the years 1787 to 1791 and is mostly written in a type of documentary Chinese, what is interesting however, are the number of Hokkien words that turn up in the text, especially when speech is being quoted. These words are glossed at the end of the book by Leonard Blussé and Wu Fengbin. Many common characters and phrases appear in these texts that are still found today. Here are just a few random ones:

厝稅 Chhù-soe - rent

公班衙 - kong-ban-ge• - meaning the Duch East India Company, probably from Dutch compangie. Some Penangites stil know this and use it for “government”.

鈸 – boat for ten lui (if this appears so early so far south can we still say it is a Thai loan?

財副 – châi-hû an accountant

字 – glossed as chóa and meaning a certificate

生理 seng-lí – business

無鐳 bô-lui (1789) if used this far back why do so many people get their knickers in a twist over it? I’m sure it predates many other newer words that people don’t bat an eyelid at.

Then there are some others I have never heard before, these are the really interesting ones:

貓黎 ngiau-lê? meaning a short box or cabinet (Chinese gloss is 短櫃), haven't been able to track this word down so far, maybe ba-le?

出婚字chhut-hun-chóa = certificate of permission to marry

交寅簿kau-eng-po•(pok?) = a marriage register

Another interesting one was the character for "nia", as in a-nia, written {雅/女}

I never get much time to do this sort of thing nowadays, and this is all the detail i can manage at the moment, sorry!

[amhoanna]

Bravo, Kadri! This proves that at least some of these Malay loanwords were already established over 200 yrs ago. Cin chùbī.

I don't think this has been brought up on this forum in my time, but am I correct in thinking that in PngHkn "poa̍t" means 0.10 ringgit, while "phoat" means Thai baht? The two terms are clearly related to the Siamese word "baat21". Exactly how remains a mystery to me.