What to Revive?

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Yeleixingfeng,

Looks like I need to clarify what I mean by ‘all’.

At the top-most strata, ‘all’ would mean accepting and embracing the existence of the major ‘ancestral’ variants of Hokkien, i.e. 廈門 È-Múiⁿ, 漳州 Ciăng Cīu and 泉州 Cǔan Cīu, and their sub-dialects. From a pronunciation standpoint, that means, e.g. acknowledging that 火 can be he, hoe or hǝ, respectively. From a lexical standpoint, that means, e.g. acknowledging that 兩搗 nǑⁿ tâu and 兩擺 nng pâi mean the same thing. The parallels in British vs. American English would be the differences in pronouncing “can't/chance/past”, and knowing that the boot or trunk of the car mean the same thing. That is what I mean by ‘learn them all’, i.e. to be aware of the differences.

The next strata is where it gets complicated. The overseas variants of Hokkien would have undergone local influences (and here, even Taiwan is not spared, with the absorption of some Japanese loan-words, e.g. obasan for ‘old lady’). Where does one draw the line? This is very subjective. My personal background and bias makes me inclined to accept aokh1979's rule-of-thumb (ref: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6276&p=29526#p29526) - whatever Malay loanwords that his grandmother knew and used, e.g. batu, tapi, are acceptable. Now, these I would accept at the local stratum of use, i.e. it is okay for Penangites to use these terminologies amongst themselves. But when speaking to non-Penangites, it is only proper that the common terms 石頭 chioq-thau and 但是 tan-si be used.

The final stratum is the most contentious, and the one that I personally do not subscribe to (but that’s just me), i.e. the injudicious borrowings from English, and the adulterations and simplifications that took place in the past three decades or so. So, boh-meaning, boh-fair, actually, horr, etc. are not acceptable to me. And especially not that ghastly word ‘kapster’, i.e. someone who kap-siau-kap-phi (chatterbox/tale-tattler) . No ‘soap’, either. One level of borrowing, i.e. sabun, is enough, thank you. And if you ask me, I think it would be nice if Penang Hokkiens also learn 胰皂 i-co (man, I love that word - thank you, 檳城新報!) and 肥皂 pui-co, too, in order to restore some semblance of a Sinological link and a means to sensibly write it in Chinese characters.

This topic is, again, one that is difficult to answer. The reality is that languages, if left to take their natural course, are in a constant state of flux. Being a descriptive linguist, Sim would advocate a que sera sera point of view - which I respect, because he is embracing the reality of things. I, on the other hand, being the stubborn idealist, tend to adopt the prescriptive approach. Hokkien, with all its colourful variants, was at its best when our forefathers brought it across to Formosa and the South Sea, and before the buggers in the North went and flattened its birthplaces with Mandarin. Why spoil a good thing when it managed to escape China unscathed just in time? We should try to gel that linguistic snapshot in stasis, and not desecrate it any more than Mandarin is desecrating the other dialects in China today. But that’s me.

My Uthopian dream: aokh1979 and Andrew (representing Penang Sin-Kheq 新客 Hokkien), Sim (representing Penang Baba Hokkien), amhoanna (representing Taiwanese Hokkien), niuc (representing Bagansiapiapi Hokkien), siamiwako (representing Philippines Hokkien), Ah-bin (God, I think you know them all!) and all the rest of us, meet at a Hokkien fraternity gathering of sorts. We all speak our respective creoles of Hokkien, but respecting the unspoken rule of the lowest common denominator. And amidst the babble of the different creoles of Hokkien, we all understand each other well, and delightfully share in that fraternity.

And standing all around us are a bunch of Mandarin-only sad sods, scratching their heads in utter bewilderment.

[Yeleixingfeng]

Sorry, just a short reply.

I am from a different generation than most of you, so perhaps only I see the problem.

You accept what your grandparents understand because you grew up in that environment, which implants in your concept that what they say is natural, thus conceivable. That applies to the next generation too. Our parents, (your generation, not you) speaks of /ti-vi/, /gos-tan/, /den/(then), /so/, /investment/, /financial crisis/ etc. To us, those are naturally Hokkien, registering under the same level as 'sat-bun' in your world. IMHO, you accepting 'sat-bun' but not 'mi-ning'(meaning) is selfishly unthoughtful to us. Also, it would be selfishly unthoughtful of us to my next generation to accept 'mi-ning' but not, I imagine, 'you'. These margins of distinguishing between the strata would be challenged every single generation, and soon Hokkien would be so dilute that learning it is a waste of time. That is why I don't agree with even 'sat-bun', even if it portrays locality.

Then again, that would be harshly stubborn. That is why I am asking for your help.

EDIT: Come to think of it, my stand is kinda similar to xng's argument in Mark's link. And, I have seen how he has been bombarded. So, if you are gonna slaughter me, just post the word 'nonsense' and spare me the sarcasm (Pls... *big beady eyes*), I will know to hold my tongue next time. >.<

[Mark Yong]

夜雷星蜂： 汝好！

Fret not. This is a Forum, and everyone is entitled to voice their opinions, as long as they do it politely, and do not force their stances on others.

Now, to address your points...

Firstly, I don’t think I am quite old enough to be in your parents’ generation, so let’s go easy on that ‘your generation, my generation’ thing.

Secondly, I am not a native Hokkien speaker, I did not grow up in Penang, and neither do my parents and grandparents come from there. So, what I have ‘accepted’ as part of the Penang Hokkien lexicon are not what I have naturally grown up with, but what I viewed as accepted norms while I was living there.

Next, I should qualify that what I accept is not necessarily what I like. I did not say I liked the word sabun in Hokkien - for the record, I don’t. But I reluctantly accepted it, even though the evidence clearly points to it being a foreign loanword. Why? Because for as long as I have heard Hokkien spoken throughout my life, I have not known of any other way to say ‘soap’, at least until very recently when 肥皂 pui-co and 胰皂 i-co came into the picture (and even then, I personally have never heard either said aloud).

Honestly, if I had my way as a prescriptive linguist, I would purge Hokkien of all non-Sinitic loanwords, keeping only words that can be legitimately written using Chinese characters (and while I am at it, why not have all Chinese schools in Penang, Medan, Bagansiapapi, Singapore and Philippines teach exclusive in Literary Chinese using Hokkien pronunciations?). But is that even possible? Where do I draw the line? Simple example: baq (meat) is not 肉; that character read as jiok. But the evidence shows that baq has been a non-Sinitic borrowing into Hokkien since time immemorial. amhoanna has already stated the same case for ta-pO (man) in a previous thread.

I know the words 電視機 tian-si-ki, 退車 the-chia, 了 liau and 所以 sO-i right from the word go, so I have no use for the unnecessary borrowings /ti-vi/, /gos-tan/, /den/(then) and /so/, respectively. And I know that I can use the correct forms in Penang without being looked upon as an imbecile. Regrettably, 肥皂 pui-co and 胰皂 i-co came in too late into my Hokkien-speaking life, and has totally fallen out of the knowledge sphere of the Penang Hokkien speakers. Would I want them to learn those correct forms? Of course! But can I make them understand me today if I said 肥皂 pui-co and 胰皂 i-co today, in the same way that I naturally say 電視機 tian-si-ki instead of TV?

Honestly, 夜雷星蜂 (and I am not being sarcastic here), if you could successfully convert Penang Hokkien speakers from sabun back to 肥皂 pui-co and 胰皂 i-co, I would be the first to come to Penang, shake your hand and give you a big hug.

[Yeleixingfeng]

So, what I have ‘accepted’ as part of the Penang Hokkien lexicon are not what I have naturally grown up with, but what I viewed as accepted norms while I was living there.

Er, that is exactly what I meant by generation. Yours are probably aged around 20-30, eh? Mine is about 10-20, a whole ten years of difference. For example, and also dengan dukacitanya saya maklumkan bahawa...

無公平 has just recently went obsolete in our generation. We now use im1-ba2, from imbalance - English. This phenomenon started 2 years ago, and within that 2 years, no one says 無公平 in school anymore. I have seen only a few 20+ adult use it. That is how I define generation. And, you clearly are from the 20-30 years group when you were in Penang, right? >.< But, yeah, I don't think you are as old as my parents.

I don't quite think you got the whole meaning in my previous post. I was saying, in your case perhaps, that ten years later, someone like you could very well fly to Penang. The Hokkien they would get exposed to, I imagine, would be full of ti-vi, /den/ and /so/. Thus, that someone like you would perceive those as typical of PGHK, and think that 了後 for 'then' is archaic, albeit genuine, thus too late to revert back.

This would go on and on and on even if someone really does something to stop it, because what is Hokkien and what is not differs from generation to generation.

And honestly, in my and my father's generation, saying the-chia would get you confused stares already. Aokh can further prove this.

[SimL]

Hi Yeleixingfeng and Mark,

I agree with Yeleixingfeng's point that language is in a state of constant change - even within a single community, over the generations. And because language is always changing, if language communities are separated by space (with the resultant reduction in communication) and by "governments" (S.E. coastal Fujian, Taiwan, Malay(si)a, Singapore, the Philippines, Burma being administratively separate for much of the 20th century), then the forms are guaranteed to diverge. As a descriptive linguist, I just accept this. Mark acknowledges this too.

However, these facts in no way undermine Mark's position and what he's trying to do with Hokkien. Sure, we now have locally borrowed words in each variant, and sure, they hinder communication between these communities. But, there is nothing to stop the (re-)forging of a common form. The "natural process" may be divergence, but humans can intervene and make it go the other way, if there is enough of a need (and collective will) to do it. This happened with German - up to 1500-1600 just a motley collection of "dialects", certainly far more diverse than the situation we see in Hokkien today***. Out of this variation, a common language - "Standard German" was forged, by poets, playwrights, authors, university professors, intellectuals, educational authorities, governments, from the mid-16th century onwards (the process was more or less completed by the mid 19th century, though differences remain to this day, of course).

***: Variation in German dialects. Bavarian and the Hamburg dialect are far further apart than Teochew, Cuanciu, and Ciangciu.

The difference between the two scenarios was of course that a lot more people and institutions were behind the German initiative than for Hokkien at the moment. But there's no "theoretical objection" or inherent impossibility in Mark's desired process (in contrast to the inherent impossibility of stopping language change).

[Mark Yong]

You’re joking, right... im1-ba2? Okay, that’s way too much for me.

In previous threads, I mentioned that during my 6 years in Penang, there were various sources of learning Penang Hokkien, which conveniently fell into three main groups (or strata, if you like) of increasing complexity/purity of the Hokkien employed:

Level 1: Interacting with colleagues and vendors at work.
Among colleagues at Hewlett-Packard, the Hokkien spoken was invariably mixed with a significant amount of English and some Mandarin words, mostly due to the techno-commercial terminologies required. Still, it was my starting point for learning the fundamentals of the dialect, and I did learn the Hokkien terms for some technical stuff (which I have listed in another thread). With the vendors, the Hokkien was a bit purer, and I suspect it was mainly because they were mostly Chinese-education.

Level 2: Interacting with friends’ parents, my regular car mechanic at 五條路 GŎ Tĭau LŎ (McCallum St. Ghaut), and the middle-aged chaps like 老張 LĂu Tioⁿ whom I would bump into during thrice-weekly hikes up Bukit Jambul.
At this level, the Hokkien employed was more pure, i.e. less intrusions of English loanwords. It was at this level that I learnt a large stockpile of words for everyday items and concepts.

Level 3. The Leng Nann Hung Chuen (嶺南洪拳) martial arts academy in Pinhorn Road.
This took my Hokkien to yet another higher level. The Hokkien used here was even purer, with almost no intrusion of English, partly because the people I interacted with spoke little English to being with, and attempts to use English would actually be frowned upon as being somewhat uppity. In some instances, the spoken language employed was far more literal, with the Sinological links becoming very apparent.

It is interesting how I would take the words and phrases that I learnt at each level, and tried to apply them to the level below. For instance, I learnt the word 練拳套 lĭan kŭn thò (learn a set of movements in Chinese boxing) at the martial arts academy, i.e. Level 3. I said it to my friend’s mother (Level 2), who spoke Hokkien and little else, and the term totally baffled her (but that said, I learnt the Hokkien words for a whole plethora of words for food and kitchen utensils from her).

So, what did I do with this motley of sources? I took the best of what each level had to offer. From Level 1, I absorbed all the factory-related technical terms, 录孔 lāk khāng, 磨鐵 bŭa-thìq, 鹹水鋼 kíam cûi kng, etc. From my friend’s mother came 紅棗 ăng-cô, 杞子 kī-cî, 洋參鬚 iŎⁿ-sŏm-chîu, 木【】 bòk-kèng, etc. And from the martial arts academy, I grilled myself to speak lexically-and-grammatically-accurate Hokkien, with more literal words thrown in from time to time.

And having done that, I decided to identify what I saw as correct Penang Hokkien as that of Level 3. And I would endeavour to speak Level 3 Penang Hokkien as much as possible, unless it was clear to me that a Level 1 speaker I was communicating with could not cope (in a previous thread, I mentioned that I used the words 註册 cû-chĔq with a friend (I asked her when her marriage registration was going to be), and she gave me a blank stare, shook her head, and said “不會曉 b’ĕh-hîau!”). The Level 1’s may have seen me as being pretentious, especially considering that most of them knew I was not local, but I didn’t care.

The point I am trying to make is that all the three groups described above co-existed during my time in Penang (1998-2003). It is not as if Level 3 supplanted Level 2, and then Level 2 supplanted Level 1 over a period of time. Though, as you rightly pointed out, one day it will be the case if something is not done about it. With im1-ba2 and the like now in the picture (you know, you really made me spew blood there), I may return to Penang in, say, 5 years’ time, and find that even what I knew as ‘Level 1 Penang Hokkien’ will by then be totally indistinguishable from some hotpot of English and Mandarin, supplemented with some Hokkien grammatical particles here-and-there (sort of like Japanese sentences where Kanji is used to write the nouns and verb/adjective stems, and supplemented with hiragana for the grammatical particles).

I am aware that there are Penang Hokkien classes being run by the MacAlister Road YMCA. However, from what I understand (and perhaps Ah-bin and aokh1979 can provide some insight here, based on their interactions with Tan Choon Hoe), the standard at which it is taught is to the level of ‘street conversation’. While it is undeniably a very good start, I believe that inasfar as preserving the dialect and pushing it to the forefront as a true working language in Penang, it is not good enough. You must be able to describe just about any object or concept with it, and you must be able to write* it. Otherwise it will always be seen as “that rojak local Penang creole that is fun to speak now-and-then”. Have you noticed how, whenever I post words or phrases in Hokkien, I always try to do them in both 正體字 Traditional Chinese Characters followed by Romanisation with tone marks (unless I do not know the Chinese characters, or am not confident of the tone)?

To cite the tired and broken record example of Hong Kong: Cantonese is not a street creole there. Ignoring the crass English borrowings and horrid loan characters for the moment, it is the established spoken language with a comprehensive vocabulary that stands on its own terms, in official news broadcasts (I know Malaysia’s FM98.8 does the 9:00pm news broadcast in Hokkien followed by Teochew at 9:10pm. But c’mon... honestly, how many Penangites listen to it vs. the Mandarin news? And have you noticed the number of mistakes and stutters the newsreaders make? Of late, even the Cantonese version is not much better...) and even in the court of law. It can be used to read and write Chinese text unambiguously.

* On the subject of writing Hokkien, the regular Forumers will, no doubt, be aware of my strong convictions that Chinese characters and a predominantly Literary Chinese model a’la the 檳城新報 Penang Sin Poe should be the way to go. It is neither the place or my intention in this thread to argue for, and much less push, that case forward. Nor is it my intention to exclude those who either do not read Chinese or do not support the idea of its use in writing Hokkien. To cite an objective example, the Koreans and Vietnamese did away with Chinese characters, but their respective resultant written languages are well-established and effective vehicles for writing their own language. Of course, I have my own opinions on whether Chinese characters should be re-introduced into Korean and Vietnamese, but I think I’ll hold my tongue on that one.

Have I now adequately addressed the concerns you raised in your thread’s posts?

[Yeleixingfeng]

Mark and SimL,

Thanks for both of your detailed replies. Just to mention that this could very well be my last post in this few months, unless something does interests me.

Now, in regards to the topic,

I understand your points now, and agree fully with it.

The problem now is the education system - something beyond every NGO's hands. Even Mandarin faces such challenges, not to mention Hokkien. We are taught in English for Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Additional Mathematics, taught in Malay for History, Moral, Accounts, Economy and Trading (perdagangan). Take Chemistry for example. We would ask, "可以借我Periodic Table嗎?" instead of 元素表.
That is considered very mild. Look at this, in Hokkien:
Pure metals 咧, 伊 ductile, malleable, lustrous, high density, high melting 共 boiling point, 復是 good conductor of heat and electricity. Ductile 咧, 是講伊會be drawn徦變wire. But 咧, pure metals 無焉爾 marketable, 因為伊過頭soft了; so, 挴有 other metals 來 disrupt 伊仒 orderly arrangement. (....)

In such a context, Sinitic languages obviously are nothing but nuisances. They have absolutely no reason to exist, and there is no way to change the situation.

Next, why don't we just adopt Mandarin grammar? I don't see much grammar difference between Mandarin and Hokkien. Of course, we shall replace 這, 别, 那 with 此, 莫, 彼 etc, and I personally suggest の for 的.

I know many will get pretty angry at me. Haha. Anyway, we are left with no choice. Choosing any other type of orthography would marginalise us from the Chinese world - books, movie subtitles and script for communication.

By the way, Mark, send me your thoughts on Vietnamese and Korean when you are free. ^^ I'm really interested.

[Ah-bin]

Pure metals 咧, 伊 ductile, malleable, lustrous, high density, high melting 共 boiling point, 復是 good conductor of heat and electricity. Ductile 咧, 是講伊會be drawn徦變wire. But 咧, pure metals 無焉爾 marketable, 因為伊過頭soft了; so, 挴有 other metals 來 disrupt 伊仒 orderly arrangement. (....)

Actually, this happened centuries ago in English, because people used Latin and Greek for Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics and Additional Mathematics, History, Moral, Accounts, Economy and Trading

Of all the names of those subjects, only "trading" is really English, all the others are ultimately Latin or Greek!

The outcome of hundreds of years of book-learning in Latin and Greek has been that of all the supposed "English" words in the "Hokkien" quote only

high
melting
good
of
heat
and
be drawn
soft
so
other

and the plural -s are actually English. all the rest are foreign borrowings, mostly from Latin.

[Ah-bin]

By the way, Mark, send me your thoughts on Vietnamese and Korean when you are free. ^^ I'm really interested.

Perhaps you would be interested in this essay about the relationship between Chinese and Vietnamese?

http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf4/alves2001what.pdf

[amhoanna]

Interesting thread, yet again.

I believe in keeping everything and using everything too ... to a point. Everything that was in any dialect of Hokkien (or Teochew!) before "outside contact"? Keep it. Let the forms duke it out amongst themselves. "Internationally popular" loanwords used for new concepts, like satbủn? Keep it.

Much of what Yelei describes is actually code-switching. Why the loans for concepts that already have one or many existing words in Hoklo? Reminds me of lots of people under 50 in Taipak (Taibei) who like to use one-syllable English words in place of perfectly good Mandarin words. Nobody is doing it in Hoklo, at least not yet. But these loans are just symptoms of something else. Look to the disease, not the symptoms.

I, on the other hand, being the stubborn idealist, tend to adopt the prescriptive approach. Hokkien, with all its colourful variants, was at its best when our forefathers brought it across to Formosa and the South Sea, and before the buggers in the North went and flattened its birthplaces with Mandarin. Why spoil a good thing when it managed to escape China unscathed just in time? We should try to gel that linguistic snapshot in stasis, and not desecrate it any more than Mandarin is desecrating the other dialects in China today. But that’s me.

Yes! This "original" Hoklo is the Hoklo that is itself most. It IS Hoklo. But I would tend to include any "innovations" based on this original Hoklo. Words like kiảmcúikng and cng (as in "cng góa ẻ chia") are innovations that Hoklo could have and would've come up with in the best of scenarios. These words also prove that any language, spoken Hoklo included, has the resources w/i itself to interpret and interact with a changing world! Whether they're borrowed or not is not relevant... And, if the farflung Hoklophone communities are going to talk to each other in Hoklo again someday, the most practical solution would also be to use an "original" type of Hoklo, i.e. the common denominator elements.

That is why I don't agree with even 'sat-bun', even if it portrays locality.

I have not known of any other way to say ‘soap’

I like pure Hoklo as much as anybody. I guess for that reason I would also be against any kind of Literary Chinese-centered effort to clean up Hoklo. Satbủn is not a loan in the same way as "den"...

BTW in TW there's another way to say SOAP, tẻkhơ. But only satbủn seems to have made it into the mainstream.

I see Teochew loanwords as a class apart. They fit into Banlamese seamlessly, and enrich it by giving more meaning to existing words. Sino-Japanese, Lit Chinese, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc. and potentially Vietnamese also give Hoklo a kind of loanword that is loaned not phonetically, but based on underlying kanji. These kind of loans fit into Hoklo seamlessly as well and enrich Hoklo in most cases. The ones that loan phonetically yield less nutrition. I'm talking about TW Hoklo sèse' (THANKS) or PgHK kớnciong (NERVOUS) or however it's pronounced. The Mandarin ones can also trigger code-switching.

Malay, Pinoy, Formosan, Austronesian in general, and Spanish words fit Hoklo phonologically, but don't enrich it by thickening the "web of interactions" between existing words. In some cases, though, there are age-old interactions in effect.

English loanwords don't fit Hoklo phonologically, don't do anything for existing words, and for many speakers also trigger code-switching into English. To be avoided at all costs.

And honestly, in my and my father's generation, saying the-chia would get you confused stares already. Aokh can further prove this.

The TWese say bakkhu', from Japanese, ultimately from English BACK.

and all the rest of us, meet at a Hokkien fraternity gathering of sorts. We all speak our respective creoles of Hokkien, but respecting the unspoken rule of the lowest common denominator. And amidst the babble of the different creoles of Hokkien, we all understand each other well, and delightfully share in that fraternity.

Yeah, let's just hope we don't all just speak English "for comfort". Possibly surrounded by head-scratching, Mandarin-speaking sad sods yet. But, if we powered past some upfront kind of weirdness, we sure could make Mark's dream a reality.

What I've seen lately in Vietnam has been kind of mind-bending. Will share sometime.