Malaysian/Singaporen Hokkien foreign malay words

[aokh1979]

Suka could have been a locally-made Chinese word, I keep an open mind that it may even be classical Chinese because we read it with glottal stop in Penang.

Does anyone know Ikan Parang ? Do you think Parang Hu (Parang Fish) is a Malay laonword or Chinese word ? Ask any Hokkien scholar in Fujian and see what he says. Samseng does sound Chinese to me, and it's connected to 3 sacrifices to God in the ancient time, according to some old folks in Penang. However, it is unknown to Hokkien in China, as far as I check. Maybe some people do, I dunno.

Most Hokkiens in China cannot remember Pah-Sng is "waste". Same thing could have been happening since long time due to influence by foreign culture, eg: Mandarin, other dialects. Has anyone heard of the word Kham-Heng as "bully" ? It's widely used in Penang, it sounds nothing like English or Malay to me. But none of my Hokkien / Teochew friends in China knows what that is.

[Ah-bin]

鐳 can be a another borrowed-sound. I am not sure if "radium" was known to anyone when the character was invented. It meant "jar" for wine.

It certainly wasn't known. The character has been used in the Nanyang for over two hundred years to mean money. In the records of the Chinese Hui-koan in Batavia they used it all the time to mean....money!

If 鐳 means money, then why is it that so many mandarin, minnan and cantonese dictionaries I checked didn't include that meaning ?

Barclay has it (p. 152 "a copper coin")

廈門方言詞典 has it (p. 132 meaning a "copper coin" and "money"

閩南方言詞典 has it too same meaning as above - but I don't have a page reference at the moment.

The answer to your question xng is.......go and buy some better dictionaries! (and also stop trying to look for Hokkien words in Cantonese and Mandarin dictionaries).

As for duit, I have read somewhere that it came from the days when the Hokkiens were using shells for buttons - therefore buttons are liu wa. Shells were considered wealth when there was no usage of precious metals like bronze or copper.

The origin of duit/lui has already been sorted out: from-Dutch-to-Malay-to-Hokkien:

Loan-Words In Indonesian And Malay by Russell Jones - on Google book search

http://books.google.com/books?id=GJ9ShB ... &q&f=false

Go to Page 68 - there it is. I'm sure the author of this book knows his stuff better than someone who thinks the name Peru comes from Hokkien.

As for "sayang" means something dearly loved. There is also a Mandarin version of this if you look at the classifical texts. When somebody says " hai ya, chin sayang". This means generall wasteful, but strictly it means losing some things dear to you. You should try save someting dear, don't you?

References please - "I read it somewhere" doesn't cut it and neither does "classifical texts"

[xng]

Ah Bin and aokh

Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien all come from a common root. All the sounds if they are originally chinese and not borrowed comes from chinese characters which are in the comprehensive Kangxi dictionary. When people migrate to different regions the sound change, when dynasty change then the vocabulary change but the characters still remain the same as it is preserved in written classical chinese.

Why is it people simply refused to accept that these are malay words ? Just because you guys have been speaking it since young and refused to change back to the original ? When a borrowed word is borrowed into local tongue, the sound is modified to suit 'local' tongue. It is usually not the same as the original sound most of the time eg.

Suka (sanskrit) -> Suka (malay) -> Sukak (msian hokkien)

?(Arab) -> Bazaar (English) -> Pasar (malay) -> Pasak/Pasat (msian hokkien)

Lorry (English) -> Lori (malay) -> Lo li (msian hokkien) (notice the missing 'r' sound)

? (Dutch) -> Duit (malay) -> Lui (msian hokkien) (Sorry, I haven't asked what's the original sound for money from a dutch guy yet)


Suka means joy in sanskrit and duka means sorrow in sanskrit in which the meaning was changed to like and unhappy in malay.

The original word for 'like' in hokkien is Ka Ee which has a meaningful chinese character too. Putian Hing hua uses Ko Ee (as hing hua originated from Quanzhou minnan). Vowel A is usually changed to vowel O in Hing hua.

Msian Hing Hua also uses 'Su kaa' being influenced from malay too.

[xng]

Barclay has it (p. 152 "a copper coin")

廈門方言詞典 has it (p. 132 meaning a "copper coin" and "money"

閩南方言詞典 has it too same meaning as above - but I don't have a page reference at the moment.

The answer to your question xng is.......go and buy some better dictionaries! (and also stop trying to look for Hokkien words in Cantonese and Mandarin dictionaries).

As far as I know, copper coin is called 銅錢 in both cantonese and mandarin. I have yet to ask my hokkien relatives in china what they are called there.

And didn't you say that Lui is borrowed from Malay which itself borrowed from Dutch ?

If Lui is a hokkien word, then why is it that those in China/Taiwan who have no nanyang relatives don't know what lui means ? They all use 'Cinn' 錢.

The dictionaries that I used are from world renowned HK university and UCLA university and another best selling taiwanese dictionary, I am sure they have better researchers than those I haven't heard of such as barclay.

You seem to forget that Hokkien, cantonese and mandarin all come from the same root written language (except for loan words). The beauty of chinese language is that each chinese character has an intrinsic meaning.

[xng]

鑘

鐳 can be a another borrowed-sound. I am not sure if "radium" was known to anyone when the character was invented. It meant "jar" for wine. Let's not forget that Mandarin (or Cantonese, etc) has tons of 借音字 everywhere. Today, 胜 is the 簡化字 of 勝 that means "victory" but in ancient time, 胜 is "uncooked meat". You can tell from the radicals. Both, have nothing in common.

From the character, it definitely looks like it is a borrowed sound. The Gold radical means it belong to the metal group. The thunder character is borrowed for its sound. I think the modern meaning is 'radium' but the older meaning seems to point to 'metal element'. What does kangxi dictionary shows ?

[Andrew]

The dictionaries that I used are from world renowned HK university and UCLA university and another best selling taiwanese dictionary, I am sure they have better researchers than those I haven't heard of such as barclay.

Oh dear.

In any case, lui is definitely Dutch via Malay - it is in Barclay (1923) but not in Douglas (1873), and Barclay includes one of the phrases as "sù-kú-lui", 1/4 cent. No-one here, except Loono, is arguing that it is a Chinese word.

You seem to forget that Hokkien, cantonese and mandarin all come from the same root written language (except for loan words). The beauty of chinese language is that each chinese character has an intrinsic meaning.

What is the intrinsic meaning of the following characters?

萬

來

無

[Ah-bin]

I am sure they have better researchers than those I haven't heard of such as barclay.

Oh dear oh dear.... Lú siá án-ne-khoán kā-liáu forum ê lâng khoàⁿ liáu tō TSC (tōa-siaⁿ chhiò = LOL)

The dictionaries that I used are from world renowned HK university and UCLA university and another best selling taiwanese dictionary,

Names please..... UCLA...you mean the website? That's a website, not a proper dictionary.

You seem to forget that Hokkien, cantonese and mandarin all come from the same root written language (except for loan words). The beauty of chinese language is that each chinese character has an intrinsic meaning.

No spoken language "comes from" any script. "Written language" is just a less accurate way to express "script". "Chinese language" doesn't mean the same thing as "Chinese script". The languages can exist separately from the script. Xng, writing this sort of thing just shows you have no idea what you're talking about. Come back and talk about this after you have spent a while looking at the readings here:

http://www.pinyin.info/

Then you can have an intellegent discussion.

[xng]

Sorry, I don't argue with someone who is sarcastic , unintelligent, highly inflated ego and just plain stubborn! This is the first time I hear that written and spoken language can have different meaning, ucla is not a dictionary but a website etc.

Case closed. I will not be replying to you anymore, Ah Bin !

You guys can still fool yourself that those are hokkien words but most people in china and taiwan won't understand what you are saying. So your so-called hokkien words are indeed quite 'hokkien'.

[SimL]

Hi xng,

Please don't get upset about this issue.

I think (as Andrew also pointed out) practically everyone except tangoloonokongo also thinks most of these are Malay words (either really native, or borrowed from Dutch, Sanskrit, etc), borrowed into Malayan/Singaporean Hokkien, and that some of them then got taken back to the Chinese mainland and/or Taiwan (the few ones which Mainlanders or Taiwanese recognize, and which are sometimes quoted as 'evidence' that they are native sinitic words). Aokh remains perhaps slightly more open about the possibilty of them being borrowed in the other direction, but not in a dogmatic way (which I think is fine).

The main area where I disagree with you is that you perceive my attachment to Malay or English loan words as a "refusal to change back to the original". It's not that at all. I've tried to explain this a number of times, I'll do it one more time. I speak a particular variety of Hokkien called Penang Hokkien. That variety has a number of Malay loanwords, I use them because they are the natural words in that variety. When I speak to Taiwanese, I should be conscious that these are not known to them, and I should learn the words which they use, and use those. Taiwanese too have Japanese loan words in their Taiwanese. They use them because they are the natural words in that variety. When they speak to me, they should be conscious that these are not known to me, and they should try and avoid using them. Alternatively, I could be open, and try and learn the Japanese loanwords and they could be open and learn the Malay loanwords. Not to use them in my/their own everyday conversations (that would be ridiculous), but in order be able to understand the other party, when the other party is speaking in a 'natural way'.

You are very attached to a model where there is a "true", "proper" form of a language. This position is a well known one, and is subscribed to by 99% of the human population. But linguists and lay people genuinely interested in language have for the last 50 years developed the "descriptive" model, where one looks at how a language is used, by people who really use it, and then try to analyse that (which is complex and fascinating enough), instead of spending their energy telling the speakers that this or that form is 'wrong'.

I wrote several months back that I thought that being a "purist/prescriptivist" vs. being a "descriptivist" is probably just a deeply ingrained personality trait, and no amount of discussion is going to change that. My repeating the same old ideas and arguments here is not to try and change you, but to try to give you some insight into the contrasts between my position and yours.

[xng]

Hi xng,

I speak a particular variety of Hokkien called Penang Hokkien. That variety has a number of Malay loanwords, I use them because they are the natural words in that variety.

Your argument is flawed. In Msia/Singapore, most people ie. 98% don't know that they are using Malay loanwords unless they have been to China/Taiwan or seen my list in internet forum as you guys have.

If you don't believe me, just stop any stranger or friend and ask them to analyse their sentences and identify which are malay words , I am sure they will tell you they are ALL hokkien words. Then when you ask them, what is the equivalent hokkien word for that malay word, they will not know ! That's the danger of using malay words when it is passed through many generations, they don't know the original word.

The same situation happened with me until I mix around with China people and watch taiwanese shows.

Eg. in Penang, they say 'batu' for rock but in Klang, they still maintain the original saying 'cio tau'. How are the Penang hokkien going to communicate with the Klang hokkien effectively ? So isn't it better to say the original hokkien version ?

English loanwords are different because they are more easily identified eg. aunty, uncle. Taiwanese uses some japanese words but they are very, very minimal eg. japanese equivalent to aunty, uncle. They are much, much less than the malay loanwords in Penang.

Furthermore, in Malaysia, there are many Malay educated chinese who throws in too many English words into their hokkien or cantonese that it is not considered hokkien or cantonese anymore but rather Hokglish/cantoglish. Believe me, I've seen many of these people in real life.

They are subconsiously using 60% english, 10% malay, 30% hokkien. They are essentially using English vocabulary with chinese grammar and some hokkien words thrown in to make the grammar simpler.