Malaysian/Singaporen Hokkien foreign malay words

[niuc]

Jambu is liám-bū in my variant (j -> l/d), very close to Taiwanese 蓮霧.

Reading news, The Carnal Prayer Mat mentioned by Ah-bin apparently is a new film now in HK. I was told that many court officials (官 kuaⁿ) during imperial times had soft manner, even effeminate and engaging in orgies etc, therefore the term a-kuaⁿ for transvestites.

[amhoanna]

Thanks, Niuc. The tone contours would be high-rising & low-level, right?

Sim, would the PgHK form be jiámbū (high-rising, low-level)?

I was confused throughout much of my last stay on Bali: why did all supposedly liànbū-flavored stuff taste like pa̍tlá (jambu batu?)?

It's interesting that speakers of "j --> l" dialects turn j to l in loans as well, "synchronically". But I think there are other examples. A lot of TWese pronounce the voiced interdental /th/ sound in English as [l]. As a teacher I always tell them [z] or [d]/[t] would be a much softer landing.

I notice from Wikipedia that Balinese also has /ny-/ instead of /j-/ in its "jambu" cognate.

[SimL]

Hi amhoanna,

Sim, would the PgHK form be jiámbū (high-rising, low-level)?

As both tone2 and tone3 sandhi to tone1 in PgHk, I can't be sure whether it 'is' "jam2-bu7" or "jam3-bu7" ('is' in quotes because it isn't any tone really, as it's not a sinitic syllable).

It's quite a nuisance to me, that in my variant: tone3 and tone7 have the same contour; tone2 and tone3 sandhi to tone1, and tone 1 and tone5 sandhi to tone7 and tone3 respectively (which are indistinguishable).

This means that even if I have a genuine sinitic compound, if I don't know the first syllable in isolation, then I always have 2 choices for it's non-sandhi tone. I.e. if I hear a sandhi tone1, the non-sandhi could be tone2 or tone3; if I hear a sandhi tone3/7, the non-sandhi could be tone1 or tone5, or even tone7 (if the sandhi tone is indeed a tone3).

BTW, I usually say "jam-bu" rather than "jiam-bu", though I don't think I'd notice or feel it 'wrong' if I heard "jiam-bu".

[niuc]

Yes, Amhoanna, tone contours would be high-rising & low-level for liám-bū; or to be more precise, in my variant it is low level (lia-) then high-rising (-am) & low level (bu). My RT/sandhi for T2 is not T1 but [T7+T1]; similarly, ST of T5 is [T3+T1].

English /th/ e.g. three is /t/ in Singlish, so same as tree.

[amhoanna]

Coēsiā ta̍kgê

[Yeleixingfeng]

Reading through the posts, I have decided to say something for xng. >.< Nonetheless, the followings are my humble observation nia. It should be subjected to some doubt. Please keep this in mind throughout the post, despite my declarative tone. Haha.

Indeed, as stated by xng, a lot of my friends are oblivious to the Malay borrows in Hokkien*, like lui(duit), ga-lo(gaduh), kau-eng(kahwin)** and ciah-hong (makan angin).

* not sure about the previous generation
** some say it is 媾姻. I don't know. Haha.

And, we should not deny that we are wrong to use them, that these expressions are wrong. (Wrong means being different from the standard - I don't know which variant it should be based on, but Malaysian Hokkien seems to be too mixed to be the model. And, admitting it being wrong does not mean we have to change it verbally. We can just 將錯就錯. After all, these tsho3 ultimately defines our variant, makes it stand out. ^^)

This is parallel to the condition of Mandarin in Malaysia. We use 醬 for the abbreviation of (這樣) all the time, written and verbal. We know that it is wrong - but do you see anyone changing it? Only the news reporters and the radio deejays, whom I think actually should. Other examples include 嘛 and 咯, from Hokkien - 你要嘛去咯, and also meng-mong 夢, feng-fong 蜂. It defines Malaysian Mandarin - but we know it is seriously wrong. Besides, I am against any professor who demands that we speak Pekingly. Eww.

In regards to the communication issue,
My dad had Taiwanese visitors a few weeks back. Well, they sat and had dinner, blabla. And, (to my surprise as well), they talked - in Mandarin - about Hokkien. It all started when my dad let slip of a word 吃風 (chi4-fong1) that the Taiwanese did not understand, and translated to ciah-hong to get the same result. And, they tried to converse in Hokkien, but to no avail. My dad is a kin-cio-lang wannabe; he seldom watches Taiwanese drama, thus ignorant of the pronunciation differences like ly-lu(汝).
Many of my friends, who are fluent in Hokkien but hates Taiwanese drama for their monotonous plots >.<, do not understand keng-tsat. (I'm not saying keng-tsat is correct. I am forever with 補快 until I get something better. >.<) They find my long lectures of the difference between Taiwanese and Hokkien soporific too - how saddening.

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

Xng was wrong to label his sources as being better, but I think I get his meaning. He was trying to say, that if Malaysia has a particular expression obsolete/absent in other variants, then we should acknowledge that it is wrong, and not use it in our daily writing.

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

By aokh.

I don't know about the etymology of 鐳, as I used to think it was a recently created 形聲字 for radium, like 鋁 for aLUminium. But 鑘 as sword could relate to what I found on the internet:
http://www.g12e.com/html/5/292/331/2006 ... 22-1.shtml
It shows that in Yan, small figures of 刀 were used as currency.
Anyway, xng was saying that if only Hokkien dictionaries have that particular expression, then it could very possibly be that the character was created specially for Hokkien to record a foreign borrow. Thus he draw upon Cantonese and Mandarin lexicographical resources to distinguish whether or not a Hokkien term should be promoted as the standard term so that other dialect-speakers can also understand the written text originally meant to be read colloquially in Hokkien. That is the difference between 錢 and 鑘. Writing 錢, the idea is clear to other dialect-speakers; writing 鑘 however is not.


So..
Obviously I can't say if you guys have spent enough effort trying to tolerate his rudeness - I have hardly been through all the posts. But I think, if you guys can just spend one whole post dedicated to commenting on his attitude, telling him explicitly that he should change his almighty tone, instead of continuously refute his arguments, he might change. All I see in this post - I don't know about others - is how you guys mocked his dogged determination to present his point. I mean, some people are just blind to their arrogance - some people are brought up in such an environment that it would be hard for him to change...

Honestly, I admire his courage, that he actually continued posting in this forum despite all the conflict. He must feel so lonely. T_T

[SimL]

Hi Yeleixingfeng,

You really have a good heart and a kind personality. No, for me, he only provoked anything ranging from mild irritation to intense fury. It's true that a person's ideas should be judged solely on the merits of the ideas, but for me, if someone is so rude and abrupt that I feel that my point is not being understood, much less respected, then I can no longer devote any energy towards trying to understand his point. For me, the world and human interaction consist of far more than just the exchange of facts.

[Ah-bin]

Well, I'm not repentent for mocking. If someone lies and makes up stories to support their own arguments, and deliberately misquotes and twists other people's arguments, then I think they deserve all the mockery they get.

I don't have a problem with differences of opinion, but I do have problems with lies.
The reason is that people tend to come here first when they want to find out about Hokkien through English, and if you let lies go unchallenged, newcomers might end up believing them as truth.

My favourite was "人 has been the character for lang for 5000 years". How can you take people seriously if they just post rubbish?

When a person never admits to being wrong and changes the subject when cornered, that is the hallmark of a troll. I'm very happy that this forum has been troll-free for months now. I hope it stays that way.

I don't know about the etymology of 鐳, as I used to think it was a recently created 形聲字 for radium, like 鋁 for aLUminium. But 鑘 as sword could relate to what I found on the internet:
http://www.g12e.com/html/5/292/331/2006 ... 22-1.shtml
It shows that in Yan, small figures of 刀 were used as currency.

It's an Interesting coincidence, but this has all been researched already. Look through a Chinese dictionary long enough and you can find something to prove any theory about any word you feel like, and the oppostie of that theory.

鐳 was used in Chinese documents in Batavia in the eighteenth century, you can find it many times in the archives of the Chinese Council (Chinese Raad or Kong Koan 公館).

[amhoanna]

I mostly ignored xng's posts. His single-minded point of view actually had little or nothing to do with Hokkien -- a language he didn't speak and wasn't trying to learn. Like many people I've met in real life, he could not grasp or accept the concept of Hoklo as an independent language a la Malay, Burmese, Russian, etc.

Ah Bin was right, if xng really was a man on a mission, he should've done something to make an impact. Trying to change great minds on a forum is not likely to make an impact. Most of the arguing that people do on forums is just a waste of time.

Do I like how Aokh, my fellow 1979, assigns hanji to Hoklo etyma suka-suka? And Yelei too, when he bothers to do it? No, something about that blatant disregard for probability, sound change rules, other Hoklo dialects, and popular (not obscure) punji (not siokji) makes me cringe. But if Aokh was an "idle forum cat", I would be better off just ignoring his hanji, b/c they'd get nowhere anyway. And, as it is, he's an "activist", somebody who's actually doing something Hoklo-wise. That is something to be admired. But, even if he wasn't, there'd be no point in arguing with him.

Even Ah Bin's "fear" that beginners would come here and be misled by wrong info ... might be unfounded, in a metaphysical sense. Beginners who really care would find the real facts soon enough anyway. And all U have to do to find misleading info about Hoklo-Hokkien ... is go to Google and type in

hokkien -mee

Look through a Chinese dictionary long enough and you can find something to prove any theory about any word you feel like, and the oppostie of that theory.

He said it! I'm talking about Ah Bin.

[SimL]

One of the most annoying things about xng (also mentioned by Ah-bin) was that even when he was proved patently wrong, he never retracted his statement, or acknowledged his mistake in any way. One of the most dramatic examples was when he *declared* that Hokkiens never had/have just 1-syllable personal names (that it was a "Mandarin thing"). I then looked into my family tree - an uncle of mine did the research, and there are hundreds (if not over a thousand) names in it - and (from memory, but don't quote me on this), from the 1850's to the 1920's, about half of my maternal sin-kheh family had 1-syllable personal names. They were from Amoy and Cuanciu, so "more Hokkien" than that one could hardly get.

Anyway, I think I've vented enough about him now (this is a public expression of my frustration, after years of trying to remain polite to him). As he never comes here any more, I think I don't have a need any more to gripe about him (though the need may arise from time to time, as old issues are discussed ).