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Guest: Xiamen Ah Long
Ah Long and I talked about the similarities and differences living in Xiamen and Penang. Things we can improve, and things we should continue doing. Of course ended with some stupid silly conversation.
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Ah John ah, it is “zai1 kian3”, not “zai kni” for ?? in Penang Hokkien. I believe there is no Hokkien variants that pronounce ? as “kni”. This might have been influenced by Cantonese which pronounces ? as “kin”.
To be honest I have not said ?? in Penang Hokkien before. Usually I said “bai bai”. But if ?? is to be used the most common pronunciation is “zai kian” for both Zhangzhou & Quanzhou. (https://nlg.csie.ntu.edu.tw/systems/TWLLMT/index.html) Will check with Ahma-grade native Penang Hokkien speaker.
I believe Chinses Cari server is down daily arounf 4/5AM Malaysian time for server maintainence. Here is the link for that page
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https://chinese.cari.com.my/myforum/viewthread.php?tid=212691&extra=page%3D2%26filter%3Ddigest
I don’t know how to say ?? in Hokkien. We just sing it without knowing its general refernece. Yes, Penang Hokkien ??, many of which can only be found in Malaysia as it has a lot of Malay & English words, are wickedly funny. So far the most wicked one I have heard is the one that wishes all short people to die. Here it is (fragment of it as I can’t remeber it correctly):
eh1 ah1 tok1, pak1kan3 lok1. ???????
kan3 lok1 tiao3, si1 kiao1 kiao1. ????????
Does any one know the full / correct version? What is “kan3 lok1”? I was too good to actually scold short people with it that’s why I can’t remember it well.
I’m not sure about the origin of this wickedly funny ?? but I think it might have been created before the advent of TV since in the past people would put more of their brain onto creative things (for better or worse) rather than focus passive activities like watching TV or playing computer game like what teenagers today do.
Hey Penangknia, thanks for your input again.
I agree that Zai Kian is correct. I just get confused! Because ? can be Kian in Zai Kian. But it is Kni when it is used in ?? Kni Bin. What do you think?
And Kan Lok is what we call gasing. You know the kids played. It may have been extinct now. I think it’s called ?? in Mandarin.
i don’t mind to take buses now but my experience with our penang transport servise wasn’t good. i still remember many times i waited for an hour or more just for 1 bus to get me home frm school or tuition ctr. Very geram that time!!! I used to push and squeeze myself thru the crowd,and my big school bag was a good weapon. hee hee 😉 but felt veli pai-say n sorry to those ang-mor-kau(foreigners) who at last couldn’t get on bus after long wait, pity 🙁 Bor-pam-huat lah,(no choice) if i missed the bus,the school prefect would copy my name mah. Well,one reason people dont like to take bus in pg bcs it is too HOT to wait n walk under the sun.
Pardon my lousy Hokkien, what is ? Kni Bin?
It’s my bad, I wasn’t very clear. I was in a hurry making this post yesterday.
Kni1 Bin3 (??) is meet face to face. Literally means See Face.
Another time we say Kni is in “Bo3 Bin3 Kni1 Lang2” (No Face See People)
I hope I’m making some sense.
Whatlau. Do you know I spent 4 days to download the Episode 22 ? And I din have time to listen to it yet. It was disconnected and disconnected. Tonight am going to download my own Episode 23…… ^__^
About the Zai Kian – I have been telling John so many many times liao. A lot of thing you just dun translate it literally. As far as I know, Kian is pronounced as Kian in Zai Kian, other that that, all the rest should be as Kni.
I watched Taiwanese TV since small, and also I now live in Xiamen. Zai Kian is correct – trust me. However people in China (most of them) use Bye-Bye including Mandarin. I dun, I still stick to Zai Jian in Mandarin. I never use Bye-Bye when I speak Mandarin. I hate when Chinese people use English words. Especially in my company. I hate it – hate it – hate it. Many people try so hard to preserve Chinese purity, and many other people try to make themselves “international” by mixing English words into Chinese, in CHINA.
Nowadays dunno why I listen to many Hokkien songs. Some of them are really good, some ballads – not that kind of old-fashioned music. Modern ones. Anyone got any to introduce, please send to my mail…… ^__^
Ah John you are right, I thought you were writting about some noddles, like Kali mi as I didn’t look at the romanized version carefully. Was wondering I must have missed some Penang hawker food not to understand it.
As you can see, my Hokkien is really paliah. I’ve never heard (or don’t remember) of ?? before in Hokkien. I would use ?? “tu4 diok1” instead of ??. The only case where I knew the pronunciation of ? is in ??(kian1siao3), never heard of ? pronounced in “kni” until I heard you.
I think kni is ?? and kian is ??. After checking out dictionary I think I would also prefer pronouncing kni in ?? a la Ah John since it makes more sense as in ??knibin –>??? zaiknibin –>?? zaikni. However, Ah Long’s argument that people in Taiwan and China say zaikian makes a point too in terms of communicating with Hokkien people from non-SEA region. The final litmus test, I think, should be whether it is able for local Penangites to understand. I would use the one that most Penangites would understand. In any case I have no objection to anyone using zaikni or zaikian. It’s your choice. For me I will use bai bai since I’ve not used or heard zaikian or zaikni in Penang before listening to Ah John & Ah Long using it(them).
According to ????????(2002), which does not list the phrase “??”, but guessing from context pronouncing zaikni instead of zaikian would be preferred. /Generally speaking Hokkien in Singapore is pretty close to Penang’s in terms of vocabulary and usage, except that many Singaporeans preonouce ti instead of tu for “pig” and hue instead of hua for “flower”. Still there are still people in Singapore that pronounce tu & hua and the dictionary mentioned listed both though ti & hue are preferred since they are the more popular one. Similarly Tan Choon Hoe PHD mini-dictionary listed tu & hua as the pronunciation of Penang Hokkien doesn’t mean that all Hokkien people in Penang pronounced tu & hua. Dictionary can never be precise or 100% accuarate but only provides a general picture of the speakers pronunciation. So I treat dictionary as reference, not Bible.
page 212
? kni
(1)??????~??????
(2)???~?? ?~
(3)???????????????~??????????????? || (3)?”?” ??[kian].
page 219
? kian
(1)???????~?
(2)??????…?…????????(qian4)????????????????????????????~?~?| ~?~????
Sorry to confulse you, Ah John, but I was confused too, thanks to my paliah hokkien. Luckily I got some dictionaries to get some clue. As a final comment on “??”, I would say that zaikni would be preferred by me, or maybe more comprehensible for most Penang Hokkien speakers. If I’m not mistaken kni is ?? while kian is ??. In general Penang Hokkien preferred ?? in many cases even though in China or Taiwan people would use ??. For example 1934? Amoy Hokkien would pronounce it as “yit-kiu-sam-su ni” (sounds more like Hakka than Hokkien to my ear) but in Penang Hokkien it is definitely not pronoucned like this. I believe in Penang it is “yit-kao-sna-si ni”. In Penang Hokkien ?? pronunciation of numbers is only common for 1 (yit) and 2(ji), but in Amoy & may be also Taiwan ?? of 1-9 (yit, jii, sam, su, ??, liuk?, tsi, bat, kiu) is used in years and numbers.
I will choose to take bus if the public transport is convenient for the users.
I would say Penang is not organized and no one willing to take resposibilities.
This is typical Chinese attitude – SELFISH and I DON’T CARE!
Since Penang is a very ‘chinese territory’, We don’t see much improvement or development lately here in PEnang. It’s because when there is a proposal or project in place, there are more protest than support. At the end, no result!
As a penagite, we are very proud of Penang. We always promote Penang to our foreign friends But when we back to penang sometime, we are very disappointed and ‘pai seh’. I alway take a lot of photos (Nice photo & Bad one) when i back to Penang. Maybe i can share those photos with you all to praise those are good and try to correct those are bad. Anyway, we are doing our best to suggest ways to improve our lovely island. So, we can be proud of it forever!
xiamen ah long speaks like bullet train….my brain is not quick enough to interprete the whole conversation….please excuse my lousy hokkien =(
Ah John – the episode 23 is the best so far. I enjoy so much listening to you and Ah Long talk together. I put my iPod on repeat so that I can listen to this episode again and again. Ah Long’s Fujien Hua is so good and it is so lovely to listen. I cannot believe that two people can speak Fujien Hua so well. I am Chaozhou ren and there so much similarity between the Fujien hua you speak and the Chaozhou hau I know. I cannot wait to hear your next episode. Meanwhile, I will keep listening to your podcast.
I allowed my friends from Xiamen to hear this episode in London last evening and we all love it so much.
Thank you so much for giving up so much time. Say thank you to Ah Hua as well. He is so lovely. Please ask Ah Long to speak more often.
Hi Juyee: Thank you for your support, I hate my voice a lot over the podcast. I always like to speak better Hokkien or else year after year, Penang people cannot converse in Hokkien anymore due to more and more pollution from English and Malay, even Mandarin. I have great friend from Shan Tou – a real Chaozhou Ren. He can hardly understand our podcast but there are lots of similarities, that’s why I can understand people when he brought me back to Shantou couple of weeks ago. Please also tell your friends from Xiamen, that I like this place, despite some uncivilised people and attitude, afterall I like living in Xiamen – a relaxing place.
Hi xian: Ha-Ha. If I go on air again – I will remember to speak slowly…… ^__^
Hi John: Besides talking – I really hope we can put everyone’s head together, we should do something to help developing Penang – draw attention from more people to take good care of our home-town…… I bought a CD yesterday, a guy in Guangzhou sings songs about his home-town, all tracks are just lovely, with street names, food, people’s names in lyrics…… Very nice music…… Do we know lots of musicians in Penang ? If one day we can produce albums in Penang Hokkien, it would be lovely…… ^__^
Tombong as in tombong kelapa? The crunchy little round fruit found inside some coconuts?
Hokkienkui, yes. Tombong Kelapa is what we talked about.