Penang Hokkien lessons

[FutureSpy]

Last weekend, I found this wonderful resource for Penang Hokkien on FB. He uses his own romanization, but it's very easy to understand and he does indicate the tones unlike those books by Choon Hoe Tan.

http://www.penang-traveltips.com/penang-hokkien.htm

https://www.facebook.com/groups/learnpenanghokkien

The guy is still posting lessons, so more lessons are probably coming soon Another nice thing is that he also has a section on names for some Penang streets in Hokkien.

I saw a few posts by Cathy there, so I checked first with Sim to make sure I wasn't double-posting this here

[SimL]

Hi FutureSpy,

The "crime" of double posting is far, far less than that of NOT posting !

We've re-hashed some topics, repeating our (bigotted!) opinions here over and over again, for more than 10 years. I'm sure putting the same link twice is not going to get you banned from the Forum . [But thank you for being thoughtful anyway.]

Yeah, nice site. Very heart-warming to see Tim promote Penang Hokkien in this way. The internet is the future!!!

Also such a relief to see someone write the Hokkien aspirated consonants as "ph-", "th-", "kh-"; the unaspirated ones as "p-", "t-", "k-"; and the voiced ones as "b-", "g-" (i.e. the "POJ" convention). These days it's common for Malaysians and Singaporeans to use "p-", "t-", "k-" for the aspirated ones; and "b-", "d-", "g-" for the unaspirated ones; and 'don't know' / 'mix them up with the unaspirated ones and write them "b-", "g-" ' for the voiced ones (i.e. the "pinyin" convention). The "POJ" convention was well known and understood (by the few people who were interested in writing Hokkien) in my youth, and the "pinyin" convention didn't exist at all, because pinyin wasn't widely known in Malaysia in those days.

The "pinyin" convention makes me cringe, and frustrates me when I see (modern day) Malaysians and Singaporeans use it, because it makes it impossible to distinguish the Hokkien unaspirated consonants from the voiced ones. (And also because the old "POJ" convention used to be known in Malaysia and Singapore, for example, for the spelling of personal names in Hokkien.)

Tim obviously is linguistically quite well informed (and has a sensitive ear), because he uses the "POJ" convention (and is hence able to distinguish the unaspirated consonants from the voiced ones) on his site., And furthermore he knows and explains about tone sandhi. In my experience, most "linguistically naive" native speakers of Hokkien are not (consciously) even aware of tone sandhi in Hokkien, and are quite amazed and intrigued when I point it out to them. Of course - when pointed out - they agree it happens, but then I often get "Oh, but you must do that - it's not [humanly!] possible to pronounce it unchanged."

Cathy noticed and pointed out to me that Tim uses Mandarin tone indications for Hokkien in EXACTLY the same way / system that I thought up for myself in my youth, and which I used for most of my life. That is, even for a few years after I had been reading this Forum, after which I finally *forced* myself to master the POJ tones.

Tim's (and my old) system is namely:

Penang Hokkien tone-1: ba = Mandarin tone-1
Penang Hokkien tone-5 : bâ = Mandarin tone-2
Penang Hokkien tone-3/7 : bà/bā = Mandarin tone-3
Penang Hokkien tone-2 : bá = Mandarin tone-4
Penang Hokkien tone-4 : bah = Mandarin tone-3 (with postvocalic stop)
Penang Hokkien tone-8 : báh = Mandarin tone-1 (with postvocalic stop)

That way, Penang Hokkien appears to have "only 4 tones".

The reason for the mapping is obvious. The tone-contours of the Penang Hokkien tones are roughly the same as the Mandarin ones. As it happens, Penang Hokkien tone-4 is lowish (and hence sounds like a short version of Penang Hokkien tone-3); and Penang Hokkien tone-8 is highish (and hence sounds like a short version of Penang Hokkien tone-1). I emphasize "roughly", because many Penang Hokkien speakers would say "very similar" or "exactly the same" as the Mandarin tones. But I think this is a paradoxical illusion. It is precisely because Penang Hokkien speakers "hear" the Mandarin tones as Hokkien tones, that they pronounce their Mandarin that way. And so that becomes a sort of "self-fulfilling prophecy". Once they pronounce and think of Mandarin that way, then indeed, Penang Hokkien tones are identical to Mandarin tones, under the above mapping.

In reality, I've now realised - and this has been mentioned elsewhere in this Forum - the Mandarin tone-4 - e.g. 會/会/hùi(pinyin) - falls much more dramatically (and perhaps begins higher) than the Penang Hokkien tone-2 - e.g. 火/hóe(POJ), which is only "highish", and doesn't fall at all, or only a little.

For that matter, (to me) that is one of the most striking differences even between Penang Hokkien "hó" (good) and other forms of Hokkien "hó" (ignoring for the moment that many other forms have the vowel "ö" nowadays) - the non-Penang Hokkien forms also drop much more dramatically.

PS.
Another "nice" aspect of using this "pseudo Mandarin" tone system is that the tone-sandhi rules for Penang Hokkien are very easy to remember:

- tone-1 and tone-2 => tone-3
- tone-3 and tone-4 => tone-1

Really, it works, even for the ru-tones! (But only for Penang Hokkien, because only in Penang Hokkien does tone-3 sandhi to tone-1; in most other varieties of Hokkien, it sandhies to (Hokkien) tone-2.)

The only thing that causes trouble with these "rules" is that tone-7 (which sounds identical to tone-3 in Penang Hokkien) "doesn't sandhi". [Strictly speaking, it does sandhi (to tone-3), but to a tone which sounds identical to tone-7.]

I guess Penang Hokkien native speakers just "(subconsciously) internalize" and "know" these two "tone-1 and tone-2 => tone-3" and "tone-3 and tone-4 => tone-1" rules, and then have to "memorize" (when mastering the language, say between the ages of 1 and 4) a subset of tone-3/tone-7 which "don't sandhi" (namely, the tone-7 ones). Indeed, when I was young and first heard about tone sandhi (maybe when I was about 18), I used to wonder why small/细/se and big/大/toa "both had tone-3", but one sandhied, and the other didn't. It was only after quite a few years of reading on this Forum (and other sources), that I came to understand about this merger of Hokkien tone-3 and tone-7 in Penang Hokkien.

[FutureSpy]

I think I had come across Tim's website before, but I don't remember having seen such well laid out lessons with audio and tone marks before. Seems like they're pretty much recent. They're really nice. I'm not going to learn Penang Hokkien now, but passive learning isn't a bad idea, I guess!

But I think this is a paradoxical illusion. It is precisely because Penang Hokkien speakers "hear" the Mandarin tones as Hokkien tones, that they pronounce their Mandarin that way.

So you mean if I was to pronounce these tones Beijing or Taiwan way, that wouldn't sound right in Penang Hokkien? I remember having read such a discussion on Penang Hokkien <-> Hokkien tones mapping before here, but I don't really remember what you guys said exactly. But when I saw Tim's system, I really thought: hey, that's much easier than, say, Taiwanese! But now it's: oh, I think I went too fast... haha

[AndrewAndrew]

Yes, what most Penangites mean when they refer to Mandarin tones 1, 2, 3, 4 are in fact 44, 24, 22, 53, when in fact the Beijing tones are 55, 24, 213, 42.

Cathy, aokh and I have all been providing our input. The romanisation by no means perfect - there is no way to distinguish POJ -h and -k, for instance, but at least some thought has gone into it.

A.

[FutureSpy]

Thanks Andrew! That was very informative

[Ah-bin]

Another interesting thing I've noticed about TT's spelling is how it shows how many people pronounce words in Penang Hokkien. Since he does not read Chinese characters or POJ, what he writes is purely what he hears. So there are interesting variations such as thau for "head" but tha-mor for "hair". For me the character 頭 fixes the whole syllable in my head as an unchangeable element thau but TT and other native speakers may not even realise that they are eliding an original Thau to Tha in this compound when they say it. Another example would be those who do not realise that the word they pronounce as "am-mO" (westerner) was originally made of the elements ang and mO.

Another example is "bart chew" for "eye", where the final -k has become influenced by the initial consonant of the following syllable. For TT (and I guess for other speakers too) the phonology of the word has been altered by association with this common compound, and has retained its "new" final consonant -t, even in "bart-bai" (eyebrow) where there is no alveolar consonant following which would influence change. This has happened with chi-le "this", originally chit-e, where the e has altered to le and then gone off to live a life of its own in saN-le lang "three people' and gO-le mih-kiaN "five things".

So the inconsistancy in the spelling, although I find it a little frustrating (why is it sometimes arm and sometimes am?), is actually a very interesting record of phonological features typical of spoken Penang Hokkien, that someone like me who tends to think in POJ and characters might not notice otherwise.

[SimL]

Hi Ah-bin,

I agree with you totally, that Tim writing them out purely phonetically is a wonderful way for you to get insight into how they are pronounced in reality.

I too never ever say "bák-chiu" (eye), only "bát-chiu" (though I do restore the "-k" for "eyebrow"). And I never ever say "pàng-jiō" (to pee), only "pàn-jiō". Both assimilations of the final consonant of the first syllable to the initial consonant of the second.

And indeed, I often say "thâ-mô•", but equally often "thâu-mô•" too..

Nevertheless, I think it's better to write them as "bák-chiu", "pàng-jiō", and "thâu-mô•". Learners of Hokkien just need to know to say them in the assimilated way. Perhaps a bit like writing "cupboard" and "handkerchief", when people only say "cubberd" and "hankerchi(e)f"...?

[niuc]

In Bagan, many people also say "thâ-mêrng" (tha5mng5) & "thàk-khak" instead of "thaû-mêrng" & "thaû-khak".

[timothytye]

Hi Everybody,

Well, this is Tim of www.penang-traveltips.com/penang-hokkien.htm himself. I was searching online for resources on Penang Hokkien, to find out what other people have done on this area, and by good fortune I stumble upon this forum.

It is always flattering to read about yourself, particularly when most of the comments appear to be so encouraging. Thank you!

The "Learn Penang Hokkien" section of my Penang Travel Tips website is my personal attempt to encapsulate and share my knowledge of Penang Hokkien to anybody who is interested to learn it, from visitors to Malaysians of other states. My objective is to make the language easy for casual learners to pick it up, and yet retain all the necessary elements.

I admit that I have to water down some rules, but not till it makes Penang Hokkien unintelligible. One of those rules, which I see being discussed here, is that POJ tone 7 sandhis to tone 3, whereas in my lesson, I regard them as "Regular Words that don't change tones" because of close similarity in the two tones, as far as Penang Hokkien speakers like me are concerned.

I am still posting lessons. Today I completed an article explaining my system of romanisation in greater detail (http://www.penang-traveltips.com/timoth ... sation.htm) explaining why I decided not to make use of Peh-ōe-jī, but instead create my own system of romanisation.

I thank you all for creating this forum thread.

[timothytye]

It's quite something to be goggling through the web and stumbling on a forum where you are being discussed!

Thank you very much all for your positive appraisal of my Learn Penang Hokkien effort. I am greatly encouraged.

I thought it would be interesting for you to get an insight, straight from the horse's mouth, to understand and appreciate the depth of preparation that went into creating the lessons.

My name is Tim. Penang Travel Tips is one of some 70 websites I write. It's the one where I describe
everything about Penang, my home island. The Learn Penang Hokkien portion of this website is where I attempt to make Penang Hokkien easy to learn for casual learners, from visitor and tourists to expatriates as well as other Malaysians. To make that possible, I watered down the number of tones in Hokken from 7 existing tones down to 4 for teaching Penang Hokkien. That is the maximum I can go will still retain intelligibility.

To teach Penang Hokkien, I created my own system of romanisation. (Since yesterday, following the feedback from members of my Facebook Group, this system is now called the Timothy Tye System of Penang Hokkien Romanisation, or in Hokkien, Tye3 Ji3, and abbreviated TJ) The purpose of TJ is to preserve the writing style that is already in use in Penang that appears on our dishes, street names and personal names. It exhibits elements from several sources including Malay, English, Mandarin, Pe̍h-ōe-jī and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Although Pe̍h-ōe-jī has been in use for transliterating Hokkien, I decided not to use it for a number of reasons:

1) A person with a knowledge of Malay and English will not be able to pronounce Pe̍h-ōe-jī with a high degree of accuracy without formal learning. Most Malaysians who are literate will know some Malay and English; they expect to use their existing knowledge to pronounce words that are romanised.

2) POJ uses diacritic marks that are absent in most words written in Malay and English. This requires learners to perform a double hurdle, not only in having to learn Penang Hokkien, but also to memorize those marks.

3) POJ is difficult to type on a standard keyboard. A new form of romanisation, as fulfilled by TJ, overcomes this issue by replacing diacritic marks with numbers that are sequenced to denote four distinct tones. The numbers may be written as subscripts or as regular numbers.

4) POJ distinguishes 8 different tones which were later reduced to 7, when tones 2 and 6 were merged. Although the tones are numbered, the diacritic marks do not offer any clue to the numbering. In comparison, TJ waters down the issue by distinguishing only four different tones that correspond somewhat to those in Modern Mandarin. This simplification facilitates learning without compromising intelligibility.

5) The placement of diacritic marks on vowels to denote tones in POJ creates the issue and debate over the
correct placement of tone marks in the case of diphthongs and triphthongs. Diacritic-based rules (i.e. "if
diphthongs contain i or u, the tone mark goes to the other vowels") are superflous and have no impact on actual pronunciation. No such rule exists in TJ, as the tone numbers are placed at the end of each syllable, helping to split out strings of vowels.

6) Words written in POJ are marked the citation tone (which corresponds with the "basic form" in TJ). Words
written in POJ are not adjusted to reflect tone sandhi. As Penang Hokkien undergoes considerable tone sandhi, text written in POJ requires learners to make inflight self adjustments to account for sandhi. In comparison, TJ requires the basic form (citation tone) and modified form (sandhi tone) to be shown on the text itself, doing away with any need for self adjustments.

7) As POJ was intended for romanising Hokkien in general, there is a risk that it threatens Penang Hokkien's
unique outstanding values, as it irons out the differences. TJ embraces not only words of Hokkien origin, but
all loanwords are given the same treatment, for example, vi1deo4, com3pu1ter4, etc.

I note an observation made on this forum that POJ tone 7 sandhis to POJ tone 3. This group of words are known in my TJ system as "Regular Words that do not change tone". I regard the sandhi to be not sufficiently apparent to matter at all to Penang Hokkien, and treat them as unchanged.

To help learners spell consistently, I compile a dictionary of all the words using the TJ system of
romanisation.

Even now, I am still adding lessons as and when I have time to do so, and hope that eventually, this body of
knowledge will be of great help to people wanting to learn Penang Hokkien.

Best regards,

Tim