Penang Hokkien

Penang Hokkien
槟城福建话
Pin-siâⁿ Hok-kiàn-oā
Hokkien Pulau Pinang
Native to Malaysia
Region Penang, parts of Kedah and Perak
Language codes
ISO 639-3 –
Glottolog None

Penang Hokkien (Chinese: 槟城福建话; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Peng-siâⁿ Hok-kiàn-oā) is a local variant of Hokkien Chinese spoken in Penang, Malaysia. It is the lingua franca among the majority Chinese population in Penang as well as other northern states of Malaysia surrounding it.

Penang Hokkien is a subdialect of Zhangzhou (漳州; Hokkien: Chiang-chiu) Chinese, together with widespread use of Malay and English borrowed words. It is said that it most closely resembles that spoken in the district of Haicang (海滄) in Longhai (龍海; Hokkien: Liông-hái) county and in the districts of Jiaomei (角美) and Xinglin (杏林) in neighbouring Xiamen prefecture. In Southeast Asia, similar dialects are spoken in the states bordering Penang (Kedah, Perlis and northern Perak), as well as in Medan and North Sumatra, Indonesia. It is markedly distinct from Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien and Taiwanese Hokkien.

It is predominantly a spoken dialect: it is rarely written in Chinese characters, and there is no standard romanisation.

Tones

In Penang Hokkien, the two Departing tones (3rd & 7th) are virtually identical, and may not be distinguished except in their sandhi forms. Most native speakers of Penang Hokkien are therefore only aware of four tones in unchecked syllables (high, low, rising, high falling), and two Entering tones (high and low) in checked syllables. In most systems of romanisation, this is accounted as seven tones altogether. The tones are:

Penang Hokkien tones, illustrated with the rhymes [am], [ap]
Upper Lower
No. Name IPA Contour POJ No. Name IPA Contour POJ
Level (平) 1 頂平 téng-pε̂ⁿ [am˦˦] (44) am 5 下平 ε̄-pε̂ⁿ [am˨˦] (24) âm
Rising (上) 2 上聲 chhiơ̄ⁿ-siaⁿ [am˥˦] (54) ám
Departing (去) 3 頂去 téng-khì [am˨˩] (21) àm 7 下去 ε̄-khì [am˨˩] (21) ām
Entering (入) 4 頂入 téng-jıˈp [ap˨] (2) ap 8 下入 ε̄-jıˈp [ap˦] (4) a̍p

The names of the tones no longer bear any relation to the tone contours, e.g. the (upper) Rising (2nd) tone is actually a high falling tone. As in Amoy and Zhangzhou, there is no lower Rising (6th) tone.

Tone sandhi

Like in other Minnan dialects, the tone of a syllable in Penang Hokkien depends on where in a phrase or sentence the relevant syllable is placed. For example, the word 牛 gû in isolation is pronounced with an ascending tone, [˨˦] (24), but when it combines with a following syllable, as in 牛肉 gû-bah, it is pronounced with to a low level tone, [˨˩] (21).

1st → 7th ← 5th
↑ ↓
2nd ← 3rd
↑ (if -h) ↑ (if -h)
4th ↔ (if -p,-t,-k) 8th

The rules which apply when a syllable is placed in front of a connected syllable in standard Minnan, simply put, are as follows:

Checked syllables (-h):

Checked syllables (-p,-t,-k):

Although the two departing tones (3rd & 7th) are virtually identical in Penang Hokkien, in their sandhi forms they become [˥˦] (54) and [˨˩] (21) and are thus easily distinguishable.

The "tone wheel" concept does not work perfectly for all speakers of Penang Hokkien.[1]

Minnan and Mandarin tones

There is a reasonably reliable correspondence between Hokkien and Mandarin tones:

Words with Entering tones all end with -p, -t, -k or -h (glottal stop). As Mandarin no longer has any Entering tones, there is no simple corresponding relationship for the Hokkien 4th and 8th tones, e.g. 國 kok / guó, but 發 hoat / fā. The tone in Mandarin often depends on what the initial consonant of the syllable is (see the article on Entering tones for details).

Literary and colloquial pronunciations

Hokkien has not been taught in schools in Penang since the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911, when Mandarin was made the Chinese national language. As such, few if any people have received any formal instruction in Hokkien, and it is not used for literary purposes. However, as in other variants of Min Nan, most words have both literary and colloquial pronunciations, and the literary pronunciations still appear in limited circumstances, e.g.:

Unlike in Taiwan and mainland China, the literary pronunciations of numbers higher than two are not used when giving telephone numbers, etc.; e.g. 二五四 jī-gơ̄-sì instead of jī-ngớ-sù. Literary variants are generally eschewed in favour of colloquial pronunciations, e.g. 大學 toā-ȯh instead of tāi-hȧk.

Differences from standard Minnan

Most of the differences between Penang Hokkien and Amoy Hokkien exist also in Zhangzhou, e.g.:

Differences from the Zhangzhou dialect

Although Penang Hokkien is obviously based on the Zhangzhou dialect, there are some obvious differences, which in many cases result from the influence of other Minnan dialects, e.g.:

Borrowed words[2]

Malay

Like other dialects in Malaysia and Singapore, Penang Hokkien borrows heavily from Malay, but sometimes to a greater extent than other Hokkien dialects, e.g.:

There are also many Hokkien words which have been borrowed into Malay, sometimes with slightly different meanings, e.g.:

English

Penang Hokkien has also borrowed some words from English, some of which may have been borrowed via Malay, but these tend to be more technical and less well embedded than the Malay words, e.g. brake, park, pipe, pump, etc.

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ "Penang Hokkien Tones"
  2. ↑ de Gijzel, Luc (2009). English-Penang Hokkien Pocket Dictionary. George Town, Penang: Areca Books. ISBN 978-983-44646-0-8.
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