Hokkien transcribed in sinographs

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Sign on the back of a pickup truck in Fujian Province:

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Someone who is only literate in Mandarin will not be able to understand what the sign says, although they will be able to figure out a few of the items that are mentioned and will laugh at the vulgarity, which is not relevant for understanding the actual meaning.

Kirinputra renders it thus:

They fix (SIU-LÍ, 修理) air conditioners (KHONG-TIÂU, 空調), electric rice cookers (TIĀN PN̄G-OE, 電飯碢), water heaters (JIA̍T-CHÚI-KHÌ, 熱水器), washing machines (SÉ-SAᴺ-KI, 洗衫机), and something called *KO-Á-OE (糕仔碢? 鍋仔碢?), which might be a kind of pressure cooker.

(-OE is also written 鍋 in the native script, and there’s probably an etymological connection to heartland Chinese words written 鍋, and to -KO 鍋.)

The pronunciations indicate some locale in the region west & southwest of Amoy. The use of Mandarin writing shows that the older generation that learned kanji via Hokkien readings (or alongside Mandarin readings) has substantially aged out of household maintenance duties, which of course they have. The use of Mandarin writing to write Hokkien suggests that young adults are still proficient in Hokkien in that locale.

Kirinputra, who knows Hokkien well, treats the sinographs as phonetic symbols for transcribing that language, and refrains from commenting on the meanings of the characters for the first device they fix, whereas every Mandarin speaker who is illiterate in Hokkien and is familiar with the slang character 屌 will guffaw at the superficial meaning "empty dick / prick".

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Diana Shuheng Zhang]



8 Comments »

  1. Jonathan Smith said,

    January 18, 2025 @ 5:49 pm

    Must be local Hokkien "ko-ah-oe" with ah for the 'pressure' part and matching Mandarin gao1ya1guo1, the normal term for pressure cooker in China — internet tells me this is a ya1li4guo1 in Taiwanese Mandarin and khoài-ko in Taiwanese. This ah 'press/pressure' may have no deep status in Hokkien (ap being an older [?] loaned reflection of 'press')… we need a term like 'lexicographical ghost' for such words, I guess 'Hanzigraphical ghost' works.

  2. Jonathan Smith said,

    January 18, 2025 @ 6:01 pm

    re those "literate in Mandarin will […] be able to figure out a few of the items that are mentioned" >> no, none of the items at all — unless you mean maybe guess 'air conditioner', but even that would be a weird thing to guess right.

  3. Victor Mair said,

    January 18, 2025 @ 6:42 pm

    "repair"

    most people I showed it to could guess "air conditioner" and thought it was very funny

    and a few guessed at "high pressure cooker" for the last one

  4. KIRINPUTRA said,

    January 19, 2025 @ 5:28 am

    Interesting — *KO-AH-OE is probably right. Another possibility is *KO-AP-OE (高壓鍋).

    @Jonathan Smith is right — 壓 traditionally had no *AH reading in Hokkien. It's kind of picking up a phantom *AH reading in Taioanese at present, and the same thing might be happening in Hokkien. The reading probably comes from 押, which does read AH, and is homophonous with 壓 in Mandarin. Since they're homophonous in Mandarin, some Mandarin-educated people must've figured they'd be homophonous in Taioanese too. Secondly, once the word À-PÀ (of uncertain etymology) began to be represented in the media as 壓霸 — and was borrowed into Mandarin as YĀBÀ, which may have happened first, possibly with 押 as a mental pivot — people began to assume the word "was" 壓霸, and even the Romaji-literate imagined the word "was" *AH-PÀ, although there is no historical or comparative support for that analysis.

    This has to do with the system (if it can be called that) in which Taioanese & Hokkien are represented in sinographs via Mandarin … partly through translation but largely through a system of subconscious sound correspondences. (I have something to share on this, once I get my house in order.)

  5. KIRINPUTRA said,

    January 19, 2025 @ 5:46 am

    Interesting that the Chinese Taipei scholars are trying to manufacture "deep status" for *AH-for-壓 officially. Notice how there's not even a 替 tag on this entry.

    https://sutian.moe.edu.tw/zh-hant/su/12134/

  6. Victor Mair said,

    January 19, 2025 @ 3:53 pm

    According to Kirinputra:

    Martian-type writing is full of little complexities. For starters, see how a lot of times the general principle (of borrowing sinographs according to their Mand. reading) is suspended, either entirely or just as to tone.

    Martian writing is a contact phenomenon that only exists as a genre b/c of the hierarchical nature of that contact; that hierarchical contact also entails death for the underdog, which is understudied. It's not incidental that many enthusiasts find Martian writing more interesting than Hokkien itself. There is something akin to corruption in this, although it's not what we usually mean by "corruption". Put more provocatively, why disproportionately study a facet of language death while the dying language itself is alive, kicking, and fairly understudied? (True, Penang-Medan Hokkien is not dying, so I technically exaggerate. Hopefully continental Hokkien will get well too, although there is no sign of how that could happen.)

    To me, the outstanding question here is what exactly 高啊喂 is intended to mean.

    And notice how JIA̍T-CHÚI-KHÌ makes no sense in terms of Hokkien. (Old news, though — continental Hokkien has been breaking down for decades.)

  7. Guy_H said,

    January 21, 2025 @ 2:10 am

    If memory serves me correct, the license plate 閩E is for Putian prefecture. The local Putian speech is sort of a transitional dialect between Amoy (Xiamen) and Hokchiu (Fuzhou). Its possible the characters are intended to represent Putian speech rather than Hokkien.

  8. KIRINPUTRA said,

    January 22, 2025 @ 2:06 am

    Wow! That's an interesting possibility, that it could be Henghua, not Hokkien.

    According to a few links I've found, though, E is for 漳州 (Chiangchiu).

    https://baike.pcauto.com.cn/177185/329915.html
    https://is.gd/rWhUKj

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