"Thanks" in Hakka and other Sinitic topolects
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I forget who it was and for what reason, but a week or two ago, someone said "Thank you" in Hakka to me.
That got me thinking about all the different ways to say "thanks" in Sinitic languages.
Here's a map of Sinitic topolectal equivalents for MSM (Modern Standard Mandarin) "xièxie 謝謝 / 谢谢" (“thank you”). If you click on the place names in characters at the bottom of the map, pinyin romanizations will be supplied.
Bear in mind that European-style words of etiquette such as "hello" and "thanks" did not exist in China before the 20th century. For the impact of English on the development of such spoken Mandarin civilities, see Mary S. Erbaugh, "China expands its courtesy: Saying 'Hello' to Strangers," The Journal of Asian Studies, 67.2 (May, 2008), 621-652.
Here is the abstract:
Courtesy reveals fundamental judgments about who merits respect. Traditional Chinese courtesy rests on lifelong hierarchical bonds that are too clear to require constant verbal reinforcement. But strangers, women, peasants, migrant workers, and others often do not merit face work because they lack status, fall outside the network of insiders, or are politically taboo. Until very recently, European-style equivalents of “hello,” “please,” “thanks,” “sorry,” or “goodbye” existed only in impersonal-sounding translations restricted to brief contacts with foreigners. As Beijing steps back from the socialist revolution, it is promoting these “five courteous phrases” (ni hao, qing, dui bu qi, xiexie, zai jian) to expand courtesy to universal, reciprocal greetings. Popular acceptance of this “verbal hygiene” is spreading via rapid, urban service encounters in which one's connections are unknown. In this way, China's self-identity as an “advanced civilization” is being retooled in international terms.
The following is a list of scores of different topolectal equivalents of "thank you" provided by Wiktionary:
It is evident that many of these expressions are not cognate with each other, so they must be based on a wide variety of sources that have been pressed into service to match English "thank you". Although all of the entries are intrinsically interesting, I will not pursue each of them to their origins and explain their etymologies, but will focus only on three that are particularly intriguing.
First is Mandarin xièxie 謝謝 itself, which is formed by the reduplication of xiè 謝. In premodern Sinitic, xiè 謝 meant things like "to excuse oneself; to make an apology; to apologize; to decline; to renounce; to refuse; take leave; leave; say goodbye". When I explain the meaning and usage of "xiè 謝" in pre-contemporary times, I demonstrate it in a dramatic fashion by showing how a Manchu princess who was a friend of my wife would exclaim "xiè 謝!" when she took leave after a visit to our home. My students were always stunned when I acted out her departure. They never forgot the difference between "xiè 謝" and "xièxie 謝謝" after that.
Second is "ālǐjiāduō 阿里加多", which occurs in several of the Taiwan topolects. This must be Japanese arigatō ありがとう (“thank you”), which would have come to Taiwan during the colonial period.
Third is Sokuluk (Gansu Dungan) рахмат, which I was delighted to recognize immediately, even without the notation "Dungan"). Because I know some Uyghur, I am familiar with the spoken Uyghur word rehmet ("thanks"). Dungans, whose roots are in northwest China (Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai) are Sinitic-speaking Muslims (Хуэйзў (回族) who fled to Central Asia after their rebellion against the Qing Dynasty government was quashed by Manchu forces in the latter part of the 19th century where they settled in what is now Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and became successful farmers and entrepreneurs. Sinographic lliterates when they left China, they learned how to read and write their Sinitic tongue in the Cyrillic alphabet. They must have borrowed рахмат from the Turkic Kyrgyz or the likewise Turkic Uyghurs who first romanized their language but then switched to the Cyrillic alphabet during the Soviet period. Subsequently, they changed back to the Latin alphabet and then to the Arabic alphabet, thus رەھمەت, under the "guidance" of the Chinese government who conquered Eastern Central Asia (ECA, aka Xinjiang) during the 50s after the communist revolution. I was present in Xinjiang during the 80s when the CPC hastily imposed the Arabic alphabet on the Uyghurs. The radical change of alphabet was very confusing during the initial period.
We (Americans and Europeans) think of "thank you" (or its equivalents in other languages) as an essential part of human speech. When I observe Euro-Americans teaching their children how to interact with people who give them something or help them in some way, I hear them say, "What do you say?" or "Say 'thank you'. But that has not always been the case in Sinitic languages and other non-IE tongues. Of course , they must have had other ways to acknowledge indebtedness or gratitude (gracias, grazie, merci, spasibo / cпасибо, etc.), but such expressions are obligatory for most polite, civilized Europeans.
Selected readings
- "'Have a good day!' in Mandarin" (9/5/12)
- "No Word for Thank You" (5/6/06)
- "Dungan, a Sinitic language of Central Asia written in the Cyrillic Alphabet" (6/14/21)
- "'Onion' in Persian, Turkic, Mongolian, Manchu, Dungan (northwest Mandarin), and Indic" (3/21/20)
- "Dungan: a Sinitic language written with the Cyrillic alphabet" (4/20/13)
- "The look, feel, and sound of Dungan language" (10/15/20)
- "'Jesus' in Dungan" (7/16/14)
- "Dungan-English dictionary" (10/26/18) — online here
- "Pinyin in practice" (10/13/11), esp. these two comments (here and here).
- "Writing Sinitic languages with phonetic scripts" (5/20/16)
- "Sinitic languages without the Sinographic script" (3/5/19)
- "The impact of phonetic inputting on Chinese languages" (12/9/19)
- Victor H. Mair, "Implications of the Soviet Dungan Script for Chinese Language Reform", Sino-Platonic Papers, 18 (May, 1990) (free pdf).
- Omniglot.
- Wikipedia: "Dungan people", "Dungan language"
AntC said,
February 15, 2025 @ 10:04 pm
Thank you Prof Mair. I feel a similar catalogue is called for with Sinitic/S.E. Asian equivalents for "OK". It seems everyone in Taiwan (where I am now) uses "OK". In Singapore "OK-la". Is there no more indigenous term?
Gokul Madhavan said,
February 15, 2025 @ 10:41 pm
Fascinating to see the Sokuluk word spelled out in alphabetized Arabic. I initially thought it was a case of mojibake as I was expecting to see رحمت as per the Persian. Persian speakers also don’t distinguish between the ھ and the ح (except in contextual recitation of Arabic texts by the scholarly), but they have preserved the original Arabic orthography in most cases. I wonder how the push to alphabetizing the Arabic abjad happened in the case of Sokuluk or Uyghur.
Gokul Madhavan said,
February 15, 2025 @ 11:13 pm
To the best of my knowledge, Indian languages also didn’t have a simple, everyday way of saying “thank you” in premodern times. Modern Hindi uses the word dhanyavād in formal contexts (informally it would be the Urdu shukriyā or even just thank you in an Indian accent). Consequently, in current attempts to revive spoken Sanskrit, many people naïvely use dhanyavādaḥ (the Sanskrit nominative singular of the same word).
Ironically though, this word would never have been used in this context in premodern India, as it literally translates to “blessed speech” or “speech of a blessed person”. People used to say dhanyo ’smi (masculine) or dhanyā ’smi (feminine), but this was an expression of deep gratitude (like saying “I’m blessed”) and hence inappropriate for everyday use. Thus the formulation anugṛhīto ’smi (masculine) or anugṛhītā ’smi (feminine), meaning something more like “I’m favored [by your deed]” is seen as more appropriate in modern spoken Sanskrit.
Chas Belov said,
February 16, 2025 @ 3:07 am
I remember only knowing 多謝 (thank you for a gift) when I visited Hong Kong many years ago. It wasn't until I later studied Cantonese at San Francisco City College where I learned about 唔該 (thank you for a favor).
This explained why when I used 多謝 whenever I purchased something that they seemed amused. Fortunately it wasn't the other way around. I remember being briskly corrected for my 唔該 after being comped a soup after starting my studies back here in the US.
Chas Belov said,
February 16, 2025 @ 3:10 am
I see your system doesn't let me mark content for language of parts, a WCAG 2.1 AA requirement.
I tried to code:
<span lang="zh-yue">多謝</span> and <span lang="zh-yue">唔該</span>>but it gets stripped.
Chas Belov said,
February 16, 2025 @ 3:12 am
And there's a typo in that one. Should read:
<span lang="zh-yue">多謝</span> and <span lang="zh-yue">唔該</span>
*sigh* and wishing for a preview feature.
Daniel Deutsch said,
February 16, 2025 @ 5:09 am
@myl: Is it a good novel?
Jerry Packard said,
February 16, 2025 @ 7:04 am
I didn’t see reference to the very common 謝了/ 啦 in Mandarin.
Matt Anderson said,
February 16, 2025 @ 10:59 pm
@AntC The OED gives 12 main meanings for ‘ok’ (including “ 2.1869–Fashionable, modish; prestigious, high-class”, which I wasn’t familiar with), and many more submeanings. Not sure about other topolects, but Mandarin ‘OK’ covers a large number (but not all) of those meanings. Any one of the meanings could be covered by one Mandarin word or another (好、行、可以、不差、etc), but there’s no one word that would cover them all. Which makes ‘ok’ really useful. Not sure on the details, but I think many other languages have adopted it as well
Matt Anderson said,
February 16, 2025 @ 11:11 pm
I really like the usage “O不OK” (is that ok?, with ‘ok’ being treated like a word like ‘可以’), but I haven’t heard it in a while. Maybe it’s dated?
Chas Belov said,
February 17, 2025 @ 12:05 am
I notice, outside of Cantonese, only the Min topolect Zhongshan (Longdu, Shaxi) has the marking for distinguishing between thank you for a gift and thank you for a favor. But I would expect the topolects with both 無該 and 謝謝 to have that distinction as well. ¿Is this an omission or are those phrases truly interchangeable in the Wenchang and Haikou (and for that matter 唔該 and 多謝 in Zhongshan (Sanxiang))?
Jonathan Smith said,
February 17, 2025 @ 8:07 pm
Re: "Traditional Chinese courtesy rests on lifelong hierarchical bonds that are too clear to require constant verbal reinforcement."
strange claim — on the contrary, such bonds required/require constant and precise verbal reinforcement; that's why you could practically write dictionaries of "客套話" and why politesse in Chinese languages (and many others) remains far more intricate than is the case in say English. See e.g. here. The simple "sorry"/"thanks" of the international age are different in being generic and non-hierarchical. Re: teaching kids "what do you say?" etc., anyone with exposure to East Asian cultures knows this is done far more painstakingly and universally in such contexts than is the case in e.g. the modern Anglosphere; the idea that the latter could be relatively "polite/civilized" in this respect is from a say Chinese standpoint most amusing.