I was just reading through an article in Hong Kong’s Ming Pao 『明報』, and one the words used therein was 「渴望」, or “yearning”. That got me thinking again about the on-going question of “what is Hokkien vs. what is Chinese?” (if it is even a valid question at all). Specifically in Penang Hokkien as spoken among today’s generation, almost all concepts of “hope” are expressed with just one word, i.e. 「希望」‘hi-bāng’ (in Taiwan, from what I know, 「向望」 ‘ǹg-bāng’ dominates). But does then imply an almost-certain knee-jerk reaction “only 「希望」‘hi-bāng’ is real Hokkien, and 「渴望」, 「盼望」 are not - they are just Chinese” from speakers? I know of Penang Hokkien speakers who would adopt the dogmatic stance of “I have not heard such-and-such-a-word used before in Penang Hokkien. My parents have not, either. Nor anyone else whom I have met. Therefore, it is not (admissible as) a Penang Hokkien word.” Now, I am going to raise my hand and state that I personally am very much against such a dogmatic stance. Such a dogmatic stance fails to account for the possibility that such-and-such a word was in vogue during 19th century Penang, but a lack of proper education in Hokkien today has buried the word into obscurity, possibly surviving only in the guise of the Mandarin pronunciation, which far too many young Penang Hokkien speakers today would be hesitant to map into the Penang Hokkien pronunciation - so who are we to judge? But where would I personally draw the line? For me, the rule-of-thumb is this: If the same concept as expressed in Classical or Modern Standard Chinese has its own different but orthodox Hokkien expression (that, preferably, can be etymologically mapped to specific Chinese characters), then for me, the Penang Hokkien expression would dominate. So, if 「坎站」‘khám-tsām’ has exactly the same meaning as 「程度」 “stage (of a process in progress)”, then I would give ‘khám-tsām’ preference over saying ‘thêng-to•’. But if one Penang Hokkien word 「希望」‘hi-bāng’ alone does not allow me to differentiate between the concepts of “hope”, “yearning” and “longing”, then I would have no choice but to consider 「渴望」 ‘khat-bāng’ and 「盼望」 ‘phàn-bāng’ as theoretically-admissible. For to my mind, not to do so would only be an act of deliberately impoverishing Penang Hokkien’s vocabulary. Another over-arching rule for me would be that any such ‘generic Chinese ’ words should only be taken from the Classical/Literary lexicon - for that is where Hokkien, along with the other dialects, looks back towards a common datum; and the end of the Classical Chinese period and before the advent of Mandarin as the vernacular standard, was when Penang Hokkien came to being. To cite an extreme example - never, ever in a hundred years, would I consider replacing 「物件」 ‘mi̍h-kiā’ with 「東西」 ‘tang-sai’. Sharing my thoughts impromptu. Comments welcome.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 09:56:20 +0000
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