Penang Hokkien Speech Analysis
The Penang Hokkien is destined as a dying language as the younger generation stop speaking. Hokkien was originated from Fujian province and do not have a standardized writing system. Penang Hokkien is a subdialect of Zhangzhou and heavily drawn the loanword from other languages such as Malays and English. A brief Phonology such as grapheme-to-phoneme, consonants, vowels, rhymes, tones and syllabic structure will be discussed in this article.
1. Introduction
Hokkien originated in the Southern China of Fujian province, and Fujian is home to three principal Hokkien dialects which is from the cities Quanzhou (泉州), Xiamen (厦门), and Zhangzhou (漳州). Hokkien has now become one of the most common Chinese varieties overseas. There are many Hokkien speakers in oversea Chinese, the major Hokkien varieties out of Fujian is Taiwan. Besides Taiwan, the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines.
In the late 18th to the 19th century, Xiamen (Amoy) become the principal city of Southern Fujian, Xiamen (Amoy) dialect is adopted as the Modern Hokkien, it is hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou called Quanzhang dialect, and it is spoken dialect throughout the whole Taiwan.
Whereas in Southeast Asia, there are varieties of Hokkien dialect. Philippines variant is mostly from Quanzhou or Xiamen. Singapore and Southern Malaysia (Melaka and Johor) and Indonesia’s Riau variant are from Quanzhou, it called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien (SPMH). The Zhangzhou Hokkiens went to the northern parts of the peninsula, particularly in Penang, Kedah, Kelantan, and Terengganu. Where the variant in Penang we called it Penang Hokkien.
Hokkien
Hokkien has diverse phoneme among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Mandarin, Vowels are more or less similar to Mandrin. However, Hokkien has 5 to 8 tones depending on the variety of Hokkien regional variants.
Writing System
Hokkien does not have a unitary standardized writing system if compare with the well-developed written format of Cantonese and Mandarin. In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the Republic of China Ministry of Education including its Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan, however, there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien.
Phonetic Writing System
- Pe̍h-ōe-jī
Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Chinese: 白話字) is a Latin alphabet developed by Western missionaries during the 19th century who working in Southeast Asia. Pe̍h-ōe-jī assists Hokkien to be written phonetically in the Latin script, it allows Hokkien can be written without having to deal with non-existent Chinese characters. Pe̍h-ōe-jī remains the Taiwanese script of written work, dictionaries, textbooks, literature and other publications.
2. Bopomofo
Bopomofo is another script used in Taiwanese Hokkien writings. It is used along with Chinese character in Taiwanese literature to represent Hokkien-specific grammatical particles, and also can be used to gloss Chinese characters with Hokkien readings.
Sample text: 我像離水ㄟ魚 (“I am like the fish that has left the water”, with ㄟ [ei] being used as a replacement for ㆤ ê [e].)
3. Taiwanese Kana
During the period of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a Kana-based system was introduced to gloss Hokkien writing in Chinese characters as well as another writing language in Taiwan.
4. Chinese Character
Use Chinese characters is a common method in writing Hokkien, however, there are many problems relating to the use of Chinese characters to write Hokkien. In many cases, Chinese characters are used alongside with other scripts, such as Pe̍h-ōe-jī and Bopomofo. Often time writing Hokkien using Chinese Characters phonetically, but the use of characters is an entirely different meaning to the original phrases, they are not always etymologically correct or phono-semantic nor similar-sounding, similar meaning or rare characters are usually borrowed or substitute to represent a particular morpheme.
Unlike Cantonese, Hokkien does not have a universally accepted standardize characters set. Therefore, there are various ways to express certain words and characters and they can be ambiguous in meaning.
Penang Hokkien
Penang Hokkien is a subdialect of Zhangzhou, a local variant of Hokkien spoken in Penang, [5] and it is historically served as the lingua franca and remains today as the most spoken dialect in Penang as well as neighbouring states of Kedah, Perlis and northern part of Perak. Hokkien made up 64% as a mother tongue spoken dialect in Penang Chinese community and also some of the Indian and Malay community.
Due to Penang is linguistic and ethnic diversity, Penang Hokkien is integrated with many other languages and dialects therefore heavily drawn for loanwords. These include Malay, Teochew, Cantonese and English.
Orthography
Penang Hokkien is rarely written in Chinese characters, and there is no official standard romanisation. Most native speaker using romanisation based on English or Malay and Pinyin spelling rules. These methods are commonly used in food eg. (炒粿條 t͡ɕhá-kúe-tiâu) Char Kway Teow, Char Koay Teow in an inconsistent and high variation of spelling.
Phonology
Below phonology is based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) system. Hokkien (hɔ:k-kién) is a tonal language. Syllables consist of an initial consonant, a vowel, a final consonant, and a tone.
- Grapheme-to-Phoneme
- The consonant (d), (f), (r), and (sh) are only used on loanwords
- ‘nn’ is used after a vowel to express nasalization
Hokkien does not have the letter (d), (f), (r), and (sh) in the language, word begins with these letters are loanword from other languages, For example, durian is changed to lîu-liên or roti change to lo-ti
Hokkien is also nasalized and a superscript ⁿ is added to the final letter of the word to indicate that the word is nasalized.
2. Consonant
Traditional articulations of Hokkien is simple which have only have ‘bilabial’, ‘alveolar’, ‘velar’ and ‘glottal’. Whereas articulation like ‘labiodental’ such as /f/ and ‘post-alveolar’ such as /sh/is coming from loanwords. However, it does not have ‘dental’ and ‘palatal’ articulations like in English.
3. Vowels, Diphthong & Triphthong
The vowels may be either plain or nasal, /a/ is non-nasal, and /aⁿ/ is with concurrent nasal articulation.
4. Rhymes
Rhymes table is a correspondence of sound between words or the endings of words.
5. Tones
Hokkien likes all variety of Chinese dialect and it has tonal. The pitch contour of a syllable is used to distinguish words from each other, the tonal pronunciation is essential in Hokkien because different word has different tone provided Romanized spelling are the same.
Penang Hokkien is aware of four tones in an unchecked syllable (high, low, rising, high failing) and two Entering tones (high and low) in checked syllables.
Tone Shandhi
Penang Hokkien has extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules, Hokkien depends on the phrases or sentence is placed, for example when the word 牛 gú (cow) is alone, then the pronunciation is with an ascending tone, however when it combines with the following syllable, as in 牛肉 gû-bah (beef), it is pronounced with a low tone. When a syllable is placed and connected with another syllable, the general rules as follows:
· 1st becomes 7th
· 7th becomes 3rd
· 3rd becomes 2nd (often sounds like 1st in Penang Hokkien)
· 2nd becomes 1st
· 5th becomes 7th
· Checked syllables (-h):
· 4th becomes 2nd (often sounds like 1st in Penang Hokkien)
· 8th becomes 3rd
· Checked syllables (-p,-t,-k):
· 4th becomes 8th
· 8th becomes 4th
Example
Below are examples of Hokkien consonant phonemes in possible word with IPA transcription. Allophones are important and contribute distinctive meaning when there are aspirated or non-aspirated sounds. For example aspirated phoneme /pʰ/ as in pʰɑŋ means fragrant and non-aspirated /p/ as in paŋ means let go.
Vowels of Penang Hokkien
Five different words in all 18 vowels including diphthongs and triphthongs.
Fundamental Frequency
F0 values is to demonstrate elevation of the hyoid-laryngeal and vibration speed of the vocal folds. The pitch measurement F0 averages was observed, low-frequency such as [a],[e] and [i], low-mid-frequency such as [u], mid-frequency such as [ɛ], [o], and [ɔ], whereas high-frequency such as [ɪ].
Formant Plots
The first two formants are important in determining the quality of vowels, vowels will have distinguishable formants, the chart display in formant 1 (y-axis) against the formant 2 (x-axis). The distribution of Hokkien vowels, and it shows a triangular shape in space. The emission of five-word is distributed at a close range.
Comparing the formants frequencies (F1 and F2) of all the eight oral vowels of Penang Hokkien. The F2 values presented lower averages are vowels [u], [o], [ɔ] and [a], whereas high average F2 are [ɛ], [e], [ɪ] and [i]. The low F1 are vowels [ɪ], [i] and [u], mid F1 are [e], [ɛ], [o], and [ɔ], whereas high F1 is [a]. We can say that high vowels have low F1, low vowels have high F1, front vowels have high F2, and back vowels have low F2.
Conclusion
In this article, we understand the brief history of Penang Hokkien, the writing system and the phonology of Hokkein.
