Re: Sound changes

Andreas wrote:

>Teoh wrote:
>>What about having 7 tones? :-P
>
>As said, I'm practically tone-deaf, and so two, seven or eighty-five tones
>make little difference to me.
Dude, aren't you Swedish? You can't distinguish between "anden", "the
soul", and "anden", "the wild duck"? We've dipped our toe into this
water before, but I believe one can speak fluent Chinese (pick a
dialect, any dialect) and still mortify people at the karaoké bar.
Tone-deafness, in my humble opinion which is my own, is not really an
issue here.

>>OK, OK, it's Hokkien. A contaminated Hokkien, that is. One that has mixed
>>with local Malaysian languages and picked up some Malay words, some Indian
>>words, as well as some English words (completely mangled, of course).
>BTW, is the name "Hokkien" by any chance related to the province-name
>Fujian/Fukien? Been meaning to ask this since I first heard the word
>"Hokkien", but for some reason 've never come to it before.
Yes. Other sobriquets include "dai4ggi2" (Tai(wanese) language),
"bbin4nan4ue7" (Southern Min speech), and "ho7lo2ue7" (I imagine the
characters are along the lines of what the Japanese call "ateji", but
the standard usage is (heron-old-speech). HS, while I conclude the
first one is out, does your dialect allow the last two terms?

Kou

Replies