Re: Sound changes

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 05:05:49PM -0400, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
[snip]
> >But it's interesting you mention "n" vs. "l". The [nN=2] in mainland
> >Hokkien has become in my dialect, of all things, [la:N] (low rising, I
> >forgot the tone numbers... again). So the famous Hokkien phrase
> >[ka.ki.nN=2] becomes [kakilaN], and sounds really different from the
> >original because for some odd reason, tone 2 here becomes low rising.
>
> What's "kakilaN"? I can't divine.
"Own people". Used to identify oneself with a group of people. (As in,
"come on, we're `related', so let's make a deal.")

> >(Because of the odd tone shift, I suspect [la:N] is actually a borrowing
> >from the local Malay _orang_, "man", which local Hokkien speakers like to
> >deride as [A: laN] (black man). But I could be wrong, of course.)
>
> If by "la:N" you mean "person", then it's just the Hokkien baihua
> reading of Mandarin "ren2".
OK. Then the whole _orang_ issue must be just a pure coincidence. It does
make for some bad (racist) puns amongst the Hokkien speakers, though.

> It is homophonous with the Mandarin word
> for "wolf", "lang2". Watch the hilarity ensue with cross-dialectal
> punning.
There was once this joke about how crazy the English language is.
Basically, it claims that English is crazy, because it calls things by all
the wrong names. The argument is:

"lang kio bang" (man is called mosquito)
"bang kio to"   (mosquito is called knife)
"to cin lai"    (knife is very sharp)
"him kio beh"   (bear is called horse)
"beh kio hor"   (horse is called lion)
...
etc.

Basically punning on the English "man" (imitated as "bang"), "mosquito"
("to"=knife), "knife" (imitated as "lai", sharp), "bear" ("beh"=horse),
"horse" (imitated as "hor", lion), etc.. Probably completely nonsensical
in English, but absolute hilarious to bilingual speakers.

[snip]
> No one was even *trying* to presume to feign being nice (actually, it
> was just a good, ol' fashioned ribbing). Still, a refreshing change
> from the utterly meaningless "Wow, your Chinese is absolutely
> *amazing*!!!" ("Um, all I said was, 'Hi.'")
I get that from my Korean acquiantances a lot. Having learned how to say
"hi", "thank you" and "you're welcome" in Korean, I get a lot of undue
admiration. Of course, it helps if you pronounce it with Korean
intonation. :-)


T

--
The two rules of success: 1. Don't tell everything you know. -- YHL

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