I just started studying Hokkien on Glossika and my goal is basic conversational skills within the next two years. You can imagine how shocked I was to see your one week title. Great vid!
That thing about different romanisation really hits my family. Some of my fathers generation are "tang" and others like my father and I are "tan". My grandfather is from Fuchow but around 1900 he moved to Sarawak, (West Malaysia) and although most of the fammily speak Fuchow - the Sarawak town they come from is known as "little Foochow" they mainly speak hokkien at home. "They" - because my father didn't teach my brother and I, although I lived in Sarawak for a year when I was about 14 and picked a little Hokkien.
That feeling when you find out that min doesn't actually follow a geographical continuum and instead had split off from all the others before the Middle Chinese period ;x
Actually there are many varieties of Hokkien, it seems you are learning the Zhangzhou dialect version instead of Quanzhou dialect version. Hokkien predominantly used in Taiwanese media is more like mixed Amoy (Xiamen) accent but Zhangzhou leaning. Penang / Northern Malaysian Hokkien is pure Zhangzhou accent. Singapore (and Southern Malaysian) Hokkien is mixed but more Quanzhou leaning. In Taiwan it also differs based on region with Yilan being pure Zhangzhou dialect, Tainan, Kaohsiung being mixed but Zhangzhou-leaning, Taipei mixed but Quanzhou leaning and Lukang being Quanzhou dialect. for example 猪尾短短 吃饭配卤卵 would be 'tir ber ter ter jiak png pue loo nng' in Quanzhou dialect but 'ti bue te te jiak pui pe loo nui' in Zhangzhou dialect.
Mandarin and Cantonese are actually closer to each other than either of them are to Hokkien, despite Hokkien being located in the middle. Hokkien and other Min Chinese dialects (Fuzhou, Putian, Henghua, Teochew, Hainanese) are the only modern branch of Chinese languages which diverged early on from Old Chinese while being influenced by Middle Chinese, whereas Cantonese and Mandarin are descended from Middle Chinese. This is also why Hokkien has many differences in pronunciation based on vernacular 白话音 or literary 文读音 reading. Literary reading tends to be pronunciations which are more derived from Middle Chinese influences whereas vernacular pronunciations mostly originate from the pronunciation which originated from Old Chinese and formed independently in Fujian. Furthermore in Hokkien there is an underlaying substratum of non-Sinitic origin from the indigenous Minyue people who lived there before the Chinese arrived and Sinicized the region, words like 'man' and 'woman' (ta-po, tsa-bo) has no Chinese character equivalent and words are often selected only based on sound with no actual meaning (查埔). Cantonese also has some words of non-Sinitic origin but the indigenous people of Guangdong and Fujian were different and so were their native languages which influenced their respective dialects. The region of Pearl River Delta was traditionally inhabited by Kra-Dai/Tai-Kadai people related to Zhuang, Thai and Lao people; and Guangdong was at times part of the same kingdom as northern Vietnam. Fujian on the other hand was the urheimat (homeland) of Austronesian people more closely related to Taiwanese aborigines, Pacific Islanders and other Maritime SE Asians. In the case of 畀 which means 'to give' in Cantonese it is probably originated from Kra-Dai (Tai-Kadai) languages, whereas Hokkien uses the original Old Chinese 予 which is even older than 给 Cantonese or Yue Chinese dialects appeared much later than Hokkien did and as a result they do actually still have a better correspondence with Mandarin when using Chinese characters; whereas in Hokkien you might find that many words don't even have a Chinese character equivalent simply because it's so old the original words have been forgotten and lost or that the words are not even of Chinese origin to begin with. Two features of Old Chinese only preserved in Min Chinese dialects (including Hokkien) and not in any other Chinese branch is 上古无唇齿音: consonants 'f' don't exist in Old Chinese and just corresponds to 'b','p' or 'h'/ 上古无舌上音: no consonants 'zh', 'ch', 'sh' or 'r' and they often correspond to 't', 'j' or other consonants.
You're absolutely insane for doing this! Thank you for a detailed description of the Chinese languages as well. a little note at 6:56, 魚仔's official lyrics is actually kind of a mandarin translation and didn't use the actual Hokkien words (“本字”）, so "想到半暝" is actually "想甲半暝" which is pronounced siūⁿ kah puàⁿ-mî; and “希望月光帶你回到我身邊” is "希望月光𤆬你轉來阮身邊 hi-bāng gue̍h-kng tshuā-lí tńg-lâi gún-sin-piⁿ" where 𤆬 tshuā means 'to lead' and 阮 gún is the first person possessive 'my'
Thank you for learning Hokien. Preserve your heritage and pass it down to the next generations. Communist China slso wants to annihilate dislects. So you need to make an effort to preserve Hokien,/ Minnan dialect.Btw not the whole of Hokien province speak what you call Hokien or Minnan Hua.
starting at 1:35, your voice is almost the same volume as the background music, which makes it too hard for me to continue trying to watch to the video. this is so annoying for me, when good content is ruined by background music that is too loud
I highly recommend listening to Mayday's songs to learn! Their songs are very catchy and meaningful. Here's some : - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1j_mpwKmlJg.html - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3wrto8oJu5A.html - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-D4yJ85oqjzQ.html - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5VUUGZ1-nlY.html
speaking a language is the way to learn how to speak the language. Speaking another language and translate it is learning how to translate a language into another. When two people don't understand eachother it just needs time to find vocabulary that can be understood and work the way up from there.
This has made me curious about Hokkien! I've studied Mandarin for years (although still struggling having a proper conversation sadly), but I've gained a solid knowledge of characters, words, grammar structures, etc (I just need to get my $h1t together on the speaking to people part, too scared! 😭). Cantonese has always scared me, just seems so wildly different from Mandarin. While attempting to get basics down, I really struggled with their pronunciations more than I expected. Anyway, I'm intrigued that Hokkien seems to share more similarities to Mandarin than I ever would've expected. Anyway. Thank you for making this! Really cool to watch! People really need to know about all the other different Sino-Tibetan languages out there! By the way, what's the easiest way you used to find Hokkien media? I'm assuming searching for something like 闽南语音乐/电视... or something... (I Googled how to write Hokkien in Hokkien, and that's what came up. That might be wrong! 🤦🏼)
Yes. Language/ dialectd learning is easy with learning from live people. But viewing dialect TV series and listening to dialect songs can help. Recommend 1 Teochew song: 门脚一丛梨. Keep it up. 方言万岁
Very very nice video.. Aunty’s daughter can speak English, Mandarin n very little Hokkien .. will send her this clip n hope that she can try to learn more Hokkien. Awesome clip! Well done
As a mandarin speaker, I need to do this but with Mandarin! There are some pretty out there dialects, and I grew up with local dialect of Mandarin but learning standard in school, so I speak the ??? dialect. I would need to literally learn a little bit.
You didn't get chance using early work of PiLi Puppet Action Fantasy series as Guide? All puppet characters, including narration, is voiced by one named 黄文澤 [Ng][Boon][D-yuk], also know as Octavocal, eight voice, Master, 八音才子[Bae⁴][Yin¹][Tsai²][Zu⁴]. Iconic puppet character that represents him is 素還真 [Soh⁴][Hwan³][Jin¹]. I hope you know the number I put represents the tone. Lastly, 😭 I'm SO~~~ proud you chose Proper Chinese Writing for subtitle, my dad is The Last Generation who learn such writing in Malaysia before switching to the handicapped ♿️ writing system.
aw thanks for this wholesome video! as a germany-born teochew I also related to a lot of things mentioned in this video and it feels nice to be represented. when I am with germans they think I am chinese and never cared about the dialects esp when I tried explaining mine, and when I am with mandarin chinese I also felt disconnnected. they were always so nice ngl but I still felt so left out bc I couldn't speak mandarin well as I didn't grow up with mandarin but with teochew and many of them didn't even know about MinNan languages, not to mention Teochew. Also, I have never met any peers/young people who happen to have teochew background like me, at best I had met cantonese but this dialect is also so different. I actually realized I related the most with Malaysians and Signaporeans of chinese background as they also have this identity crisis hahahah. I am just v thankful for the internet and content creators like you, this way one feels less lonely. It is amazing you tried to learn Hokkien, it is not much different to my dialect as both are MinNan languages. have a great day :)
i hope that you do more videos liek this about hokkien or other languages; or if you can think of which oppportunities there are for connecting to these different languages that would be awesome. but this was great and you should feel proud! I'm gllad theres someone out there documenting their language learnign process this way! I'm inspired!!
Taiwanese Hokkien was my first language, and it's so heartwarming to see other people my age taking an interest to this beautiful and storied language. Thanks for bringing awareness to the topic! I fervently hope that Taigi doesn't die out in taiwan, but almost no kids nowadays are being taught it at home, partially due to the past efforts of the government, partially to the lack of enough taiwanese language education in school currently, and partially due to how busy parents and grandparents are with work. I'm glad you speak Canto though, I find it to be a beautiful language and hope it's cultural influence continues to flourish. 加油！
I learned Spanish through watching movies..bt with subtitles. It really helps get better. I definitely recommend Immersive translate for generation of subtitles since not most movies contain them
This is the first video of yours I watched. I've always been fascinated by languages and totally agree with what your mom says - when learning a language you also learn that people's culture and way of thinking. And I think that it goes the other way around too: if you understand the culture of the people that speak that language, then learning it becomes easier. I'll definitely watch the rest of your vids now. Please keep up the great work of learning Hokkien and do tell us how it goes!
Whenever I feel discouraged and confused about my way to learn a new language (especially the Sinitic one like this), I'll always revisit this video of yours so I don't feel alone. At least I'm not the only one who feel lost, suck, and confused about languages bcs my progress is always slow and back and forth. It's so depressing to feel lost every single time in the process 😭😭
Interesting, you have the same issue that I have seen many people have: You constantly switch between "language" and "dialect" when referring to all these different sinitic languages. I smell some remnant of nationalistic chinese teaching there.
I'm a 19yo Vietnamese chinese in the US who speaks Vietnamese, Cantonese, and a little Hokkien + Teochew. a lot of my friends (international students from mainland china and Taiwan) shamed me for not being able to speak mandarin like the rest of them😭 it's so comforting to hear other ppl my age speak hokkien and other southern chinese dialects !!
I am a Hokkien generation from Medan Indonesia as also Hokkien Medan lang and really want to learn more about Hokkien (i can but it still hard for not general word). in fact I'm mixed Chinese Indonesian and I hope there is an easy way to learn it in a standard way, just tmi 😅
The edit, the filming and the theme as well as the concept are so freaking amazing I was shocked when I saw you have just few subscribers. You really deserve more view, keep going! 👏
As a fellow singaporean, god damn your mandarin is better than mine. I always thought it was useless during school time so I just completely ignored it as much as possible, now I kinda regret it. The thing is, my mom's Malaysian and barely speak any english so I have to converse with her in chinese. My mom's side of the family also speaks (a mashed up version of) hokkien and it sounds cool, ever since I was small. I've always wanted to pick it up, imitating my grandma's words sometimes but my visit to Malaysia was not frequent enough for it to stick. The only few words I remember are the curse words, "I am", and "吵死人" (loud as hell, because I was noisy when I was a brat lmao). Then covid came and in Singapore, yknow, everything's in English. my chinese skills fell like crazy and my hokkien is basically non existant. I want to learn it back but I don't have the drive in me to try hokkien again for to fix my chinese. on a side note, during covid times I picked up Japanese cuz anime, vtubers, felt cool to know a "secret" third language lmao(a lot of people in Singapore actually knows japanese :/). I am kinda proficient in Japanese which is kinda funny, cuz I abandoned chinese for Japanese, not sure how our ancestors would look at it
Hokkien, a.k.a. the lingu franca of the Chinese immigrants in the Philippines. Though Philippine Hokkien has changed enough to be its own dialect, I wonder how close to its mainland roots it still is.
