Whenever my friends ask me what language I speak I just say "Chinese" because it's hard to explain that I speak such a small dialect like Teochew. I have never really met anyone other than family and family friends that can speak it. It makes me happy being able to understand some of the words in this video, but growing up in Canada, I have not spoken it much at all. I am starting to forget my languages that I once knew well.
Just read your comments and I can't believe i felt annoyed and frustrated because not many can speak it.... instead i should've realised it was special.... oh well, better to realise late now, rather than never
Do come to our hometown in pontianak west kalimantan, indonesia. Most of the chinese speaks teochew... or Visit shantou or jieyang or nam ao, chsoyang or chaochow.. all speaks teochew... I know so because i ve been back to my grand dad hometown several times in jieyang... around 2017ish
@@Cys62 Same in thailand, most of the Chinese here are all from Teochew roots, especially the wealthier ones, or our current dynasty's first king Taksin was Teochew, so you could say Thailand has a king with Teochew roots. I only know one phrase "meng hi!" I still don't know what it means but I say it when I want someone to share food. Then only my great grandmother and aunties know Teochew anymore, it's sad. I wish they taught me when I was a kid and learning languages was easy.
I am Teochew from China, so happy to hear the friendly local accent from overseas, and can understand all what you say.😂❤ really hope that one day you can come back and see that land where your ancestors once lived.🎉
Hi.. I'm Teochew from East Malaysia.. but I lost track of my ancestral roots in China.. I hope one day I can come there to see the country where my ancestors came from and find other family members..
@@ttasmirah9002 Do you know which region or city it is? Welcome to come back and have a look. Even if you can't find your relatives, you can come and see this land and local culture.😀
My grandma is Teochew and grew up in Cambodia, married my Khmer grandfather and had my mom and her sisters and later came to America. I'm mixed Chinese, Khmer and white and growing up my grandma would speak Teochew and broken English to me but would speak Khmer to m my grandfather. My Khmer grandfather already spoke perfect English so his younger daughter and my mom always spoke to him in English. Only my grandma, mom and her older sister are fluent in Khmer but my mom's younger sister speaks fluent Teochew.
Teochew from China. Though I grew up in Shenzhen, I am still able to speak Teochew, at least no problem at all when talking with native. This is our own culture and root, and we should keep it.
This is so heart warming. I'm so happy there's an association of our people out there and I'm so happy inside to know people like you three exist out there meeting together and even doing videos like this. I'm in a process of reading Chinese news daily in Mandarin with the eventual goal of reading in full teochew one day : ) I find these videos so heart warming. Thank you so much for your contributions to our community.
My wife’s Teochew and and im Mexican. I’ve always been super curious as to why so many Teochew people are immigrants from non-mainland China. My wife’s family emigrated from Vietnam.
That is greatly related with the early Chinese expats that already emigrated to Southeast Asia during the Ming Ching dynasties. Most of them mainly spoke Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese.
You can tell the girl in the centre is the most fluent. Greetings from Indonesia :) If anyone is interested, I'll write the Hanzi for the Teochew words below (probably only useful to those who've learned written Chinese): 1a. Goi Bak 雞肉 1b. Te Bak 豬肉 1c. Ak Bak 鴨肉 1d. Gu Bak 牛肉 I've also heard of 'nek' being used, particularly in China. But I'm not sure what the difference is. I heard nek may be more like flesh. 2a. Sio Pien 小便 Personally, I translate this as pee, not toilet. But perhaps you could add the word for place; 位 (Wui) at the back to mean place where you pee. 2b. Tang Si 東司 2c. Chek So 廁所 2d. Sai Be 洗扒 The difference between [Tang Si and Sai Be] versus [Chek So and Sio Pien Wui] for me is that the former is like a home bathroom (where you'd also have a shower and other appliances). Where as the latter would only have a toilet (like most malls). 3a. Choi Sia 多謝 3b. Gaginang 家己人/儂 3c. Le Ho 汝好 In Indonesia, people usually say Kam Sia (感謝). However, I'm certain this is from Hokkien influence as Teochew in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, and most other places never say this. 4a. Chao Khi 早起 4b. Chao Che 早醒 Unfortunately I've never heard of 'se' or 'beki.' I heard a lot of ch sounds in Teochew tend to become s sounds for Vietnamese Teochew due to influence from Vietnamese. So perhaps 'se' is simply the same as 'che?' 5a. Lui 鐳 5b. Chi 錢 5c. Kou 筘 (there's probably no proper Hanzi for Kou so this character is just a stand in) Lui is the more traditional Teochew way to say money, while Chi is due to influence from Standard Chinese. Basically whatever the most standardized way of communicating in Chinese characters is for a given time period. Putonghua Mandarin in our case. Usually, older languages like Teochew or Cantonese will absorb vocabulary from the current Chinese standard so that they're not left behind in advancement. In Teochew, you can see this in people saying Sio Pien (小便) as the more 'formal' way to say pee, but still retain the 'colloquial' (aka more Teochew native) way of saying pee; Pang Jio (放尿). In Cantonese, you can see this in Cantopop where songs are written in Mandarin but sung aloud in Cantonese readings. 6a. Tou Kun 肚困 6b. Tou Yiau 肚枵 7a. Ut or Yi 夗 Teochew usually has 2+ readings of a single Chinese character. Vernacular reading (白讀), Literary reading (文讀), and a third reading that may stem from dialectal differences within Teochew. A good example of this is 大, where it's read as Tua vernacularly, but as Tai when coupled with 學 to mean university. Similarly, Ut or Yi should just be different readings of the same 夗 character. 8a + 8b. Don't think there's a 'proper' way to write Tabou and Chabou. People may just use whatever characters sound similar to the spoken word like 查姆. However, kia should be 仔. 8c. Nui should be 女 (from Cantonese). So it's not Teochew or Vietnamese. Usually people substitute the N sound for L due to 懶音 (lazy tongue), but using the N instead is not incorrect. In fact, it's considered more proper.
@@user-qz2os3ml2f The lazy tongue (switching N to L) is mostly a Cantonese trait. As is the case with Nui becoming Lui. It can be found in other languages too however. For example in Teochew; 可能 (possibility) can be said Ko Neng or Ko Leng.
@@kero5577 Yeah its common in Indonesia where I'm from. Also in neighbouring countries e.g. Singapore. Because we receive a lot of influence from other Chinese languages like Hokkien, Hakka, Cantonese, etc. Bak is originally from Hokkien. For example, in my Teochew, 免 (no need) and 變 (to transform) is 'meen' and 'been' respectively, which mimics the Cantonese readings (hope I'm using the English phonetics properly). And many originally iang ending words like 榴蓮 liu liang (durian), 仙人 siang jing (celestial) are ien ending now. Liu lien and sien jin respectively. Probably from Hakka influence.
Aye finally a channel that’s teo chew. Literally no one I know speaks teo chew but my family or family friends...it’s cool too see you guys teaching others or just talking about it. I relate to you guys a lot . I’m from philly ! Keep it up :)
thenonalysa um not that I know of...we have viet, Cambodian, and ASA clubs but not specifically teo chew nang....yeah same it’s awesome to see others speak teochew
wow it's so cool that you have a teochew association at uci. my mom is from swatao/shantou so we speak teochew. i'm confused at a lot of words they use in the vid but here's what we would also say at home: cheso for toilet, joisia, jin for money, doukun/douiao for hungry, i for sleep, gia for child (dabou for boy, jabou for girl)
I really appreciate the effort from the three of you to create this video. I am Teochew in Cambodia. But here we also had an association of Teochew and I only have few friends can actually speak the dialect. Have a nice weekend.
khuntien nang. teochew hok coi. long cong ta teochew ue. Nice to have these video. Greetings to all Teochew friends, from Pontianak, West Borneo, Indonesia
I randomly took a job in Chaozhou and knew nothing about Teochew people before hand. It was such s fun experience, the tea and food culture was so great. And the people are smart and amazing.
hello im teochew from indonesia and i like so much watching your videos cause actually i literally know most of the word you all use even from different place😚
Hey ladies, thanks for the video,I’m really grateful and overwhelmed when I saw this video..I live in SG and my ancestors from Chaozhou Chao’an Feng Tang county…young Teochew still remember and speaks them is really wonderful and outrageous! All the best !
There’s many kind of teochew guys Shua tao/mountain entrance and shua bue/mountain edge , its totally different But almost can understand all , the verb is the same but the vocab could be different
Bonjour from France ! Really nice to hear teochew from other countries. Maybe one day we can make a discussion over the world and compare each other ! Jiosia !
My mom will say like this, if i refuse to sleep in time 😂,,, "Pang khe ut low, thi am lou,, ma ca le ai khe thak ce.". ( Go to sleep, it's already night,, tommorow you must go to school) 😂
It is amazing to see those three girls born overseas still so eager to speak their parents' swatowese dialect. Keep up the spirit. If they really want to speak more correct teochiu , then go to teochiu of China and spend some time there.
That’s really cool my parent came from Vietnam but my moms side speak Cantonese and Vietnamese and my dads side speak mainly hakka(Ngai type) I’ve been trying to figure out my family history and where I’m from and why my family decided to migrate to Vietnam and such
@@sjsjdjfjf5116 I'm not really sure, we do have different type of hakka spoken in my province "West Borneo, Indonesia" one other type that I hardly understand is called "singkawang" (city name) dialect. But "Ngai" means "Wa" or I right? I also understand Hakka, because my mom communicates with my nanny in Hakka instead of Teochew with my dad. Anyway, nice to know you @Stan Taemin
My grandfather (dad side) migrate from Swatou to Singapore and then to Indonesia because of the war (Japanese came to China). Hakka people in West Borneo since Yuan Dinasty (13th century - 1257) and Teochew of my mother side is from Gold Miner Family hired by the King(Sultan) of Pontianak (my home town)
Wendy Rostandy that’s cool. I’m a Asian American, so I don’t have much info about that stuff, although I did visit my family in Vietnam so that was a amazing experience since I hadn’t been there since I was five. the only family members I know still love on China are great uncles I’ve never met or heard much about, and Ngai isn’t pronounced wa it’s weird they don’t have the sound in the English alphabet, but it’s similar to when you say bring that ng sound plus i.
Hi I am from Indonesia. I am a teochew also. Just for information, in Indonesia there are so many regions in the country and only one region that still have so many teochew people who speak their teochew language that is in West Kalimantan (we teochew people call it Khuntien). While the other regions dont speak teochew anymore. Its so good to know that there are teochew people that still speak their mother language outside China.
I am teo chew from Vietnam and I am very proud of my heritage. I always greet Asian people in teo chew first and if they don't understand then I will greet them with different dialects.
I’m atleast 25% Chaoshan Chinese , due to my grandpa from my dad side is full blood one. Sadly Cambodia go thru war. But I know my aunt still speak the language
That was great, good job girls. Im Aussie born Cambo Chinese Viet teochew nang and I also say things same and differently to you too... wake up "jao kee" where the 3rd girl said bek k... bathroom we say "gong bung" and "chea soh" as well im just trying to type phonetically lol anyway, keep it up my teochew sistas!
Hi I’m Teochew, living in Australia. Some of the words have a nasal tone & it’s not easy to translate to English, phonetically. For example wake up = Chao Che, the 2nd word has a nasal tone. The word for meat = bah but the word nek, means flesh. We must also remember another ethnic group (Teo Yeo). They speak Teochew with an accent. Keep up the good work. We must not forget our Teochew dialect. Our ancestors are from Swatao (Shantou, in Mandarin). We are all gaginang. Cheers
I'm half Hokkien, half Teochew by ethnicity, culturally Thai-American and I am so happy that I can recognize some of these words and phrases! I sorely wish I grew up speaking it more fluently. I hope we can all continue to keep our precious dialects alive.
I relate to this video so much!! my family does the same thing and blend viet words into teochew and screw me up LOL. Hello from the U.S.! Wish I live in Cali where more gaginang live since not many in east coast. Keep making more videos speaking teochew :)
We used to have large Teochew speaking community in Southern Peninsula Malaysia (Melaka and Johor). In 1980s majority of the Teochew ditched their language for Mandarin. Only old people speak Teochew now and it didn't get passed down because of the "Speak Mandarin Campaign".
When other people speak Teochew, do they mix in a ton of English? I think at this point I speak a new language that is just Teochew and English mixed together. I met a guy from China who speak the Teochew from China and then English as well and he has a very hard time understanding me.
@@user-qz2os3ml2f their accent is super different!!! I think the only way to explain it is to compare it to an American back in the 1820s hearing an English person talk for the first time.
In teochew learned from my grandparents and they’re teochew from vietnam, we say “ei bei” for bathroom :), for wake up my family says “jow say” (like pronounced). For money we always ask how much something is we also say “yet juy jee?” Hungry we say “tou Kung”, and maybe the girl in the white shirt on the left side’s mom calls her “noi kie” like kid like my kid :)
Indonesia Chinese Born, here. My father is Hakka/Khek, and my mom is Teochew/Tio Chiu.. So I know both languages and I just know and surprised there are Teochew people in Vietnam too (sorry, I'm not good at geography) and we speak same language as teochew, yet accent a lil bit different. But yeah, I love to know about this. PS : there are still a lot of Teochew people here. Love from Indonesia
Hopefully, I can find a tewchow association for my daughter who is 1/4 tewchow/Hong kongese) on her mothers side. When I would meet my in-laws they would always say, “Jet Jet” which I assuming means “eat, eat” in tewchow.
True, my mom never exclusively teach me teochew, but she speaks it with her mom and dad and i used to never wanting to try to learn it since it made me feel like an outcast in school. now im 21 and sad af not being able to speak my own language.
In Singapore, we say Ki Lai for wake up. I’m not sure if that’s Teochew. The confusion we have here is some Malay words have been used to replace some words when we speak in Teochew. Eg. We use SUKA for ‘to like’, It is not Teochew but I haven’t a clue what the actual word is. Lol.
Hi Nona and friends.. Dig your vid! To add my perspective of the TeoChew word "ook". I use the term "ku ook" to literally mean "go sleep" ..If the person were already sleeping, then I would use "ee" (or "ii") On the topic of money, in the U.S. "ko" = 1 dollar ..jic ko, naw ko, sah ko, etc.
I am a pure cantonese from Malaysia. Just trying to improve my hokkien and watching some Teochew videos too... As both have similar tones and pronunciation of words. Learning Languages is super super fun by the way.
Meat, in Singapore Teochew, we usually say "Ba", in Teochew China, they say "Nek". Toilet, in Singapore ,we localised it and say "Liang Lang"... in modern days Teochew in China.. they say "Chey-Sor".
You have to visit Indonesia especially in West Kalimantan, there are still many people who can speak Teochew, I laugh when I hear the girl on the left talking, hahaha
I totally get Nicky. When you speak multiple languages you sometimes forget others don't. I speak viet and teochew and it confuses my only viet relatives.
I used to be fluent, but I stopped using it because I started to use Lao more often and eventually forgot most of it. I understand more than I can speak, but it's still embarassing. I really wish I didn't stop speaking the language. I'm glad I do remember some words and was able to follow along, though. If there's a branch in San Diego, I'd join after COVID is under control.
I speak this with Vietnamese at home. My teochew is different as my parents and grandparents are from Vietnam but great grandparents are born in China. So I mix my Vietnamese with it a lot
@@user-qz2os3ml2f I'm Teochew Viet too but currently living in Canada. There are many Teochew in Vietnam and they have different pronunciation/accent depending on the area they live in. Teochew ppl who live in Soc Trang province speak somewhat different from ppl who live in Saigon (HCMC)!
"Bha" for meat is Hokkien, not Teochew. In Teochew it's called "nek" 肉. They don't even seem to differentiate between Hokkien and Teochew. In fact those two dialects share many similarities, but are also distinctively different to some extent.
No, i think bha for meat is teochew. My ancestors left china 3 generations ago and now the language is with me. I’ve only been familiar with bha and the other Teochew families i know also use bha 🤔 interesting though, i’m gonna ask my dad
For me gaginang sounds like I’m alone. My family also don’t say hi either. If we greet someone for example if it’s our mom we would just say mom in multiple different ways/languages like ma, maman, mom and mum. My parents speak multiple languages like Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Cambodian ( I don’t know the name of it), French (my mom know the most out of both of them) and English only some (I think that’s all). So we have some words that are different Edit for me the way she said gaginang sounds like I’m alone and also ga bha literally sounds like plastic meat 😂😂
We also use the same words for alone, but never for greetings (yea no words for hi). When we found out that the person that we speak to is Teochew nang, then we usually will say "khathinang le" to establish closer relations or connection.
if these girls were to visit Shantou/Swatow they will find themselves not understood by anyone except ppl in their 80s. you r speaking the archaic form of Teochew, like those spoken 100 yrs ago. 🤣😅😅🤣
:o really? cool! me too, although some words are not common but still understandable. Any idea teochew use in this video also sounds archaic? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NyCnjh9i1ZI.html For me It sounds very dear and familiar
@@WendyRostandy For Southern Chinese languages like Teochew or Cantonese, there's usually a colloquial and formal way to say things. Formal follows more what Standard Chinese (Mandarin) speaker says and is regarded as more complex vocabulary, while colloquial is more day to day speech. In Indonesia, because we were banned from learning Chinese for a while, our Teochew lost most formal vocabulary, so most people just use the colloquial vocabulary. Teochew nang from Pontianak born in 70s onwards basically sound like uneducated Teochew because they don't use a lot of the formal vocabulary. What needs to be done to regain knowledge of the formal vocabulary is learn Chinese characters and Mandarin. Then, learn how to read each character in Teochew. For example, the word handphone 手機 is read Shou Ji in Mandarin. You need to learn the Teochew reading, which is Chiu Ki. And now you know the formal or more advanced vocabulary for handphone. Most people in China will say this instead of Tien Ue. Older people in Pontianak (born before 60s) should still know the Teochew readings for Chinese characters. My grandparents were educated in Chinese schools in Pontianak and their vocabulary is still advanced so they have no problem communicating with those from China. Very different from my dad who only studied how to read/write Chinese characters for a short while, so he would have more trouble communicating with Chinese-educated Teochew.
Teochew people r scholars, hav terrific etiquette, ...distinctive polished-diction, the top dialectic clan(elite)...most of e *genders (Teochew) are e` most handsome of Samsons & gorgeous Delilahs, amongst the other clans; Hokkien, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka, Hockchew, etc so, ...are the 3 of u of pure Teochew descendants, ancestry, heritage, or pan`~tapestry? The centre lady apparently resonanced with me.✓.