Talk:Min Nan

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I don't like Min Nan or Min-nan. I think under (mainland Chinese) pinyin spacing conventions Minnan is the most appropriate, although I could put up with Min-nan as that suits the Taiwanese. But I have never seen Min Nan used, and I think it's ugly. Andrew Yong 22:48, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

See MediaWiki talk:Chinese language. -- ran 23:18, Jun 8, 2004 (UTC)

Isn't Min Nan foremost the name of a region, synonomous with "Southern Min"? A-giau 13:05, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Min Nan (or Minnan or Min-nan) is the accepted translation for 閩南話. Similarly we use Wu for 吳語, Xiang for 湘語, etc. -- ran 13:27, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

The question is whether it is also the accepted name of a cultural/linguistic region in Fujian, i.e. Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, to name a few of the cities. See minnan:Bân-lâm for native usage (referring to the region, not language). A-giau 20:55, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, that I don't know — isn't it just short for "South Fujian"? If it also refers to a cultural concept, then feel free to move Min Nan to Minnan (linguistics). -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 20:30, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 Intelligibility 2 Tones 3 Cellophane noodles question 4 Hokkien 5 Requested move 5.1 Survey 5.2 Discussion 6 Voyager Amoy clip 7 Do we need new pages? 8 Literary vs. Colloquilal (vernacular) readings

[edit] Intelligibility

Is Min Nan intelligible w/ Cantonese? It should be indicated, for comparison, whether it is or is not. Thanks! ~ 70.57.137.163 07:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

No, they generally aren't mutually intelligible. --Beirne 10:55, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

15:33 -- 28 October 2005(AEST) Intelligibility is a question both of degree and of the amount of contextual information available. Under conditions where contextual information is available and relatively unambiguous (e.g. in a simple act of buying and selling a souvenir item), it is possible for speakers of the two dialects to understand each other. This applies to other pairs of dialects and potentially languages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 137.111.158.198 (talk • contribs) 06:38, October 28, 2005 (UTC)

---

  The above comment is nonsense and should be deleted, for in the simple act of 
  buying and selling a souvenir item, even speakers of English and and speakers of
  Mandarin are possible to understand each other.
  Minnan is mutually unintelligible with Cantonese and Mandarin, period. --
  —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.121.215.56 (talk • contribs).

---

The intelligibility among different divisions of Min Nan (e.g. Amoy, Teochiu, Zhanjiang, Haifeng/Lufeng) should better be elaborated in the article. :-) — Instantnood 20:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

I have added an intelligibility section. -- A-cai 12:42, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tones

Tones of ChaoZhou differs very much from other Min Nan. see: Teochew_dialect —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.40.139.167 (talk • contribs) 08:31, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cellophane noodles question

Hello, there's some controversy about the origin of the name saifun to refer to cellophane noodles. It was earlier thought that this was a Japanese name (i.e. harusame saifun) but it now seems it might be related to the Mandarin "fen si." Is it possible that "saifun" is a Min Nan pronunciation? It doesn't seem to be Cantonese. Thank you, Badagnani 05:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hokkien

Someone just added "(Hokkien)" after the name of the language in the box up top. But if Chaozhou is a dialect of Min Nan and there are many variants and dialects, is it proper to put "Hokkien" (one particular form) as the alternate name of the language? I don't think that's correct. Badagnani 00:06, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually "Hokkien" is the more proper name for this language, or dialect if that is what you prefer. "Hokkien" is a Min nan word that has been in use for hundreds of years by native speakers in Southern Fujian, the motherland of Min nan, and by vast number of emigrants therefrom. "Min nan" is a relatively new Mandarin word coined by the ruling class Mandarin officials around fifty years ago. --—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.121.215.56 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Voyager Amoy clip

Dear A-cai,

You provided the POJ for the Voyager Amoy clip as: "Ū-êng, to̍h lâi gún chia chē ô·!" However, on [[1]], Heruler gives "Ū êng, tióh lâi gún chia chē!" Did you mean to use "tioh" instead of "toh"? Tøsia! Oniows 01:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for not responding sooner, I don't check this page as often as I should. There are some minor spelling and pronunciation differences in the Amoy dialect. This is an example of such a difference. The two words to̍h and tio̍h actually are the same word, but based on different accents. To the best of my knowledge tio̍h is based on the Quanzhou accent, whereas to̍h is based on the Zhangzhou accent. In Xiamen, both pronunciations seem to be interchangeable. To me, the voice on the recording is too slurred at that point to say definitively, but it sounds like to̍h rather than tio̍h to me. The person at the above website does not appear to be overly concerned with absolute faithfulness to the pronunciation on the original recording. For example, he spells chia̍h-pá bē (Xiamen accent) as chiáh pá bōe (Zhangzhou accent). It means the same thing, but it is not what the voice on the recording says. The recording clearly says bē, which makes sense, because both gún (we) and bē (question particle) are based on the Xiamen accent. If it were bōe, the person would have more likely pronounced we as góan. However, since Min Nan is not my native language, I would love to hear the opinion of a native speaker (especially someone from the Xiamen area). I hope this response was not too long winded. -- A-cai 13:47, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do we need new pages?

I think we should consider reorganizing the pages related to Min Nan. In my opinion, the Min Nan article should describe the Min Nan family of languages:

• Min Nan family

1. Amoy (linguistics)
   • Quanzhou (linguistics), Xiamen (linguistics), Zhangzhou (linguistics), Taiwanese (linguistics), Singapore Hokkien
2. Southern Zhejiang
   • I'm not as familiar with these.
3. Chaoshan
   • Teochew (dialect), Swatow etc.
4. Hainan
   • Qiongwen

The numbered items each represent mutually unintelligible branches in the Min Nan family tree. The bullets underneath each number represent the various mutually intelligible accents that belong to that branch (not comprehensive). Part of the problem is that Min Nan is colloquially associated with Xiamen speech or Taiwanese (which are mutually intelligible). This is similar to how Chinese is colloquially associated with Standard Mandarin, despite the fact that it really represents a family (ex. Sinitic) of mutually unintelligible families (ex. Min) of mutually unintelligible families (ex. Min Nan) of languages/dialects! I think the articles we have now should stay, but should be more narrowly focused on their topic. For example the Taiwanese article should not spend time on basics common to all Amoy speech forms, such as orthography, tones and grammar (except to the extent that these things vary from Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Zhangzhou speech). To use English as an analogy:

• Germanic family

1. German language
   • whatever
2. English language
   • British English, American English, Australian English etc.

Including the grammar explanations in the Taiwanese article, but not in the Xiamen (linguistics) article (which does not exist), or in the Amoy (linguistics) article, would be akin to including a grammar section in the American English, but not in the British English article (which would not exist in our scenario), or in the English article (which would redirect to Germanic in our scenario). One problem is that we do not have a standard term that everyone can agree upon for the language which is spoken in Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Taiwan. Min Nan is popularly used, but is also a family of mutually unintelligible languages/dialects. In summary, I think we need separate articles, but I'm not sure what to call them. The following are mutually intelligible: Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Taiwanese. Each should be treated in a separate article. My vote would be to put most of the basic information about the language (Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Taiwanese --- not Teochew (dialect), Qiongwen etc.) in a single article (not Min Nan). You could call it Amoy (linguistics). Quanzhou (linguistics), Xiamen (linguistics), Zhangzhou (linguistics), and Taiwanese (linguistics) would only contain information that is unique to those areas. At some point, I would like to work on the above, but am curious if there are any opinions about my proposal. -- A-cai 13:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Literary vs. Colloquilal (vernacular) readings

The Amoy (linguistics) article touches on this issue but does not give reasons for literary vs colloquial readings. From [2], "During the South Song dynasty, the officials from the north brought the official language. Anyone studying to take the exam must know the official pronunciation of the Hanzi. Hoklo acquired its literary sublanguage during this time. Unlike earlier, the northern influence was restricted to the literary usage: reading an official document, people's names, reading digits (while counting in colloquial way)." It also says colloquial Amoy is sourced from ancient Han language and coastal aborignal language. I don't have any published sources to back this up, but I think it would be nice to point this out.Oniows 14:40, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that the literary/colloquial section of the Amoy article needs fleshing out. First, we need some historical background which explains the phenomenon. Second, we need more examples of how this phenomenon plays out in everyday usage. For the second one, I'm still trying to think about the best approach to this. I'm trying (without much luck so far) to identify discernable rules for when to use which one. So far, I have come up with (loosely):

• single syllable words -> colloquial (ex. 名 miâ name, 學/学 o̍h to learn, 大 tōa big)
• multi-syllable words -> mostly literary (ex. 名詞/名词 bêng-sû noun, 大學/大学 tāi-ha̍k university)

The problem is that there seem to be a lot of exceptions to the above generality. For example, 大學/大学 goes by the colloquial reading in some places (tōa-o̍h), or even a mixture of the two (tōa-ha̍k). It would be good if we could find some academic research about this. My gut feeling is that it's not so much about precise rules as it is about how the word came into the language and the relative lack of standards organizations compared to languages like English. Of course, English has a lot of standards organizations, and it still has its inconsistencies :) -- A-cai 09:40, 8 April 2007 (UTC)