Yes, Luc de Gijzel from The Hague in Holland, 5-year expat in Penang, proudly showed me his very first effort after years of research. And he did do quite a lot, unearthing along the way some interesting predecessors from China and Singapore.
"When we first arrived (to take up his new posting in Prai) my wife took Hokkien lessons at the YMCA. I joined her," the good-looking Dutchman explained. He needed a dictionary, but trawling through the bookshops here and even in Singapore didn't really help.
"When I asked at a local book shop, I was told that "Hokkien is just a dialect". I thought to myself, "How can you dismiss your own mother tongue like that?" According to Luc, Hokkien is NOT just a dialect but a proper language in its own right. Actually I need to find out more about this myself so I reserve judgement on this.
He then started compiling his own list, which just grew and grew, and then he came across an old dictionary from Singapore, printed in the 1940s. Together with help from his teacher Lee Siew Har, they embarked on this intriguing and, personally, quite daunting, project, and the result, after 1 1/2 years of work, is the "Eng Kok ua Pinang-su Hokkien ua chhiu ji tien" ... or at least that's what it says on the front cover!
Printed by Areca Press, the compact book is available in bookshops for RM22.
Although it's got no intonation per se, the intro does attempt to differentiate between the different pronunciations, but that's not easy: e.g. I can think of is "car" and "eat" - both start with 'ch' but in the latter he's put "chhia" and the former "chiah". Hmmm ... if I weren't a native speaker it would be even more confusing.
However, overall I think he's done a swell job, considering he himself isn't a fluent speaker (difficult for locals to get the 7 intonations right, let alone foreigners - remember that funny "kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong" - grandpa said the tin can hit me?). He tells me he never knowingly says "cannot" - ie "bay sai" cos it could come out like he's "selling sh_t". Or horse sh_t! It will be a useful present for locals and expats alike.
Sadly, Luc is leaving us to return home, but Penangites should be proud (and slightly ashamed) that he's left us a USEFUL legacy to remember him by.
No comments:
Post a Comment