Recall on last learning on how similarly words can have different meanings.
Example:
- Ai can mean ‘爱’ or ‘要’
- Note how Ai has slight difference in intonations when used differently.
- In the context of 爱 , it is more pronounced with Ai1, while in 要, it is pronounced as Ai3 (numbers loosely follow the hanyu pinyin).
- Lao3 yah2 = useless/old man/old fashion OR Lao1 yah3 = old coconut
Today, I am going to share how I learned about the fluidity of Hokkien as a language. With the same character, the additon of different characters can create a wide vocabulary of words that mean different things. This made learning Hokkien a little tricky because then the same character used has no direct meaning or relation to the chinese word translations. As sometimes translating from chinese to Hokkien is a method of learning since both can be similar soudning. On a sidenote though, learning can be easier for some words as there is no need for mad memorisation of unique Hokkien characters nor words!
Example:
- ‘suah’
- ha suah = umbrella (Interestingly, speaking with my dad, I found out that in Singapore/Malaysia Hokkien, umbrella in Hokkien can be ha jia too?)
- buey suah = will not disintegrate
- ‘bu’ = female
- niao bu = female cat
- lao bu = mother
Learning Hokkien 