Fui Chew (Huizhou) Hakka

[Mark Yong]

Hi,

I am currently trying to find out if there is anyone in Malaysia who speaks my native Fui Chew 惠州 (Huizhou) variety of Hakka. The variant of 惠州 I belong to is specifically the 惠州城 sub-dialect, which I have only ever heard spoken among my family members in Kuala Lumpur (the more common 惠州 is the 惠州省dialect, which more closely resembles the standard Meixian dialect).

For instance, phrases peculiar to it are:

Mandarin Standard Hakka 惠州城
---------- ------------------ -------
我们 ngai diu ngin 我等人 ngoi2 nyin3 我人
东西 dong si 东西 han3 ya3 (?)
看 k'on 看 t'ae2 睇
可以 tet 得 tiak1 得
兒子 lai chae2 仔
怕 kiang 惊 k'ong3 恐
誰 ma-kai ngin ?? 人 nai3-sü3 那 誰
那里 lai wui 那位 nai3-ni2 那里
那个 kai chiak 该只 k'oi3 chiak1 该只
睡觉 soi muk 睡目 foon kau 睏觉　

(Note the very close resemblance to Cantonese.)

Cheers,
Mark

[Guest]

My family hails from Hong Kong, and I married my wife who comes from LongChuan, in Heyuan county (龍川 河源市), but much of her dialect seems to correspond with your dialect. I notice for "I", you use 'ngoi', my wife says 'nguoi', and also "tai" for 'look', sleep 'fun gau' etc.

You "k'oi chak", she says "gui tsak".

You can see a summary of her dialect in my site.

http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/hakga/siduva.htm

Cheers,
Dyl.

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Dylan,

Thank you for your insights. I took a look at the article in the link you posted. Yes, it does appear that there are similiarities, e.g. 畀 bi2 (vs. "bun" in standard Meixian). For "he/she", it is pronouced "k'ü nyin" (cf. "k'ia tiu-ngin" in standard Meixian).

Another peculiarity is that we refer to mother as "ah nai" (should it be 娜 or 奶?). We use the same phrase as Cantonese to denote "son and mother" 兩仔娜 ("leung jai laa" in Cantonese, vs. "liong jaae nai" in my Hakka). For stomach, we use "t'u pot" 肚腹 (cf. "t'u pat" in Meixian).


As an aside, I have a theory that the Yue word for "he/she" should not be 佢 as popularly used in Hong Kong literature but rather should be 其 (which is used for the 3rd person in 文言. Clues from Hakka/Yue parallels seem to suggest this. Another example is "我等" (as used in "等等", meaning plural or etc.) rather than "我地". Also, "now" in Hakka is "kin ha" "今下", which suggests that the Cantonese "ga ha" should be the same (final -m in 今fused and disappeared over time), and not "家下" as popularly written.

My opinion is that rather than "synthesise" new characters for the obscure words, we should try to search for their true character origins in 文言 and have those characters used instead. For instance, 畀 is the true Hanzi for "give" (bei) - even 康熙字典 correctly defines 畀 as 賜也, yet we substitute it with 啤 in modern written Cantonese. Using the correct original Hanzi would better enable colloquial Cantonese text to be read by other dialect readers. What do you think? (Maybe this should be placed in a separate forum!)


Regards,

Mark

[Guest]

Language is a funny thing, and the Hakka speaking peoples have had a history of migrations (as have the Cantonese, though fewer people speak of such things - their clan records tell this). It said many of the features of Hakka are due to having passed through those areas on their tracks down southwards over the centuries.

One of these features is said to be where the front high vowels in syllables ending in -ng have come down to us as -n finals, and also many of such characters have colloquial and literary readings.

For instance "root" can be pronounce /kin/, /kEn/ and /kaN/ where /N/ represents the velar nasal ng sound.

Some people pronounce the festival QingMing as /ts'in min/, my wife pronounces it as /tsiaN miaN/.

It is said this change is reflected in Gan speaking areas too, and some hypothesise that Hakka and Gan share a common ancestral language form.

Not only sound changes, but Hakka have words which are also shared with dialects. Spider /la k'ia/ appears in some Min dialects, for instance. Hakka speakers are said to have passed through western Fujian before arriving in current day Meixian. Western Fujian is dotted with Hakka speaking areas like RongDing and it's tulou buildings.

Fujian Hakka dialects differs from Meixian. ChangTing dialect for instance lacks the Ngip Sang tone. Despite this, they are Hakka dialects, as they share other factors like grammar and vocabulary.

In a paper given to me by a researcher into Hakka and other languages, he postulates that Hakka, Gan and Yue dialects like those of the Siyi (sei yap - si yip) may be related. As I've already mentioned, the Yue speakers also migrated, and they may have arrived in the southern Guangdong areas much earlier than the Hakka, but I don't believe some of the Cantonese is as old as 1800 years old, but it might be much later I feel. Anyway, it's complicated, and I'm not a linguist.

Dyl.

[Guest]

I just read the following article:

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%83%A0%E5%B7%9E

Could it be that the branch of Hakka that I come from be 惠城話, and not 惠州客家話? I do know for a fact that the so-called 惠州客家話 is definitely different from the variety of Hakka that my family speaks. Also, my grandfather used to tell us that our Hakka is from "惠州城", as compared to the other type of 惠州客家話, which is from "惠州省". The above article does imply that 惠城話 is not really Hakka, but rather a variant of the 粵 dialect (interestingly, my elders refer to our dialect as 惠城話, not 惠城客家話).

Dylan... any ideas?

Cheers,
Mark Yong

[Dylan Sung]

Mark,

The Yue influence is quite obvious in your vocabulary as is my wife's dialect. For instance "t'ei = to see", and "fun gau = to sleep". I've not been to Huizhou, but perhaps the names of the same places may have changed over the last several decades, and what your grandfather called them are no longer the same. For example, you hear Meixian dialect, but Meixian is split into Meixian and Meizhou nowadays, so you could say you spoke Meizhou dialect rather than "Meixian", when in fact it's just a modern convenience for local administration to split the area up, when they are really the same overall area.

Huizhou and Huicheng sound like the same place to me. Huizhou city perhaps. Anyway, that's a guess. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, that is, you'll need to try your dialect out in Huicheng/Huizhou to see if it belongs or comes from the area.

Cheers,
Dyl.

[hong]

mark,I think you must know that in SEA huizhou association means huiyang,hailu ,etc.
Yap ah loy is from huiyang and of course only speak huiyang hakka but many people called him as huizhou hakka.
There are a few articles talk about this special huizhou hakka language.
http://chinese.cari.com.my/myforum/view ... a=page%3D2

[Guest]

Hi, Dylan & Hong,

Thanks for the insights and links.

Another peculiarity that crops up in my family's 惠州話 is the difference in some of the family relationship terminologies. Some of these terms also depart from Yue. Two that I can think of are:

Mother - "a năi" (I am not sure if the Hanzi is 奶 or 娜. However, we refer to "mother and son" as "liong jáe năi" (兩仔娜), which is identical to the Cantonese "liong jái ná"). I believe in Cantonese, "ná" also means 'female'.

Aunt (father's sister) - This is a very peculiar one that I cannot figure out. My paternal grandfather had two elder sisters. My father used to call them "nyi dăi" (二 ?) and "sam dăi" (三 ?) (they were the 2nd and 3rd in my grandfather's generation), and not "nyi gu" (二姑) and "sam gu" (三姑). Only the sisters younger than my grandfather were addressed as "gu" (姑). As my only source of old Chinese terms is my trusty 康熙字典,I went through all the entries with the 女 radical. The only terms that appear to come phonetically close are 娣 媂 and (女+低) - none of which are satisfactory (even the closest one, 娣, is defined differently, as "wife of a younger brother").

Can anyone hep me with the Hanzi?

Cheers,
Mark Yong

[Dylan sung]

Interesting, as my wife from Heyuan 河源/Longchuan 龙川 also calls her older sisters a-t'ai. For grandmother she called her a-tsai. Unfortunately, I've not had much time researching the hanzi for these terms. But, as you said, many terms seem to be cognate with Yue dialect terms.

Dyl.

[hong]

In 客家话通用字典 there is mentioned 姑太 ku thai for 父亲的姑姑 in 江西石城。

[lan xian dapu hak]

I am a dapu hakka. I find that there is generally very little difference in the various variants of hakka dialect. the terminology and idiomatic expressions are quite similar. This is due to the fact that many old classical words are still used by hakkas. Words like 'wu' for black as used for black crow. I can understand most variants. As compared to mandarin, there is a systematic difference as in:
vowel 'a' is substituted by 'o'
kan (mandarin) (see) is kon
han (cold) is hon
fan (rice) is fon or pon
hau (good) is hou

vowel 'o' is replaced by 'oo'
fon (wind) is foon
tong (pain) is toong

[tfc.chin]

I am a dapu hakka. I find that there is generally very little difference in the various variants of hakka dialect. the terminology and idiomatic expressions are quite similar.

My Hakka variant is from Shenzhen/Bao'an. I personally have a very hard time understanding Hakka from other areas, partly also because the tone system in my variant has changed at bit. Many YinQu tone contours have changed into YinShang tone contours.

Thomas

[tfc.chin]

As an aside, I have a theory that the Yue word for "he/she" should not be 佢 as popularly used in Hong Kong literature but rather should be 其 (which is used for the 3rd person in 文言. Clues from Hakka/Yue parallels seem to suggest this.

My believe is that it is derived from/interchangeable with 渠 with the same meaning. Nevertheless, 佢 has been used for a long time as a dialect character for 3rd person.

I also believe that 3rd person possessive 'gia[sup]1[/sup]' should be 其.

Thomas

[lan xian dapu hak]

The words 'fun gau' are definitely Cantonese or yue dialect. Kak Kah Fa (Hakka) for sleep is 'soi mook' (to rest your eyes) in all variants. I speak fluent Hakka, Minnam (Hokkien), Cantonese (Yue), Teochiew, Mandarin and, of course, English and Malay/Indonesian. I can understand all variants of Hakka.

[ong]

Even the experts from China didn't claim they can understand all hakka dialect.If you say you speak dapu,you still have to explain which sect you know.see dapu xian zhi.See what I have posted
http://chinese.cari.com.my/myforum/view ... a=page%3D2
http://140.115.170.1/hakkaculture/big5/ ... cebook.pdf