Hokkien Study Group

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księżycowy
Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-17, 20:21

vijayjohn wrote:Oh, you mean the tone systems themselves? As opposed to how they compare to Middle Chinese? Also, what does "Wu" mean? Different Wu varieties have different tone systems, so I'm going to guess you mean Shanghainese.

Yes to both.


Interesting, thanks Vijay. Now where are my diagrams, example words/sentences and recording there of?

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-06-17, 21:02

Well, for Amoy Hokkien, it's obviously already in the Google Doc. :P But basically (I know the diagram and first sound file at least are specifically for Taiwanese but still):
Image
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... 8Tones.ogg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:POJ_tones.ogg

And Beijing Mandarin is of course like this:
Image
With the usual example words here:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AZh-pinyin_tones_with_ma.ogg

Cantonese is more like this:
Image
And here are some examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dLV9QjhHME
Although I don't think the keyboard part really makes any sense. :lol:

There isn't really a diagram for Shanghainese I know of unless you count this or something, but there are definitely sentences without the tones actually marked on them (in a way, though, I think the fact that the tones aren't marked kind of speaks to the uniqueness of its tone system in a Chinese context):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufyGrWo9muU
(Click CC for the written versions of the Shanghainese phrases since the video's been updated since it was first uploaded)

księżycowy

Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-17, 21:12

Now do Fuzhou, Teochew, and Sixian Hakka!

And then relate it all back to the development from Middle Chinese tones.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-06-17, 22:54

For a couple of diagrams for Fuzhou dialect, see p. 101 (i.e. the fifth page :P) of https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/ ... /3520/3220. For transcribed examples with audio, see here.

For Teochew, see this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb8U0tF3V5g

I believe this diagram is for Sixian Hakka. Not really sure what else to recommend for that besides these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLgNjunJcA8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cyZ3qqugok
As for the development from Middle Chinese tones, I'll start out by completing my comparison between Amoy Hokkien and Mandarin:
in isolation, the high flat and rising tones with vowel/nasal finals correspond perfectly to (and are nearly identical with) Mandarin. If a word in Amoy Hokkien has a high flat tone in isolation and doesn't end with a stop, then its cognate in Mandarin has one, too, and same with the rising tone. If it does end with a stop, its equivalent in Mandarin with have either a rising tone or a falling tone.

To be more specific, if the tone is low, and the syllable in Hokkien ends with a stop and begins with a sonorant, the equivalent in (Beijing) Mandarin has a falling tone. If it follows these conditions except that it begins with an obstruent, the equivalent in Mandarin has a rising tone. However, if the tone is high and it ends with a stop, actually, the equivalent in Mandarin may have any of the four tones due to a history of dialect mixing in Beijing. If the tone is high falling in spoken Hokkien as well as literary Hokkien, then the equivalent in Mandarin is the so-called falling-rising tone. All other tones in Hokkien correspond to falling tone in Mandarin.

Cantonese preserves the same number of tone distinctions as Middle Chinese did except that when a syllable ends in a stop and begins with a voiceless consonant, the tone in Cantonese is high only if the vowel is short and mid only if the vowel is long.

Fuzhou dialect preserves the same distinctions as literary Amoy Hokkien. However, the qualities of all the tones except the high tone are different. The rising tone in Hokkien corresponds to a (high) falling tone in Fuzhou. The high falling tone in Hokkien in turn corresponds to a flat mid tone in Fuzhou. The low (dipping?) tone in Hokkien corresponds to a falling-rising tone in Fuzhou, but the flat mid tone in Hokkien corresponds to a rising-falling tone in Fuzhou! And finally, the low checked tone in Hokkien corresponds to a rising tone in Fuzhou.

Teochew preserves the exact same number of distinctions (eight) as there are listed for Middle Chinese. The checked tones are roughly the same as in Hokkien (though the difference in tonal quality between them may be slightly smaller in Teochew than in Hokkien). If a syllable with a high falling tone in Hokkien begins with a voiceless consonant, then its equivalent in Teochew will also have a high falling tone (possibly an even more dramatically falling one). All other tone qualities are completely different between Hokkien and Teochew, but Teochew has a falling-rising tone in the same words where Fuzhou has it. The high flat (unchecked) tone in Hokkien corresponds to a mid flat tone in Teochew. The high rising tone in Hokkien corresponds to a high flat tone in Teochew. Any syllable with a high falling tone in Hokkien that begins with a voiced consonant corresponds to a syllable with a high rising tone in Teochew, and the mid flat tone in Hokkien corresponds to a low tone in Teochew.

Sixian Hakka preserves roughly the same number of distinctions as Mandarin but with a slightly less complicated relationship to Middle Chinese and completely different tonal qualities. The checked tones are roughly the same as in Hokkien (but with the lower one possibly having a tone quality that more closely resembles Teochew). Unusually, the high flat/unchecked tone in Hokkien and Mandarin corresponds to a tone in Sixian that is either rising (this happens in both northern and southern Sixian) or mid flat (only in southern Sixian). The rising tone in Mandarin corresponds to a low flat tone in Sixian. The falling-rising tone in Mandarin corresponds to a mid-to-low falling tone in Sixian, and the falling tone in Mandarin corresponds to a high flat tone in Sixian.

Shanghainese has only two phonemic tones but five surface tones. The checked tones are pretty much the opposite of Hokkien; the low checked tone in Hokkien corresponds to a high checked one in Shanghainese and vice versa. The high flat tone in Hokkien corresponds to a high falling tone in Shanghainese. Anything else that begins with a voiceless consonant corresponds to a mid-to-slightly-higher-than-mid tone in Shanghainese, and anything else (that begins with a voiced one) corresponds to a low rising tone in Shanghainese.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-17, 23:57

Did you at least break a sweat? :P

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-06-18, 0:04

Oh, idk. It's usually pretty hot here anyway (like in Taiwan and Penang!), so I don't even notice if I do break a sweat. I probably do just by default. It just took a long time to write. :P

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-18, 0:08

I'll take it, even if only a minor nuisance.

EDIT: I was just thinking how it's been so hot this summer, it felt right to be learning Hokkien. :P
We keep getting hit with muggy, hot ass weather here. Luckily it usually only lasts a day or two at a time.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-06-18, 4:08

I guess Xiamen also has similar weather.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby Bubulus » 2018-06-18, 14:31

I'm finding the tone sandhi more confusing than I thought, or more precisely, harder to remember than I thought. :hmm:

Using ksiezycowy's 5-tone analysis:
  • high tone -> mid tone (unless it ends in -p/t/k/h, then it's low tone)
  • falling tone -> high tone
  • low tone -> falling tone (unless it ends in -p/t/k, then it's high tone)
  • rising tone -> mid tone
  • mid tone -> low tone
Last edited by Bubulus on 2018-06-18, 18:05, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-18, 14:44

Yeah, thats one of the things I should have taken into consideration before dragging the rest of you (except Vijay. Vijay deserves this! :twisted: ) into this.

It might have been better to go with Cantonese or Shanghainese or something. :P

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby Bubulus » 2018-06-18, 14:56

Well, I'm not saying it's bad either. It's just taking me longer to get used to the tone sandhi than I thought.

It might be useful to point out that -p/t/k syllables basically just change into the other tone: low tone -> high tone, and high tone -> low tone (a -p/t/k syllable can only have either the high tone or the low tone).

(It's also interesting how, in some sense, -p/t/k syllables undergo double sandhi. A low tone -p/t/k syllable tries to have the falling tone, but it can't, so it seemingly undergoes sandhi to have the high tone. Syllables with the falling tone obtain a high tone after all. Similarly, a high tone -p/t/k syllable tries to have mid tone, but it can't, so it seemingly undergoes sandhi again to have the low tone. But this is just phonological analysis, not something a learner has to concern themself with much.)

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-06-18, 16:13

Ser wrote:I'm finding the tone sandhi more confusing than I thought, or more precisely, harder to remember than I thought. :hmm:

I don't even bother memorizing the rules. :P
Using ksiezycowy's 5-tone analysis:
  • high tone -> mid tone (unless it ends in -p/t/k, then it's low tone)
  • falling tone -> high tone
  • low tone -> falling tone (unless it ends in -p/t/k, then it's high tone)
  • rising tone -> mid tone
  • mid tone -> low tone

Don't forget that syllables ending with a glottal stop follow the same pattern as the ones that end in another stop!

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-18, 16:14

If I remember correctly, the glottal stop does something weird doesn't it? I'm trying to remember the chart at the end of Unit 2.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-06-18, 16:17

Oh, you're right. Low-tone checked syllables become falling instead of high, but high-tone checked syllables become low.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby dEhiN » 2018-06-18, 17:02

Ok, I gotta ask: what's a checked tone or syllable?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-18, 17:13

One that ends in a glottal stop (<q> in Bodman, <-h> in POJ) or -p, -k, -t.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby dEhiN » 2018-06-18, 17:49

księżycowy wrote:One that ends in a glottal stop (<q> in Bodman, <-h> in POJ) or -p, -k, -t.

Oh ok, and I guess a checked tone is the tone used for that syllable? Then going with the tone diagram Vijay posted, would tones 4 and 8 be checked? Would the following be an accurate way of calling each tone?

1 - High (Flat)
2 - High Falling
3 - Mid Falling
4 - Mid Checked
5 - Rising
6 - Mid (Flat)
7 - High Checked

vijayjohn wrote:Image
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-18, 17:52

Traditionally it's numbered 1-8 (skipping 6), but other than that, yes.

The 4th and 8th tones are the checked tones.

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby dEhiN » 2018-06-18, 17:54

księżycowy wrote:Traditionally it's numbered 1-8 (skipping 6), but other than that, yes.

The 4th and 8th tones are the checked tones.

Thanks! And I didn't even bother looking at the diagram to see that 6 is skipped. Any particular reason?
Native: (en-ca)
Active: (fr)(es)(pt-br)(ta-lk)(mi)(sq)(tl)
Inactive: (de)(ja)(yue)(oj)(id)(hu)(pl)(tr)(hi)(zh)(sv)(ko)(no)(it)(haw)(fy)(nl)(nah)(gl)(ro)(cy)(oc)(an)(sr)(en_old)(got)(sux)(grc)(la)(sgn-us)

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Re: Hokkien Study Group

Postby księżycowy » 2018-06-18, 17:56

Supposedly it has developed into the same thing as the (don't quote me here) 2nd tone.


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