I've been laughed at (yes, all you evil people who made fun of my Hokkien speaking abilities...... ) and been the butt of jokes about my command of the language for YEARS now (all in good humuor, thankfully).
So recently, I've been putting a bit of effort in making myself speak Hokkien a bit more frequently, like once every month, specifically when ordering bah kut teh (no greens, it is SO WRONG bunny!) or spare rib rice. Nevermind that people INSIST that one never really speaks in hokkien, one SHOUTS it, or HOLLERS it. And it is not uncommon for the non-Hokkien speaking crowd to huddle together in fear while traversing the streets of my beloved Hokkien speaking town, for to their untrained ears, "EVERYONE'S FIGHTING!!!!!".
I love Klang, and it's dialect of choice, so I pooh-poohed their naivette, and took to my Hokkien speaking lessons seriously.
And in my quest, I've googled my dad many a time for the Hokkien version of a certain word.
Usually, my dad, being a fine, true blue, born and bred in Klang specimen, will answer me INSTANTANEOUSLY, sometimes with a bemused look on his face (accompanied by a little chuckle) and sometimes with a "where did I go wrong educating this child of mine" look (accompanied by a sad shake of the head). Well... some of the words are pretty basic, I AM in my thirties, and he IS a teacher.....sigh.
But ONCE and only ONCE did one of my "how do you say this in Hokkien" queries stump him.
I mean, he was literally, at a loss for words.
I did my usual "how do you say [word] in Hokkien?" thing on him and expected him to answer in an instant.
He didn't.
Instead, he put down his chopsticks (yes, we DO love our food in Klang), pondered for a full 10 seconds, looked this way and that, looked staight at me with a "I CANT BELIEVE THIS" look on his face and said very gently, "In the Hokkien language, there is no such word".
Everyone around the dining table stopped eating. Too stunned to do or say anything.
The word I asked him about?
"Please".
Hokkien, you GOTTA love it!!!
5 comments:
Lol.... Books, you are too funny la, lady!
But, true. Let me go back and ask my mum! (yes, I am proud that I am a half-hokkien who only understand.. and speak words , not in sentence, of hokkien)
Hee hee
Hahahaha...no words for please..that's so funny!
LOL while we knew the particular word couldn't be 'bad' we wondered just what it was!
Waited with bated breath to see what the word was, then we almost fell off the chair. XD
Janvier, it's Hokkien, i think if the word was a bad one, he would have rattled off at least 20 versions of it! haha!
Hmm, whenever we say "please" whilst speaking in Hokkien, we say "tolong"! Could it be because our Hokkien is Penang Hokkien, and thus peppered with lots of Malay words?
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