This lesson builds on lesson 14 with a more involved discussion about location. You’ll be introduced to new verbs and structures. As in the previous lesson, pronunciations in brackets indicate Kaiping Dictionary pronunciations.
- 問 · mùn · to ask, inquire
- 來 · lọi · to come, in order to
- 吓 · hạ · a moment, short while, verb suffix
- 喲 · yìak · final particle, only
- 正話 · jing-wà [jen-wà] · just, just now
- 梳化 · sō-fạ* · sofa
- 企 · ki [kei] · to stand
- 地 · ì [èi] · floor, ground
- 瞓 · fun · to sleep, lie down
- 凭 · bàng · to lean on
- 塳 · bùng · classifier for wall (牆)
- 跌 · ik [et] · to put, place
- 床 · chöng · bed, couch
- 放 · fong · to put, place, release
- 房 · fọng* · room
- 褸 · lau* · overcoat
- 漏 · làu · to lose, leave behind, neglect, omit, leak
- 樓 · läu* · building, house
- 啊 · ò! · interjection
The new word that perplexed me is ik “to put, place.” The Basic Course transcribes this word with a novel Chinese character, combining the radical 口 with the character 跌. I failed to find this word in the Kaiping Character Dictionary by looking up variants of ik in the pronunciation table. There’s the distinct likelihood that I am overlooking something which is glaringly obvious to native speakers.
Do you know this word?
is it somehow related to ī (with the same meaning)?
ReplyDeleteHm. I only know of ī meaning “to give” (as used in lesson nine)—can it also mean “to put/place”?
ReplyDeleteI've not been speaking Taishanese on a regular basis for quite a while so I may be wrong. I think the Taicheng equivalent is [it33]. I believe this is a regional difference. I noticed there are regional ending stop consonant differences for certain syllables:
ReplyDeleten <-> ng
t <-> k
However, I think the Kaiping accent ought to be [ek33] instead of [ik33]. I'm somewhat puzzled that the i/e vowel shift did not affect this one.
Well, I'm off the topic: We still do not have a good character for transcription.
@Stephen—Your input is still tremendously appreciated! I think in Kaiping it might then be et, but not sure. I will ask around when my workload lightens up. I’ve noticed that words ending in -en, -et, -in, -it in Kaiping all tend to end in -ik in the Basic Course. In this case, since 跌 is pronounced as it in Kaiping, maybe this word would be too?
ReplyDeleteYour question before about the transcription of words without characters is a good one—I just don’t have a good answer. My sense is to either write in a romanization or use a “best match” character. In this case the best match seems to be 跌; we just can’t add the 口 radical to differentiate it.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be entirely against writing in phonetics as Gene Chin does. It’s just not my style.
I listened to the recording just now, and it sounded as though speaker B (an e-accent speaker) pronounced this word as et. The Kaiping dictionary gives 的—I looked this up before but skipped it because I thought it was implausible! The example given is 的個的 et goi ẹt (ik gwoi ịk), with the translation 塞個塞子.
ReplyDelete@Aaron - Sorry I may have confused you. Let me try again. For Taicheng accent:
ReplyDelete'to put/place' is [it33]
'to fall/drop (跌)' is [et33]
塞個塞子 is [it33 goi33 it215]
Thank you, Stephen. It looks like the I-E switch; the Kaiping dictionary gives the same pronunciations, but flipping the vowels, so that where you pronounce [i], they pronounce [e] and vice versa!
ReplyDelete@Aaron - Does the I-E switch also take place for the noun 塞, i.e. the 2nd 塞 of 塞個塞子?
ReplyDeleteYes, it’s the same syllable, but with a low-falling tone.
ReplyDeleteThank you Aaron. It is good to know that there's i-e switch. I noticed i-e shifting before but did not know that i-e switch is also out there.
ReplyDelete