Anatomy in Penang Hokkien is a list specially compiled for the benefit of doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners who are stationed in Penang and often have to speak to patients in Penang Hokkien. Other chapters created for medical professionals are Phrases for Doctors and Ailments & Treatments.
Both patients and doctors are often too embarrassed to talk about genitalia, but then again, a medical situation may make it unavoidable. As would be expected, these body parts are swear words in Penang Hokkien. It is perfectly acceptable to use stand-in terms or metonyms as a substitute.
The actual word for penis is lan3chiau4 [lan-tsiau] . As it is regarded as vulgar, the more acceptable word taught to children is ku3ku1ciau4 [ku-ku-tsiau] , though a commonly used stand-in name for it is sio1tee3 [sio-ti] (literally, "little brother").
The scrotum is called lan3pha1 [lan-pha] , the testicle is called the lan3pha3chee4 [lan-pha-tsi] . The testicles or "balls" are also known as hoot1 [hut] (as in, boh3 hoot1, meaning to have no guts, or "no balls"). The stand-in word for testicles is jee33-gor33*-ban33 [dzi-gɔ-ban] (literally, "250,000")
As for vagina, the actual word is also considered vulgar, so speakers of Penang Hokkien commonly say snaeh3knia1 peng2 [sɛ̃-kiã-peŋ] (literally "delivery area").
* Tone 3 unsandiable morphemes are written with the tone 33. For details, read unsandiable morphemes.
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Please use the information on this page as guidance only. The author endeavours to update the information on this page from time to time, but regrets any inaccuracies if there be any.
About this website
Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.
While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.