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Culture and History of Penang Hokkien

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For generations, the culture and history of the people speaking Penang Hokkien is often left unappreciated. It is only in the past decade that interest in local culture has been rejuvenated.

How does Penang Hokkien come about? Who are the people who speak it? Why and when did Penang Hokkien become the lingua franca of the Chinese of Penang? How does the system of romanization used in this course compare with other forms of Hokkien romanization? In this section are articles that provide you insights into the language.
  1. Arrivals of the Chinese in the Malay peninsula

  2. Missionary Dictionaries of Hokkien

  3. Where does Penang Hokkien come from?

  4. Do Penang Chinese remember where they come from?

  5. Chronological History of the Hokkiens in Penang

  6. Penang Hokkien words in English

  7. Creating a truly Penangite Language

  8. Introducing Learn Penang Hokkien

  9. Are you a Penang Baba Nyonya?

Background to the development of Learn Penang Hokkien

  1. About Penang Hokkien

  2. Why write Penang Hokkien in Romanised Form

  3. Tai3ji3 Romanisation System

  4. The Thought Process that went into developing the Tai3ji3 System

  5. Gatekeeper for Penang Hokkien: The issue of the methodology for permitting a word into the Penang Hokkien Dictionary.

  6. The Risk of Relying Only On Peh-oe-ji When Learning Penang Hokkien

Penang Hokkien Authors

  1. Cheah Cheng Seang
    Cheah Cheng Seang is the author of the book Penang Hokkien (Minnan) Dialect. He serves as the supervisor for tourism and events at the Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi.

  2. Raymond Kwok
    Raymond Kwok is an expert on Baba Nyonya culture. He has written a number of books on Baba Nyonya and has also assembled Hokkien rhymes and ditties into books.

  3. Tan Choon Hoe
    Tan Choon Hoe wrote the first book to teach Penang Hokkien in recent times, and in so doing is credited with reviving interest in learning the language.

Miscellaneous

  1. Are You Hokkien, with Marcus Chin and Huang Jinglun


Reference Material, Academic Papers and other resources related to Penang Hokkien

  1. English Min Nan Chinese Dictionary: https://glosbe.com/en/nan
  2. Lexilogus of the English, Malay and Chinese Languages (Malacca, 1841):
    https://www.penang-traveltips.com/pdf/lexilogus-of-the-english-malay-and-chinese-languages.pdf
  3. Malay Lexicalized Items in Penang Peranakan Hokkien, an academic paper presented by Lim Beng Soon of the Regional Language Centre, Singapore, and Teoh Boon Seong, Singapore Management University:
    https://www.penang-traveltips.com/pdf/malay-lexicalized-items-in-penang-peranakan-hokkien.pdf
  4. Words in Penang Hokkien:
    https://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/tien-hsia.php?searchterm=026_hokkien.inc&issue=026
  5. Written Hokkien (Wikipedia):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Written_Hokkien
  6. Peh-oe-ji (Wikipedia):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%CC%8Dh-%C5%8De-j%C4%AB
  7. Min Nan (Wikipedia):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnan

Learn Penang Hokkien with Memrise

Now you can use the most user-friendly tool on the web to learn Penang Hokkien. It helps you to listen, understand and memorise. Go to Memrise, and learn Penang Hokkien at your own pace.

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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.

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