Ong in Penang Hokkien

If you see a Penang Hokkien word of Hokkien origin being spelled with "ong", for example ong2 (king), kong1 (grandfather) or gong3 (stupid), you can be sure that the "ong" carries the sound /ɔŋ/. That's the same sound as of the word "king". It is also the sound of the "ong" in English, in words such as long and song, to name two. The "ong" is called a rhyme. For the same reason, you can say that long and song rhyme together.

However, as you know, Penang Hokkien borrows heavily from Malay. In Malay, the "ong" can be pronounced as /ɔŋ/ as well as /oŋ/. Words with the /ɔŋ/ sound from Malay include potong, gong (the percussion instrument), tolong, to name three. But sometimes, the "ong" is pronounced /oŋ/, as in patong, jelutong, kangkong, to name a few. To differentiate between the /ɔŋ/ and /oŋ/, many Malay words are refined to "ung", so it's often that we see patung, kangkung, belitung, spelled with "u" but pronounced with "o".

Words that come direct from Malay into Penang Hokkien are not respelled to differentiate the /ɔŋ/ from the /oŋ/ to retain the Malay spelling, if the Penang Hokkien pronunciation is the same.

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