Verb Suffixes in Penang Hokkien

A list of suffixes in the new romanised system of writing Penang Hokkien. These suffixes are attached directly to nouns without hyphen. The verb to which these suffixes are added may be in the citation form or sandhi form, depending on circumstances.

Where the verb is in the citation form, you should place a hyphen between the said verb and the suffix, to indicate that the verb has not undergone tone sandhi. If the verb is in the sandhi form, it is fine to join together the verb and the suffix.

tiok1 著
Tiok1 is suffixed to verb to mean "unintentionally", "accidentally" or "managed to".

Wah1 that3 ie1. I kicked him. (intentionally)
Wah1 that3-tiok3 ie1. I accidentally kicked him. (unintentionally)

Wah1 liak3 hu2. I catch fish.
Wah1 liak3tiok3 hu2. I manage to catch fish. (regular form)
Wah1 liak1-tiok3 hu2. I manage to catch fish. (emphatic form)

koay3 過
Koay3 is suffixed to verbs to mean "to have done it before".

Wah1 ciak3 sushi. I eat sushi.
Wah1 ciak3koay3 sushi. I have eaten sushi before. (regular form)
Wah1 ciak1-koay3 sushi. I have eaten sushi before. (emphatic form)

Penang Hokkien Grammar

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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While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware.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.