Characteristics of Words in Penang Hokkien using Taiji Romanisation

In this lesson, we take a look at the characteristics of words in Penang Hokkien when written using the Taiji Romanisation. Hokkien words are originally written using Chinese characters. The benefit of such characters is that they retain their meaning regardless how the words are pronounced. When these words are romanised, the priority shifts from character recognition to pronunciation, a process that often compromises on meaning.

Rules for Words in Penang Hokkien

In Taiji Romanisation, a "word" is defined as "one or more syllables, each ending with a tone mark, which is anything from 1 to 4". In order to pass as a word, it has to convey a specific meaning in its standalone form, and belong to any of the following parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, adjective, particle, preposition, conjunction and interjection. A syllable or syllables that do not belong to any of the parts of speech is not regarded as a proper word in Penang Hokkien.

In order to further enhance the precision of thoughts and ideas, the Taiji Romanisation puts in place the following features:

To join or not to join

Ideas can be composed of more than one word. For example, mm33 cai1 (don't know) comprises the negation particle mm33 and the auxiliary verb cai1. As each carries its own meaning, mm33 cai1 is written as two words.

On the other hand, mm33thang1 (don't) is written as one word because thang1 on its own does not carry a specific meaning. It only conveys a meaning when attached to mm33.

By divorcing the use of Chinese characters, their meaning is often lost. However, the resulting ambiguity can be cleared by whether an idea comprises words that are joined together or separated. In the above example, there are two different verbs involved. Ki3 means "to memorize" while "e3ki3" means "to remember". This example shows two almost identical verbs. Kun2 means "to stew" while kun4 means "to boil". From these two verbs, we can form gerunds such as kun3 bak3 ("stewing meat") and kun1chooi4 ("boiled water"). Note that kun2 sandhis to kun3 while kun4 sandhis to kun1.

Rules for disambiguating words of the same pronunciation and tones

Where there is a likelihood of ambiguity, steps are taken to disambiguate homographs by respelling one or the other to form homophones. This is usually carried out by the use of digraphs in place of single characters, for example, be33 [be] and beh33 [be]. Taiji Romanisation requires learners to refer to the IPA symbols and/or the audio dictionary for guidance, and to use the spelling only as a guide to expected pronunciation.

How words are spelled in Taiji Romanisation

The spelling of a word is determined by a number of factors: 1. Culture
Local culture plays a heavy role in determining how many words in Penang Hokkien are spelled. If a word is commonly found in people's surname or first name, or if it appears regularly in the spelling of foods and dishes, the spelling is retain, even if it is not phonetically precise.

Names of People and Food 2. Loan
Loanwords from Malay often retain their original spelling, with only the addition of tone marks, for example, na3nah4 (pus), no3na1 (custard apple), du3rian2 (durian), etc. Some of the Malay loanwords do undergo a spelling change to conform to Hokkien pronunciation, for example, buah3 ke3rai1 (buah keras), ka3yu3 ma3neh1 (kayu manis).
Penang Hokkien also adopts many words from English without a change in spelling or the inclusion of tone marks, for example, Penang, shopping, etc.

3. Phonetics
Hokkien words not affected by cultural requirements are spelled as phonetically precise as possible. Usually each syllable comprises either a vowel with or without an initial and final consonant, digraph or trigraph. Where ambiguity may arise from monosyllabic homographs, homophones may be introduced by respelling one of the words using digraphs instead of single character vowels.

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