Old and New Spelling for Penang Hokkien

If you were schooled in the 1970s or earlier, you may receive some exposure to Bahasa Malaysia using the old spelling or ejaan lama. One of the most noted difference to the present spelling, or ejaan baru, is the use of a diacritic, ě, known as e pepet or e sempang, which is used to represent the /ə/ sound, as in "emak".

With ejaan baru, the e is done away with. So the new "e" in Bahasa Malaysia may be pronounced more than one way, and to say that Bahasa Malaysia is phonetically precise is, in my opinion, arguable.

The e in Bahasa Malaysia can be pronounced "er" (/ə/), as in emak, but it can also be pronounced "ae" /ɛ/ as in keledek, and, it can be pronounced "A" (/e/) as in enak. With these three examples, we see that the e in Bahasa Malaysia is pronounced three different ways. But the benefit of going to ejaan baru is that we do away with the diacritic, something not usually found in English, the other romanised language in common use in this country.

At the time the switch was made, most typewritters could not produce the e-breve required to type e.

Taking what we learn from Bahasa Malaysia and applying it to our situation for Penang Hokkien, when I started my journey to preserve and save the language, one of my chief goals is to make it easy for all communities to learn and use, not just people with Hokkien ancestry, not just the Chinese community, but all Malaysians regardless ethnic groups.

To achieve that purpose, I very early on decided not to use Chinese characters to write Penang Hokkien. I am not from Chinese school, and many who speak Penang Hokkien are not from Chinese schools either. If we have to learn Chinese characters in order to communicate in Penang Hokkien, only a small subset of those speaking Penang Hokkien would be capable to embrace the movement. Having said that, I am not against the learning of Hokkien with Chinese characters, and I diligently add the Chinese characters for words in Penang Hokkien to my dictionary. If I were against learning Chinese characters, I would not have done so. But I regard Chinese characters as a "good to know" that will only take us, within our modern Malaysian context, to a limited distance.

Secondly, I looked at existing romanised form. The most common and with the largest amount of literature in Hokkien, is Church Romanisation, now also called Pe̍h-ōe-jī. To me, Pe̍h-ōe-jī is to Hokkien what ejaan lama is to Bahasa Malaysia. Church Romanisation continues to be the most used writing system for Hokkien, with books and dictionaries being published using it. The latest Penang Hokkien dictionary by Tan Siew Imm also uses Church Romanisation.

It is an easy call to just make use of Church Romanisation to propagate Penang Hokkien. I gave this matter long and thorough consideration. But weighing heavily against Church Romanisation is present-day reality. Church Romanisation was created at a time when people handwrite. So it is easy to place diacritic marks over letters, or write out unique letters, such as superscript n. But in today's modern context, people are accustomed to telecommunicate in writing. The tools they use to telecommunicate - the keyboards and the key pads - are not by default able to reproduce the diacritic marks and unique characters required for writing Church Romanisation. So once again, if I take the path using Church Romanisation, only a subset of people will be willing to embrace it.

I made a brief excursion to consider Taiwanese Romanisation, but quickly exited the idea. Some say that Taiwanese Romanisation is derived from Church Romanisation, by doing away with the unique letters. Perhaps so, but that's not telling the full story. Those who champion the use of Taiwanese Romanisation often glaze over issues that Taiwanese Romanisation and Church Romanisation are not the same. Some words are spelled differently. They don't always use the same vowel for the same sound. And, different rule is applied for where to place the diacritic marks.

The fact that Taiwanese Romanisation also uses diacritic marks retains the same issues that I have with Church Romanisation. Some may argue that Hanyu Pinyin also uses diacritic marks. Yes it does, but when writing Mandarin, most people write with Chinese characters rather than with Pinyin. So Pinyin is intended more as a transcription system, to represent the pronunciation of the Chinese characters, rather than to be the system for writing Mandarin.

Another problem with Taiwanese Romanisation is its Made In Taiwan label. While some may want to establish a common writing system across the Hokkien-speaking world, we have to question, at what expense? The use of Taiwanese Romanisation will erase the unique characteristics of how we have been writing Penang Hokkien so far.

Even loan words from Bahasa Malaysia, like "lah", has to be respelled. To me, it is simply too much to give up to achieve uniformity. I am not against the learning of Church or Taiwanese Romanisation. In my dictionary I also list out words in Penang Hokkien with their corresponding in Amoy and Taiwanese, which I render using Church and Taiwanese Romanisation respectively.

Having weighed all possibilities, I decided that the best possible course to take, to ensure the survival of Penang Hokkien, as a language that can be easily used in the modern context, is to create my own writing system, Taiji Romanisation. It is the most radical step, but a necessary one to save Penang Hokkien.

Taiji Romanisation replaces the diacritic marks with tone numbers, reduces the number of tone classes down to 5, retain the spelling of commonly known words, and make learning it freely available on the Internet. In so doing, I incur the wrath of those championing Chinese characters, Church romanisation and Taiwanese romanisation. But reality has to take precedence over wishful thinking.

To save our language, we have to make it easy for people, rather than expecting them to buy in to the difficulties. That will ensure the maximum number of people have a chance to learn and use it.

People may look at what I am doing as being a lone crusader charting his own path for the language, but how many of us miss writing Bahasa Malaysia with ejaan lama? We don't. We move on, and anybody who is keen to maximize the chances for the survival of Penang Hokkien has to move on too. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

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