My grandfather was from a village near Xiamen and as such spoke that dialect. He recently passed and there are a few documents with names that, since I can only speak Mandarin, we don't know the original Hokkien reading. Is there anyone that knows some Hokkien or knows where I could find resources on it?
I understand Taiwan might have something but it might be personally confusing for others regionally because compared to Singapore or Malaysia hokkien speakers it can be different.
For example: (apologies for language tendency to be offensive)
干你娘/kan lin nia (Hokkien)
Used also in Taiwan. “F your mother”. But the Singaporean way of saying it, KNN (bastardised pronounciation – ka ni na), is unique.
Offense Level: 5 (KNNCCB: 5+)
So.. Is somebody going to start a server? Are there people who are fluent in this or interested in learning?
There seems to be heaps of resources in the wiki, but I can't find any regarding the Chinese languages except Mandarin and Cantonese, despite the ones like Wu, Hakka, and Hokkien having at least 30 million speakers, their resources are pretty scarce as well, and I can't find them on the web either so I was wondering if anyone here could give any suggestions?
Will be able to chat over discord. Am very new to dialects but I want to learn it to communicate with my grandparents.
He got rid (or heavily curtailed) the usage, promotion, and position of the dialects for several reasons:
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Unity. He wanted to have all Singaporean Chinese speak one tongue instead of several. And the best way to do that would be to choose a language that is neutral to all and native to pretty much none, which was Mandarin.
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Linguistic reasons. Mandarin is a full fledged language, while, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, etc are all just esoteric dialects. So obviously it's better to know Mandarin, if you even had to choose.
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Cultural reasons. This one was a bit tricky, and he never spoke about it openly. But it was observable that the cultures that the dialects (Hokkien especially) carried were not very good. There's a reason why most people in prisons speak Hokkien instead of Mandarin.
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To mirror Chinese culture. There were significant benefits for Singaporean Chinese to be on the same page as Mainland PRC Chinese, and so speaking the same language as them would be good for Singapore.
The drawbacks would be loss of heritage, not being able to communicate with hags and haggards who only speak dialect and other stuff.
So given all of this, was Lee Kuan Yew right about getting rid of the Chinese dialects?
its so similar in many ways, "wa zai tam por nia"
Am doing research for a project, what are some funny local insults in dialect that mean "Please Eat Shit", or anything along the lines of "shit"?
Speaking of "Eat Shit", I know Ciak Sai means eat shit in hokkien, but I'd also like to know a more polite way of phrasing it for additional humour.
Thanks a bunch in advance!
TIL that Taiwanese TV programs now uses standard Mandarin as used in China but retaining the traditional script. So I ask: is China's influence the only factor here (if the title statement is true)?
Hi there I'm a 21yo Hongkonger. Desperate to find my English so poor even after tertiary education. Looking for English for daily life(Not textbook kind of English). Prefer British English so that I can fake a British accent(JK. I'm fairly talkative and open to discussions on any topics. I'm OK with Whatsapp, Skype or FB. If you prefer other ways for communications feel free to pm me. Thx~
W’sup my fellow ladies, gaydies, and theydies: so I still consider myself a baby repper even though it’s been a wild ride since I first started my journey back in June. Since I am still at the infancy of my bag journey, I felt like I’d be a little more introspective with what makes me a RepLady. Seeing as we all come from various generations, socioeconomic statuses, cultures, and we all navigate the world perceived differently, I figured that these varying backgrounds have all had a huge effect on our decisions with how we have interacted with this forum. At the end of the day, we all have our own stories. Feel free to share your own; I am honestly just as deeply interested in getting to know what makes every Replady an RLer just as much as I am interested in getting to know your bags hehe
Warning: this is an incredibly long post, for the individual bag mentions go straight to the bottom.
##The Basics
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Age: Mid (really probably upper 😭)- 20s
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Gender Identity: Male, out of general convenience and blatant indifference
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Location: Taiwan
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Occupation & Industry: Soon-to-graduate medical student
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Individual Income: <15,000 USD/year; mainly via scholarship support, partially parental
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Familia photo: idk how y'all trippin about getting outed, baby I've been outed before and this ain't nothin
##What was your first intro into bags? My mother had a very humble collection of maybe 2~3 LV bags when I was young. Although I barely have a recollection of them, I remember vividly the sentiments which they conveyed to her. It was her own version of “making it.” She had placed her faith on a man with an ambition to leave the country and migrate to the United States. She married him regardless of the fact that his own family didn’t much like her. She took my brother and left her own family in Mexico once my dad was able to finally land a job in the Northeast. Together, they formed a family as he went through his own professional training, which wasn’t fully complete until I was 6. That’s when she made it. We had a nice house, a whole ass pool, and even took a trip to Europe once. Once he was done, she got to do her own thing and went to cosmetology school, achieving her own purpose outside of home. Regardless, when the time came that my dad ended up leaving, my mom no longer pulled her bags out anymore. Whatever sentiments she had to get over before being able to use them again (as the practica
... keep reading on reddit ➡I'm 14 years old and I've been taught hokkien since young as my grandmother only knows how to speak hokkien when I'm at school I'm surprised that not alot of people know hokkien they only know swears or simple words(not enough to start a conversation)
I was born in Hong Kong and lived there until I was 4 before I was sent to Mainland China to live with my paternal grandparents because my single biological mother couldn’t afford the living cost of Hong Kong while raising a child on her own. So obviously my mother tongue is Cantonese. But since my grandparents didn’t speak Cantonese, I had to assimilate myself into the Mandarin speaking world and I never spoke Cantonese again. So technically Mandarin was the language that I’m most fluent in before I immigrated to the USA at the age of 12.
Do I call Mandarin my native language or is it Cantonese? Even when I’m speaking Mandarin, I still have a strong Hong Kong accent. But what’s perplexing is that I don’t speak Cantonese at all except the basics and some cuss words. So if I answered that Cantonese is my native language, would I be technically lying? Or should I say Mandarin? Or am I exaggerating the problems? Is anyone else in a similar boat?
Just curious for those of you who are Malaysian Chinese (or have Chinese education/heritage of any sort), do you speak fluent Chinese, or can you not?
(Edit: Oops, I see that many of you are interested to see the results! Well, thanks for not just voting as that would skew the results - I’m making a video about this soon tho, and will post it here later!)
Hey guys,
As the title states, I created a YouTube channel to help you learn Tamil. There aren't that many good resources out there for Tamil learners, and that's what inspired me to start making videos.
I'm a diaspora Tamil myself, but when I was growing up my parents only spoke English to me. I always felt that I'd lost a part of my culture by not being able to speak Tamil.
When I was 20 I decided to teach myself Tamil, and I'm now pretty decent. There weren't that many resources - let alone resources targeted for English speakers - but through a lot of effort and through harassing my friends and family for help I managed to find my way.
I learned a lot along the way that I think will be helpful for English speakers looking to learn Tamil. This is the channel I wish existed when I was learning Tamil.
Please let me know your thoughts! Whether it's good or bad, anything I should change, what topics I should cover in future videos, etc. And if you're willing to chuck a like or subscribe, would greatly appreciate it!
My first video: Introduce Yourself and Get to Know Someone https://youtu.be/9dwpL7CVSRU
My latest video: The 3 Verb Forms You NEED to Know (aka Intro to Verbs) https://youtu.be/Zk1Bz5URB-I
I'm a Malay but I never heard a really good and offensive slur towards Malay except Melayu Malas.
Edit: Not necessarily a specific word or slur. Any jokes targeted to any races in Malaysia are also welcomed.
If you want you can also expand your choice with your location or dialect. Would love to see if there's a linguistic correlation such as north/south, Cantonese/Mandarin/Hokkien or something similar.
EDIT: Thanks everyone for satisfying my curiosity in one way or another. The poll was initially written to ask about which one of 天 or 日 you guys use. But I totally forgot to take into account the 星期，礼拜，周 differences. I can't edit this poll, so maybe I'll make another one soon.
Poll's open for a week, just so there's a lot of time to get a large spectrum of data.
I recently interested in learning Mandarin since I used to have a malay-chinese friend. I picked up words from chinese dubbed games (mostly from genshin) and several matches from csgo but I only remember ni hao (or so it pronounced). I saw some accounts from instagram about learning Mandarin but I'm afraid that it's a scam so linking several legitimate ones is appreciated. Thanks.
新加坡的华人都会说中文吗？
