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Errata and Addendum
I apologise for the following mistake (I bet some cantonese speakers are a
bit worried)
The penultimate sentence of section 0.2 of my FAQ was
Also, the use of the 'ng-' initial sound, is not found in other
conservative dialects such as Cantonese. It has spawn much research into
its linguistic origins.
and should have be written as
Also the use of the 'ng-' initial sound is not found for some characters in
other conservative dialects such as Cantonese, whereas it is retained in
Hakka.
The link at the bottom of the page was
http://ubik.virtual-pc.com/sapienti/hdindexc.htm=20
and should read
http://ubik.virtual-pc.com/sapienti/hdindexc.htm
I have the corrected version below.
Sorry for the repetition.
Dylan.
============================================
Hakka Language FAQ
0. Introduction
0.1 Who or what is Hakka as a language?
Hakka is a dialect of Chinese. It has many regional dialects, that are
strewn across southern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and many of the Pacific
Rim countries. With the migration of the last century, its speakers can now
be found on all the great continents, except Antarctica, but we are working
on that one. There are approximately 34 million speakers worldwide.
0.2 What is special about the Hakka dialects?
Within the Hakka group of dialects, there is a core vocabulary that is
common between them. Many Hakka words can not be found in other Chinese
dialects. An example of this is "la2 kia2" meaning 'spider'. Often Hakka
retains endings that are not present in the Mandarin Chinese dialect and
said therefore to be more 'conservative'. Amongst these is the endings -t,
-k, -m. Also the use of the 'ng-' initial sound is not found for some
characters in other conservative dialects such as Cantonese, whereas it is
retained in Hakka.It has spawn much research into its linguistic origins.
1. Hakka Sound and Tones
1.1 How do we write down Hakka sounds?
For the purposes of recording the sound, we can use a sort of alphabet to
transcribe the sounds. There are many types used today. The reason for this
is that various authors have developed, independently, their own ways of
rendering a sound syllable into a written transcription. There seems to be
no set standard since the various dialects may not have exactly equal sound
values for each 'letter' of the alphabet they employ. Next to fix the tone
of the word, a number (or some graphical element) is added on to the word.
So, in the above word for spider, both of these words have the tone number
2.
1.2. What are tones?
In Hakka, like many languages of the world, tones are used. It is said to
be a 'tonal language'. They are the variations in pitch of a sound. As we
are writing in English, an example would be:
i. I have.
ii. I have?
The difference between these, is that in english a question can be implied
tonally by raising the pitch of the word at the end of the sentence. But in
reality, English is not a tonal language.
In Hakka, however, there are several tones. Often the tone also depends on
the ending of the sound. There are generally six tones to Hakka, though in
one particular, Hailu or Hoi Liuk, there are seven. The tones are numbered
1 through to 6, and added to the end of a written sound. Alternatively,
some sort of accenting can be used.
1.3 Why does the tone depend on the ending of a word's sound?
There are two main categories of sound, called by linguists, "legato" and
"staccato". For our purposes we can call them long sounds and short sounds.
A long sound is created by a glide. This is the lengthening of a sound
which can occur at the begining (on glide) or at the end (off glide).
Mostly, Hakka sounds have a small off glide to many endings. This resultant
long sound will need a tone to pin its final sound value. The tones
associated with these long or legato sounds are 1, 2, 3, and 4. This leaves
the short or staccato sounds and they are numbered 5 and 6. They are often
associated with the endings -p, -t, -k (or -b, -d, -g).
1.4 Why are there so many tones?
There are this many to account for the various sounds present.
1.5 How is a tone described?
Tones are described using a arbitrary scale of five levels. A tone can be
level, rising, falling or anything between. For the best way, we can think
of these five arbitrary levels to be numbered 1 through to 5. This enables
us to write what is known as a tone contour. The tone contours are written
within two forward slanting slashes /~/. 5 is the highest level, and 1 is
the lowest. A tone contour /23/ describes a tone rising from level 2 to 3.
Similary, /423/ is a contour that begins at level 4, decends to level 2 and
rises tp level 3. If we had /5/, then this shows a short tone (possibly a
staccato tone) of level 5.
1.6 What are initials and endings?
Chinese words are for the best part monosyllabic (having just one
syllable). This enables us to split the sound into two arbitrary, but
consistent, parts. They are known as the initial and the ending. Initials
are single letters, dipthongs, and (in some transcriptions) trithongs (have
3 letters). The remaining piece of the sound is known as the ending. For
example, taking our words for spider, the sound of the words are "la" and
"kia". 'l-' and 'k-' are initials, and '-a' and '-ia' are endings.
1.7 How many initial and endings are there?
This depends on which method of transcription you use.
In the Sa Tdiu Gok dialect, as given by Dylan Sung (mabr12@dial.pipex.com),
at http://ubik.virtual-pc.com/sapienti/haksound.htm there are are 24
initials and 43 endings.
In the Taiwanese transcription given in the link in the Taiwanese Hakka
Association of USA (scchang@softidea.com)
http://www.softidea.com/twhakkausa/hktlpa.html shows considerably more.
Also, you can view in BIG5 (redding@oes.itri.org.tw) another Taiwanese
Hakka transcription table at
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Ginza/2168/pinin.htm just to compare.
2. Hakka Grammar
2.1 Are there any grammars on Hakka?
Grammars have been written mainly in bookform. Try
Author : Mantaro J. Hashimoto
Title : The Hakka Dialect; A Linguistic Study of Its Phonology, Syntax
and Lexicon Princeton-Cambridge Studies in Chinese Linguistics, V
Publisher : Cambridge at the University Press, 1973.
ISBN 0 521 20037 7
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 72-85438.
3. Hakka Vocabulary
3.1 How about Hakka vocabulary?
There are many internet sites with Hakka vocabulary. Of these are:
Sa Tdiu Gok Hakka
http://ubik.virtual-pc.com/sapienti/hdindexc.htm
Taiwanese Hakka
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Ginza/2168/diction.htm