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Re: Errata and Addendum
Dylan,
On the contrary, "ng" is heavily used in Cantonese dialect. Except the
Hong Kong people now are getting "lazy" and drop that out. I tonly
happened during the last 15-20 years.
SL Lee
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On Sat, 22 Nov 1997, Dylan W.H. Sung wrote:
> 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
>
>