Amoy (linguistics) Totally Explained

Everything about Amoy Linguistics totally explained

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Amoy (Xiamen) is a language/dialect which originally comes from Southern Fujian province (in Southeast China), in the area centered around the city of Xiamen. It is highly similar to Taiwanese, and is widely known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia. Amoy is widely considered to be the prestige dialect within Min Nan. For this reason, Amoy is often simply called Min Nan.
Spoken Amoy and Taiwanese are both mixtures of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou speech. As such, they're very closely aligned phonologically. However, there are some subtle differences between the two, as a result of physical separation and other historical factors. The lexical differences between the two are slightly more pronounced. Generally speaking, Amoy, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Taiwanese, and the Hokkien spoken in Southeast Asia are mutually intelligible.

History

In 1842, as a result of the signing of the Treaty of Nanking, Xiamen (Amoy) was designated as a trading port. Xiamen and Gulangyu islands rapidly developed, which resulted in a large influx of people from neighboring areas such as Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The mixture of these various accents have formed the basis for Amoy. Over the last several centuries, there have been a large number of descendents from these areas who have migrated to Taiwan. Eventually, Amoy became popularly known as Taiwanese among the locals living there. Just like British and American English, there are subtle lexical and phonologic differences between Taiwanese and Amoy, however these differences don't generally pose any barriers to communication. Amoy speakers also spread to Southeast Asia, where it became widely known as Hokkien.

Special characteristics

Spoken Amoy preserves many of the sounds and words from Middle Chinese. However, the vocabulary of Amoy was also influenced in its early stages by the languages of the Minyue peoples. Spoken Amoy is known for its use of nasalization. Unlike English or Mandarin, Amoy also distinguishes between unaspirated voiceless and unaspirated voiced initial consonants. In less technical terms, native Amoy speakers have little difficulty in hearing the difference between the following syllables:

	unaspirated		aspirated
bilabial stop	bo	po	pʰo
velar stop	go	ko	kʰo
	voiced	voiceless

Accents

Amoy pronunciation is based on two main accents: Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The following table provides five words that illustrate some of the more commonly seen sound shifts:

English	Accent	Pe̍h-ōe-jī	IPA
two	Quanzhou, Taipei	lī	li˧
two	Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Tainan	jī	ʑi˧
sick	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	pīⁿ	pĩ˧
sick	Zhangzhou, Tainan	pēⁿ	pẽ˧
egg	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan	nn̄g	nŋ˧
egg	Zhangzhou	nūi	nui˧
chopsticks	Quanzhou, Lukang	tīr	tɨ˧
	Xiamen, Penghu	tū	tu˧
	Zhangzhou, Taiwan	tī	ti˧
shoes	Quanzhou	phêr-êr	pʰə˨˩ə˧˥
	Xiamen, Taipei	phê-ôe	pʰe˨˩ue˧˥
	Zhangzhou, Tainan	phôe-ê	pʰue˧˧e˧˥

Tones

Amoy is similar to other Min Nan dialects/languages in that it makes use of 5 tones, which are reduced to 2 in checked syllables. The tones are traditionally numbered from one through eight, but those numbered 2 and 6 are identical in most regions.

1	Yin level	˥
2	Yin rising	˥˧
3	Yin falling	˨˩
4	Yin entering	˩ʔ
5	Yang level	˧˥
6=2	Yang rising	˥˧
7	Yang falling	˧
8	Yang entering	˥ʔ

Tone sandhi

Amoy has extremely extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced isn't affected by the rules. What an 'utterance' is, in the context of this language, is an ongoing topic for linguistic research. For the purpose of this article, an utterance may be considered a word, a phrase, or a short sentence. The diagram illustrates the rules that govern the pronunciation of a tone on each of the syllables affected (that is, all but the last in an utterance):

Literary versus vernacular readings

Like other varieties of Min Nan, Amoy has complex rules for literary and vernacular readings of Chinese characters. For example, the character for big has a vernacular reading of tōa, but a literary reading of tāi . Because of the loose nature of the rules governing when to use a given pronunciation, a student of the language must often simply memorize the appropriate reading for a word on a case by case basis. For single syllable words, it's more common to use the vernacular pronunciation. This situation is comparable to the on and kun readings of Japanese.
The vernacular readings are generally thought to predate the literary readings; the literary readings appear to have evolved from middle Chinese. The following chart illustrates some of the more commonly seen sound shifts:

vernacular	literary
[p-], [pʰ-]	[h-]	pun	hun	divide
[tɕ-], [tɕʰ-], [ts-], [tsʰ-]	[ɕ-]	chiâⁿ	sêng	to become
[k-], [kʰ-]	[tɕ-], [tɕʰ-]	kí	chí	finger
[-ã], [-uã]	[-an]	khòaⁿ	khàn	to see
[-ʔ]	[-t]	chia̍h	si̍t	to eat
[-i]	[-e]	sì	sè	world
[-e]	[-a]	ke	ka	family
[-ia]	[-i]	khiā	khì	to stand

Vocabulary

� For further information, read the article: Swadesh list

The Swadesh word list, developed by the linguist Morris Swadesh, is used as a tool to study the evolution of languages. It contains a set of basic words which can be found in every language.

The
The (Standard Mandarin, Cantonese, Amoy, Teochew, Hakka, Burmese)

Grammar

Amoy grammar shares a similar structure to other Chinese dialects, although it's slightly more complex than Standard Mandarin. Moreover, equivalent Amoy and Mandarin particles are usually not cognates.

Complement constructions

As the following example shows, Amoy complement construnctions are roughly parallel Standard Mandarin, with some exceptions (in red).

particle	English
adverb	He runs quickly.	Amoy	i	cháu	ē	kín
		Mandarin	tā	pǎo	dé	kuài
		English	He	runs	obtains	quick
adverb	He runs very quickly.	Amoy	i	cháu		chiok	kín
		Mandarin	tā	pǎo	dé	hěn	kuài
		English	He	runs		very	quick
adverb	He does not run quickly.	Amoy	i	cháu	bē	kín
		Mandarin	tā	pǎo	bù	kuài
		English	He	runs	not	quick
can	He can see.	Amoy	i	khòaⁿ	ē	tio̍h
		Mandarin	tā	kàn	dé	dào
		English	He	sees	obtains	already achieved
can	He can not see.	Amoy	i	khòaⁿ	bē	tio̍h
		Mandarin	tā	kàn	bù	dào
		English	He	sees	not	already achieved
so	He was so startled, that he couldn't speak.	Amoy	i	kiaⁿ	kah	ōe	mā	kóng	bē	chhut-lâi
		Mandarin	tā	xià	dé	huà	dōu	shuō	bù	chūlái
		English	He	startled	to the point of	words	also	say	not	come out

view chart in simplified Chinese script

view chart in traditional Chinese script

Negative particles

Negative particle syntax is parallel to Standard Mandarin about 70% of the time. Here is a fairly complete description (parallel usage to Mandarin is bolded):

m̄ - isn't + noun (Mandarin: bù)

: i m̄-sī gún lāu-bú. She isn't my mother.

m̄ - doesn't + verb/will not + verb (Mandarin: bù)

: i m̄ lâi. He doesn't come./He won't come.

verb + bē + particle - isn't able to (Mandarin: bù)

: góa khòaⁿ-bē-tio̍h. I am not able to see it.

bē + helping verb - can not (opposite of ē is able to/Mandarin: bù)

: i bē-hiáu kóng Eng-gú. He can't speak English.

helping verbs that go with bē
:bē-sái - isn't permitted to (Mandarin: bù kěyǐ)
:bē-hiáu - doesn't know how to (Mandarin: búhuì)
:bē-tàng - not able to (Mandarin: bùnéng)

mài - don't (imperative) (Mandarin: bié)

: mài kóng! Don't speak!

bô - don't + helping verb (Mandarin: bù)

: i bô beh lâi. He isn't going to come.

helping verbs that go with bô:
:beh - want to + verb; will + verb
:ài - must + verb
:èng-kai - should + verb
:kah-ì - like to + verb

bô - doesn't have (Mandarin: méiyǒu)

: i bô chîⁿ. He doesn't have any money.

bô - did not (Mandarin: méiyǒu)

: i bô lâi. He didn't come.

bô - isn't + adjective (Mandarin: bù)

: i bô súi. She isn't beautiful.

An exception can be made for hó (good), m̄-hó = bô-hó - not good.

view negative particles in simplified Chinese script

view negative particles in traditional Chinese script

Cheat sheet

Here is an English/Amoy/Mandarin conversion list for some of the more commonly seen particles:

Particle	English	yellow: dual use particle; red: two different particles
passive	They were cheated.	Amoy	in	hō·	lâng	phiàn khì
		Mandarin	tāmen	bèi		piàn le
		English	They	by	person	was cheated
object identifier (1)	He handed the money to you.	Amoy	i	kā	chîⁿ	kau	hō·	lí
		Mandarin	tā	bǎ	qián	jiāo	gěi	nǐ
		English	He	(object identifier)	money	hand over	give	you
more (1)	He ate one more bowl.	Amoy	i	ke	chia̍h		chi̍t	óaⁿ
		Mandarin	tā	duō	chī	le	yī	wǎn
		English	He	more	eat	(past tense)	one	bowl
object identifier (2)	I'm telling you ...	Amoy	góa	kā	lí	kóng
		Mandarin	wǒ	gēn	nǐ	jiǎng
		English	I	(object identifier)	you	say
more (2)	He has more friends.	Amoy	i	ū	khah	chē	ê	pêng-iú
		Mandarin	tā	yǒu	bǐjiào	duō	de	péngyǒu
		English	He	has	comparatively	many	of	friends

view chart in simplified Chinese script

view chart in traditional Chinese script

Romanization

A number of Romanization schemes have been devised for Amoy. Pe̍h-ōe-jī is one of the oldest and best established. However, the Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet has become the Romanization of choice for many of the recent textbooks and dictionaries from Taiwan.Further Information

Get more info on 'Amoy Linguistics'.

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