Talk:好早起

Pronunciation

@Mlgc1998, Mar vin kaiser Should it be hó͘ or hó for 好? If it's the former, is it because PH Hokkien doesn't distinguish the two vowels or is it just in 好? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 08:41, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung PH Hokkien doesn't distinguish the vowels, because it's not widely known among Chinese Filipinos that there might be different kinds of "o". The most common idea of the "o" sound clings to the understanding of "o" in either or both Tagalog and/or other ph languages and/or Philippine English. The average Chinese Filipino, whether elderly, boomer, gen X, Y, Z, normally aren't educated about Hokkien so they rely on the languages they are indeed educated in and what they learned from their own family. The fb groups and groupchats and discord we have are there to try to help others learn about details like this they didn't know about or frequently gloss over, but naturally, the most common at least in my experience or the widespread expectation is to consistently do /ɔ/ for all the "o" sounds. Perhaps, there might be exceptions in some families, but if /o/ is like the "o" in soul, I at least have never or rarely ever heard it besides in English, because for that one, we imitate American media as much as possible for whichever word. In the Tagalog phonology page, /ɔ/ is also the understanding of "o", some people here in ph tho don't see the difference cuz the difference between these two /o/ and /ɔ/ is so very close. If don't believe me still, maybe it's better I just keep sending youtube videos for reference as to how people keep talking like. Mlgc1998 (talk) 08:57, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: Showing me videos won't help because I have a hard time distinguishing the two sometimes. The only systematic study on Philippine Hokkien that I'm aware of (菲律賓咱人話研究) shows that these two vowels are distinguished. These two vowels are sometimes very close and are indeed merged in some dialects, but I don't know if all speakers have merged them in the Philippines. I believe I've asked Marvin about how o is pronounced in PH Hokkien some time back, and he said it's something like [o] or [ɤ] IIRC. I'll wait for Marvin to respond. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 09:09, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung That paper looks like they went to Binondo and Grace and probably talked to mostly elderlies. There's another person we know that's trying to write a paper on Philippine Hokkien, not sure when he'll be done. For that paper from Taiwan, they probably found some first gens who still kept the distinction and usually Marvin would be on the conservative side on this matter, since he naturally grew up there or very near there. It's a big country, I bet someone is bound to find someone that preserves the distinction. What'll be hard to tell and be frequently subjective is which is the more frequent common one, since this always relies on someone's own experience. Maybe it'll be better to just put both, if ever. Mlgc1998 (talk) 09:20, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: If the distinction is merged in some speakers and not merged in others, we generally tend to only have the more conservative pronunciation because the innovative pronunciation can be deduced. IPA symbols are also just approximate and they should reflect abstract categories of sounds (being able to capture contrasts) rather than trying to reflect all kinds of variation (which there is bound to be every time we speak because no one puts their tongue in the same exact position every time). Also, I know we label the pronunciation as Philippine Hokkien now, but I think it should be focused on Manila and its surroundings, not everywhere in the Philippines, as with the dialectal synonyms. It would be nice to also have other data points from other parts of the country, but I'm not sure if we have the resources for it. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 09:34, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung Is this just a tendency? And why would it be relevant if it didn't really reflect reality, in case we did somehow know which were more common? The video shows attestation and would be durable if I archived it and I probably could find more video attestations of it, since these 3 are what people are now frequently using as a formal stage greeting in formal events. Also, I am indeed talking about "Manila and it's surroundings", a.k.a. Metro Manila, often simplified by those outside it as just "Manila". I rarely have lived outside of that. Mish is a typical filchi mom around here. From other videos on the tip of my mind, I've found a few channels where filchi churches do their full hokkien church service uploaded to youtube before. Afaik, a lot of these supposed "innovative pronunciation" are normalized already in the filchi network of people I know of and often Marvin's the type to grasp at those dated features as with being on the conservative side on this matter, as observed with his behavior before with me and the others who's talked with him. Whenever he posted posts in fb before introducing hokkien terms, half the time, the words he presented are odd to me and the hokkien speakers around me. This is a frequent experience with different families within Metro Manila. He posted before that it might have to do with religion, but I doubt that. Tho this is expected, since it is indeed a scattered unstandardized dialect mostly used within people's families, neighborhoods, own associations and church groups. I believe the elderlies dealt with conflicts like this through their associations that they joined to represent them. For us, that would be needlessly long to have to do, so I think balancing things out would be better. I usually just bring these up mainly cuz I know Marvin is frequently on a certain side and I personally know others on different spectrums when thinking about this and of course, they have their varying motivations for it. For me, I just see this as Wiktionary, the free dictionary, and by far, the only reliable quality place that provides for objectively learning Philippine Hokkien in detail, which I'm sure Marvin knows and idk why you rely on him so much. Mlgc1998 (talk) 10:12, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: I’m waiting on Marvin’s response because he seems to have a better grasp in PH Hokkien. Your input on matters is still important because you are a speaker as well. I understand that within your family and the people you know, the two may have merged, but if the change isn’t complete, I would not want the distinction to be lost. It’s the same deal with Cantonese n- and l- - we only record the conservative variant and let people deduce the possible variation in pronunciation based on that. I also want to see what @Kamkamkamuti thinks (though they seem to be less active these days). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 10:57, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung Hi! Things have been pretty hectic so sorry for not being so active recently, and sorry too for possibly missing any other things you guys tagged me in. For the /o/ and /ɔ/ discussion, I do have to agree with @Mlgc1998 that based on my experience, most Fil-Chis (including myself) nowadays use only the /ɔ/ sound.

First gen still make a clear distinction between /o/ and /ɔ/, but I've found that some second gen do too. Personally, my family is sort of half and half. One side's second gen oldies (give or take in their late 70s to late 80s) distinguish between these two sounds, but one side just uses /ɔ/ for everything. However, for the side that uses exclusively /ɔ/, they retain other more conservative pronunciations for certain words that the other side does not, for example, pronouncing the 生 in 生囝 as /ɕĩ³³/ instead of the less conservative (and possibly more common pronunciation in the Philippines, or at least, in Manila) /sĩ³³/. Both sides retain certain (but not all) conservative pronunciations.

Also, even though the third and fourth gens of my family would use /ɔ/ for 好, there are some random instances where we would go for the /o/ or /ɤ/ sounds instead. For example, when we pronounce the word 無, we would say /bɔ²⁴/, but when we want to put emphasis, we sometimes say /bɤ²⁴/. Not so sure why it's like this for my family (for both sides actually), but I suspect this is because the first and/or second gens pronounced 無 with the /o/ sound, and its exaggerated form (not sure if this makes sense) is sort of an /ɤ/. Based on my experience, the same thing applies when the middle-aged third gens try to imitate their second gen parents—they go for the /o/ or /ɤ/ sounds instead of the /ɔ/ sound. But, this is all just based on my experience and I don't really have any way of telling if the same can be said for other families. Plus, I'm based in Manila so the situation may be different in other regions.

All in all though, I'd say the /o/ sound has not completely been lost, and I do think we should stick to making the distinction between /o/ and /ɔ/ on Philippine Hokkien Wiktionary, not because I want the non-distinguishing Fil-Chis to switch back to the more conservative pronunciations, but because they still exist and I don't want them to be written off completely. Kamkamkamuti (talk) 13:21, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kamkamkamuti Thanks for replying! So have you ever heard of the greetings 好早起!, 好暗晡!, 好暗暝! where the 好 uses the /o/ or /ɤ/ sounds instead of the /ɔ/ sound? If so, we can add those together with the /ɔ/ entry. Also, just curious, do you mean the city of Manila or another city in Metro Manila, that you're based in? Mlgc1998 (talk) 14:12, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998 I'll pass on the Manila question, but yes, I have heard the 好 in those three greetings pronounced with an /o/ sound. As I mentioned earlier, the second gens of one side of my family distinguish the /o/ and /ɔ/ sounds, so they say /ho⁵⁵⁴⁻²⁴ t͡sa⁵⁵⁴⁻²⁴ kʰi⁵⁵⁴/, /ho⁵⁵⁴⁻²⁴ am⁴¹⁻⁵⁵⁴ pɔ³³/, and /ho⁵⁵⁴⁻²⁴ am⁴¹⁻⁵⁵⁴ mi²⁴/. Kamkamkamuti (talk) 14:53, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung yeah I'm mainly taking from the input of other native speakers around me cuz they surround me daily and I frequently have scenarios where there are times when I tell someone in my family for example that something here in Wiktionary that maybe you or Marvin (or another guy in the groupchat or discord) said or edited that this was the case on something and then, they look at me like as if in disbelief and when I tell them these supposed conservative features, they're frequently surprised thinking and correcting me that the opposite was the conservative proper one and the one cited here seemed alien to them, so there's often conflict that bugs me here from what I read here. It's like who should I be believing then, some guys on the internet I've only met online for some years who one of them swears he's a native speaker and ours is supposed to be innovative pronunciations, as opposed to the ones who do use Hokkien in reality directly in person with us. I mean I know you'd also have the same perspective on me, but I'm saying all of us equally look at each other like this. That's the thing with unstandardized stuff. If you tell these to native speakers in my family, they'll be very conflicted that someone online away from our milieu is saying this is the real conservative Philippine Hokkien, then our Hokkien is not the real conservative Hokkien, when they really believe in their every day life they grew up on that the one their own elders and parents used is the real "conservative" one. I don't bet a good amount will change what their idea of conservative Hokkien is if they don't agree that that is the conservative Hokkien. Sometimes, I just accepted and trusted whatever Marvin put here before cuz at least probably it exists wherever he may have gotten the info, so I thought it's probably something to learn about, but the more I look into and discover stuff, there's a good amount of stuff that conflicts for different families and is away from the reality of different families, cuz the ones I meet face-to-face here sometimes make awkward faces when I tell them about stuff like these and the frequent point of learning Hokkien for many a Chinese Filipino is to connect with those of their own, so a random freely anonymously edited dictionary website saying otherwise from what they know should be, makes it matter little if it's no longer the case for theirs. I mean if my native speaker parents or sibling or cousins or neighbors was in my place here, would it be any different in their say to Marvin's say? That's the thing for unstandardized dialects, there's no set authority on the matter, even if which one of us prefers which version is supposed to be the original "conservative Hokkien". And if you did "want" to not have the distinction to be lost, I don't believe Wiktionary showing that will somehow correct the trend for people here, especially I've had multiple experiences where I had to teach someone how to search here, cuz only a few discover this website and learn how to look up chinese terms, especially non-mandarin ones, but at least there are a few. If it doesn't present what they know as the correct "conservative" Hokkien, there won't be a point reading things here that don't reflect their reality. The only prescriptive stuff that often works is if there's a set standard curriculum actively teaching people, otherwise, entries here that don't match some people's reality, it'll just make them lose credibility over the site.

Also, I tried contacting Kamkamkamuti before and that IG page that matches her description, it looks like she might be inactive for many months now.(edit: ok, she's there.) From that IG page, some of the stuff there matches the content here in wikt, so if that really is her, I noticed there are a few she noticed as well that might be different in her family as to what's here in wikt, but consistent with another person, who confirmed in their family, we have in the groupchat and similarly I remember one instance that she posted in that IG page as well that isn't consistent in my family but ours was consistent with others, so ...really confusing what really "should be". There are cases too where I told another fellow young filchi friend about here then as far as they know, it's not the case for theirs, so they told me they used VPN to anonymously slightly edit a Chinese entry's Hokkien tone cuz for them the previous one that I think Marvin put was, they considered wrong for them. So for an unstandardized scattered dialect, it's very frequent you'll encounter people from which family who claim their reality is the correct one, when in practice, there's no standard anyways so someone saying this or that is "wrong" is only speaking from their reality. This applies to whatever Marvin's reality is too, since irl, we don't have him set or elected as some sort of authority for the Hokkien throughout the city of Manila nor Metro Manila nor the country, no matter his tenure on the matter. Of course, regardless, we appreciate his contribution on the matter as well. Idk if in practice, it'll just be like the way it is right now where it always just comes down to who puts something up and insists that this is a thing which exists and then others put up what they know as the "correct" "original" "conservative" one, but this is what's hard for undocumented scattered unstandardized dialects. Idk how else it would progress out of that, but this way. If it's always just someone's conservative version that's documented that may or may not be consistent with others, there will come a time that it'll be like Classical and Vulgar Latin before and both will have some sort of problem, cuz the supposed proper one isn't spoken anymore and the actual spoken one isn't documented, or dialects will split off into more dialects because one form of it is not accepting others within it.

Anyways, I suddenly got sick today, Idk if I'll be gone for a while... Mlgc1998 (talk) 13:34, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung Ok, so from Kamkamkamuti's reply, both kinds show that they exist. No offense to @Kamkamkamuti, in both my maternal and paternal sides of my family, anything that isn't /ɔ/ for "o" raises eyebrows and as for my discussion with Marvin on his talk page, everything before "i" is either just /t͡si/, /t͡sʰi/, /si/ at least for us, and almost never /t͡ɕi/, /tɕʰi/, /ɕi/, which when I told my own native speaker sister if she recognized any /t͡ɕi/, /tɕʰi/, /ɕi/ sounds, she would correct me to say that the "authentic/conservative/proper Hokkien" she recognizes (naturally the one she learned from my grandparents and parents) "should be" /t͡si/, /t͡sʰi/, /si/ and /ɔ/. This is a set entrenched worldview for her too, which afaik is what we really hear from our grandparents and parents who the living ones are all tantamount in practice to being 2nd gen, but if other families here exhibited something else, I'd imagine she or my parents would just consider those as their Hokkien and go with the usual remark of 嘛是會做, but yeah, this scenario just characterizes the setting where Philippine Hokkien is usually mostly used in, which is usually privately used within people's own families, which I'm just saying we shouldn't be leaving out people here for whatever viewpoint. Mlgc1998 (talk) 14:07, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998 Oh, in my case, I usually go for the /t͡si/, /tɕʰi/, /si/ sounds which I am realizing now is a strange combination, but it's what I heard from my family and teachers. Some people I know (actually, I think even some third and fourth gen members of my family) do also use /t͡si/, /t͡sʰi/, /si/ like you do though, which is pretty interesting. But yeah, you're right when you say that nowadays Philippine Hokkien is usually privately used and it's hard to find a "standard" because of the lack of resources. Also, I would really appreciate it if you could use they/them pronouns when referring to me. Kamkamkamuti (talk) 14:48, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Kamkamkamuti ok, which kind of terms with /tɕʰi/? like most "tsh-/chh-" terms? I couldn't think of much examples in my family, when I mapped out a consonant table, but I know as much other families are bound to have something different. Mlgc1998 (talk) 15:49, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998, Kamkamkamuti Happy New Year! Thanks for your speedy response, Kamkamkamuti, despite being busy, and do not feel sorry for inactivity. Since there are people who are still pronouncing the two as different, I think we should only use <o> in the POJ. Think of <o> as an abstract thing that can be pronounced by [o] or [ɔ] depending on the speaker, just like Cantonese Jyutping <n> can be pronounced as [n] or [l] depending on the speaker. By doing this, there is no intention of prescribing [o] or [ɔ], but just a convention that we could perhaps document somewhere. I am saying [o] is probably the conservative variant because it's more common for a merger to occur than for a split to happen without a phonetic environment for splitting. It's also based on looking at other varieties of Hokkien, especially the homeland varieties like Jinjiang. Another thing we could do to make it more accessible to users is to have the IPA display both [o] and [ɔ] (I'll have to think about how this is implemented though). The same could be done with <si>/<chi>/<chhi>. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 17:09, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Justinrleung Happy New Year!! For future sort of romanization systems of someone somewhere, if ever there was such a thing, that somehow fully fit Ph Hokkien and whatever it's details more in some sort of way, I was also thinking about both options to not distinguish and an option to distinguish depending on the necessity of whoever speaker around here, which perspective they're operating from, but anyways besides that, if the current POJ writes <o>, then displays only IPA /o/, it will seem prescriptive. I mean I respect the opinion in general of wanting to prescribe something, but usually prescriptive stuff goes to either books, papers, posts, publications, or whatever other writing, and etc named to someone or some brand or organization specifically, so people know in good faith where they're coming from. Here in Wiktionary, that names itself a free dictionary that's anonymously edited by whoever unnamed irl user, that's gonna be iffy. If you somehow did get it to show both or somehow select more clearly which ones are reported to exist for IPA, sure for me. It's often IPA that's what people can specifically look for anyways for a more international standardized symbols to phonemes sort of reference, but right now, if it's not possible yet, we gonna have to show both existing ones. As for which is "conservative" or essentially which came first or something like that, there's a possibility too of multiple varied instances where there was a family in Southern Fujian generations back that mainly did /o/, then another family that mainly did /ɔ/, or another family that did both whichever from the two they leaned on more, then when they went here in the Philippines or wherever else, some either preserved either the one they were consistent with or did the merging of both or preserved the distinction, whose to know which case was to whose family. Perhaps, all such cases could have happened too. yeah, I bet human history is chock full of human groups frequently pointing at their own conservative version of their language or something else, must be why we have loads of languages in the world and throughout history. Mlgc1998 (talk) 20:08, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: There is no intention of prescribing, even if people are misunderstanding it to be such (because people often don't understand the intention of dictionaries). We just need to be on the same page with what notation we use to best describe what's going on. A "good" romanization should be able to distinguish all phonemes that at least some of the speakers distinguish. Since Kamkamkamuti has already said that there are some speakers who still distinguish the two, it would be best to go with having a distinction (actually regardless of its status as conservative or innovative). Also, I would like to point out that even though we do have a lot of phonetic details in our IPA transcription, I think it should be thought of more as a broad transcription. I do have some issues with our current way of notating things, because things like palatalization of /s/, /ts/ and /tsʰ/ are phonetic details and should be in narrow transcription brackets [], but we have them in broad transcription brackets //. I don't know if I will have the time to deal with this, but I think this issue is indeed pressing. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 22:04, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ @Mar vin kaiser, wondering if you have any thoughts on this. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 23:01, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: Hey, sorry I missed this ping the first time round, and the discussion is too long to read. Answering the first question, it's true that younger speakers tend to not distinguish between the two vowel sounds, but I guess it depends on which speakers you want to choose as representative of the dialect. Older speakers and some young speakers still distinguish. Since Tagalog only has the /ɔ/ sound, that tends to leak in younger people speaking Hokkien, pronouncing all O sounds as /ɔ/. --Mar vin kaiser (talk) 01:07, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

PoS

@Mlgc1998 Why is it not an interjection? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 20:04, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@JustinrleungI checked the part of speech used in the good afternoon and since it's in a phrasebook category. it seems more fitting to be set as that part of speech than an interjection, but by definition, it could also be considered as such, but i just set it as phrase to be consistent with all other likewise sort of greetings Mlgc1998 (talk) 20:10, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

@Mlgc1998: It's not consistent across English entries. As of now, we have good morning as an interjection, good afternoon and good night as phrases, and good evening as a noun. I personally think "interjection" might be more descriptive than "phrase", but I'm not entirely sure. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 00:07, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

@Justinrleung Since they're like both valid for whichever of those, you can put whichever. I was thinking it could be based on which category lists they'd make sense to go together with, since that's what the head template seems to do. Mlgc1998 (talk) 05:27, 15 January 2022 (UTC)