Talk:黃梨

Etymology

@Justinrleung I was just wondering, do you think maybe this was originally the Hokkien word 王梨 pronounced in Cantonese, and the Mandarin word is a misrendering of 王梨 as 黃梨 since the two are homophones in Cantonese? I know this is called 菠蘿 in mainland China, so I was just wondering how it became 黃梨 in Malaysia and Singapore Cantonese. The dog2 (talk) 14:57, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@The dog2: If it is indeed Hokkien that has this word first, then it could be a reanalysis of the Hokkien word in other regions, such as in the case of Hakka and Min Dong. However, the direction of borrowing is unclear to me. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:08, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@Justinrleung: What I do know for sure from my previous trip to Taiwan is that Taiwanese Hokkien uses 王梨 just like Singapore Hokkien, even though the Mandarin words are different in Singapore and Taiwan. Based on what you entered in the dialect tables, it appears that mainland Chinese Hokkien uses the same word too. The way it is said in Singapore Teochew sounds like it's just the characters for the Hokkien name pronounced in Teochew, as you can hear here (13:17). Teochew speakers from China do not use this word and will say 番梨 instead. That's why I had the conjecture that the word in Singapore and Malaysia Cantonese is just the Cantonese pronunciation of the Hokkien word, since Cantonese speakers from China don't use this word and say 菠蘿 instead. The dog2 (talk) 15:26, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

@The dog2: I have no doubts for Singapore Teochew being 王梨. And it is possible that Malaysian/Singaporean Cantonese got this word from Hokkien. They might in fact be the "bridging context" for reanalysis to 黃梨 in Malaysian/Singaporean Mandarin (though it is also possible that it could be through/influenced by Hakka). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 15:32, 11 October 2022 (UTC)