Another use of 調

Zhang XiaoShan in his dictionary 新潮汕字典  on page 623 wrote this sentence, which I thought would be interesting to discuss, so I can have some deep learning and we all can benefit together.

口畔風呾伊慾上調。

I would read this as Kao2boiⁿ5 huang1daⁿ3 i1 aiⁿ3 zio ⁿ6tiao5.

So, let us unpack this sentence.

First - kao2boiⁿ5 is explained as 外邊 in Mandarin and we would normally be saying 外邊 as ghua7boiⁿ5 外畔 in Teochew. Ah-Hog 阿福, the lad who is mentally challenged in Teochew sketches, uses this word ghua7boiⁿ5 外畔 to mean outside as ghua7kao2 外口 .

Zhang XiaoShan uses kao2boiⁿ5 口畔 to mean outside or it could mean other places other than one's home or even boarder regions, depending on use.  So let us take kao2boiⁿ5 口畔 to mean not at one's immediate vicinity. 

Then how about huang1daⁿ3 風呾  ? This is a Teochew word. Another way of saying this is hong1siaⁿ1 風聲. Both huang1daⁿ3 and hong1siaⁿ1, both our own Teochew words, mean "it is rumoured". 

You already know i1 and aiⁿ3 to mean "he" and "want" respectively. 

As for zioⁿ6tiao5 上調   - this is a Chinese word and in Mandarin is said as shang4tiao2, which means to increase prices. Could Zhang XiaoShan have used ki2gê3 起價 instead?

So to put all of these together, the above sentence written by Zhang XiaoShan means, "It is rumoured, from elsewhere, he wants to increase prices."

I have written the above, and other posts, in a way in which if you cannot read Chinese characters, you can still follow my discussions. I have this need to help all of us to improve our bho'ghe 母語 - mother tongue. I imagine by now you know about mogher website to help us in improving our bho'ghe language proficiency. 

Zhang XiaoShan uses Simplified characters and I write in Traditional characters because when I first started learning Chinese, everybody suggested I learn Traditional characters and I followed their advice - even friends from China. Once I have learnt traditional characters, it is very easy to learn simplified. Nowadays, I have to know both, as my learning resources are from Taiwan and Swatow. 

Thank you for reading this post. God bless!