hing7do6

I was listening to a comedy sketch and the husband was saying to his wife - hing7do6 - and the wife replied and said to him, "mih4 hing7do6" - what "hing'do"?

I suppose some people in our home land are speaking in such a Mandarin version of Teochew that we no longer know what they are saying and they have made this into comedy sketches. 

So, I was driving and thinking about this hing7do6 and I thought he must have been saying "現在". And this hing'do means "now".

I have heard people saying hing7zai6 現在 for "now". 

However, these words are not listed as Teochew words in ZXS.

So what is our word for "now" which our ancestors have used for millennia? 

It is zi2zung7 - 只陣 and ZXS explains zi2zung7 as 這時. 

and if you were to look up your Mandarin dictionary, you would see na4zhen4 那陣 to mean "at that time" and we say at that time as he2zung7 許陣 [he2 is said like "her" in English]

Thank you for reading this post.

I am now learning to read Tang Dynasty poems in Teochew and loving every minute of it.  I cannot access these poems in Mandarin as they sound so strange in Mandarin, but really lovely in Teochew. 

BTW: Like the way we have HanYu PinYin 漢語拼音 we also have our Teochew PinYin 潮洲拼音 [Dio'Ziu Pêng'Im] and Teochew is an English word like Swatow.  However, these are now spelled as DioZiu and Sua'Tao - and you nasal the sua. AND our people prefer us to call our land and our language as Dio'Sua - Dio for Teochew and Sua from Swatow.

I use the Pêng'Im as spelled in my dictionaries except for changing the R to Dz. One of my Teochew dictionaries uses dz for r like dzi 二 for second as second after first and not second as in time. Second as in time is called miao 秒. 

In my next post, I want to talk about the character 中.