Errors in Teochew

I have mentioned in the last post about using the wrong characters. Besides 落湯糍 loh8teng1zi5 mentioned in the last post, there is also a Teochew dessert whose name is ah4bho2nim3 鴨母𥺴 and the people in our homeland seem to always write the nim3 character incorrectly. As these food items are made from rice, sure enough they should know that the radical should have the rice 米 character.

Another food item which they always write incorrectly is spinach which we call 菠薐 buê1lêng5 and this vegetable is often written as 飛龍 flying dragon!

Would you find the Japanese writing incorrectly? Of course not. Would these people write Mandarin incorrectly? I do not think so.

Our people write Hanyu Pinyin properly, write in Mandarin characters correctly and when it comes to our Romanised Teochew and characters, 真實 四散來 zing1sig8 si3suaⁿ3lai5.

I can draw a couple of possible conclusions.

A] They have no respect for their mother tongue Dio’ghe [The Teochew language] because they have succumbed to the local government propaganda in doing a genocide to our mother tongue.

B] They do not have a Teochew dictionary at home and therefore have not checked things out before writing.

B cannot be a possible reason because there are several Teochew online dictionaries.

I am writing this post because Jason, from Singapore, who runs the Teochew Store, has written to me to inform me that our people say right hand as iu6ciu2 右手 and not ziaⁿ3ciu2 正手 and left hand as zo2ciu2 左手 and not do3ciu2 倒手 。

There are also many mispronunciations made by so called native speakers such as calling the steamed bun 饅頭 “mang6tao5 instead bhuang6tao5. In fact, bhuang6tao5 in Teochew is called either gaⁿ3guê2 酵粿 or gaⁿ3bao1 酵包 and the round shaped steamed bun is called so1lo1bao1 梭羅包。

梭羅包