Teochew special words

I know some people have been told by their governments that Teochew is ONLY a dialect and Mandarin is the real Chinese and we therefore do not have to spend time learning dialects.

There is a teacher of our Teochew Language who said Teochew is not tou2uê7 土話 [vernacular] but gou2uê7 古話 [an ancient language].

Just to let you know, the current Mandarin which we speak is actually Bag4giaⁿ1 tou2uê7 北京土話 [Beijing vernacular speech].

I just want to continue to illustrate that Teochew is NOT a dialect of Mandarin and look at the examples below and you can clearly see the differences between the two languages.

Mandarin		Teochew		English
xing2	行	ho2	好	OK, alright, will do
bu4xing2	不行	mo2	孬	will not do
ke3yi3	可以	oi6sai2	會使	possible, can
bu4ke3yi3	不可以	bhoi6sai2	𠁞使	may not
gan3de2ji2	趕得及	oi6hu3	會赴	enough time to do something
gan3bu4ji2	趕不及	bhoi6hu3	𠁞赴	not enough time to do something
dong3	懂	oi6hiao2	會曉	know how to do something, understand
bu4dong3	不懂	m6hiao2	唔曉	Don’t understand, do not know how to do something

Those marked in red are Mang5nam5 Ghe2 閩南語 which we share with Hokkien – may it be from Xiamen 廈門 [we say this as E’mung 廈門] or Taiwan 臺灣 [Taiuang 臺灣] and I am sure you already know that Hokkien and Teochew are dialects of one another belonging to the family Mang5nam5 Ghe2 閩南語 [Minnan language].

You may not find people in our homeland using this Minnan words but nevertheless these words are still used by Teochew people living in SE Asia.