U2bhung5 Sêng5dou1 of the Sui Dynasty

I have been watching drama series of the heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties and I find the weapons they used to be rather fascinating. Let us learn how to say the 18 heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties in Teochew Uê.

In Mandarin, it is written as 隋唐十八條好漢｜隋唐十八条好汉 and I have already covered 唐 and 好漢 in one of the posts but I will repeat them again.

Sui5 Ciao5	隋朝	Sui Dynasty
Tang5 Ciao5	唐朝	Tang Dynasty
zab8boih4	十八	18 (eighteen)
diao5	條｜条	the measure word for hero and MW is also known as classifier
hao2hang3	好漢｜好汉	strong and courageous person; hero

If you remember, we call ourselves Deng5Nang5 唐人 which means Tang people, and this is another pronunciation of the Tang5 character, for we are descendants of the Tang Dynasty. We call China Town in the US and UK as Deng5nang5goi1 唐人街 to mean Tang people’s street.

As for the Ciao, we have a famous Teochew singer from GigIoⁿ 揭陽 whose name is Uang Ciao 元朝

If you remember, 好 can be said as ho2, hao2, haoⁿ3 or ho7 and in this example, heroes is said as hao3hang3. Do remember that hero is also said as 英雄 êng1hiong5.

One of heroes is 宇文成都 and he uses a weapon which is called a tang2 and this is homophone to tang2 桶 as in bucket or tang2 毯 as in blanket.  U2bhung5 宇文 [his surname] Sêng5dou1 成都 [his name] uses a phoenix wing gold plated “tang” and this is called hong6sig8 liu5gim1 tang2.

hong6sig8	鳳翼｜凤翼	phoenix wing
liu5gim1	鎦金｜镏金	gold plated
tang2	鎲｜镋	an ancient weapon which looks like a pitchfork

Nowadays, there are no Han Chinese with a surname such as U’bhung. U2 is homophone to the u2 in feather such as u2mo5 羽毛 and u2mo5 giu5 羽毛球 as in a shuttlecock or badminton.

You know bhung5 as in se1bhung5 斯文 to mean refine, cultured, educated said of a person or Êng1bhung5 英文 for English language.

As for his name Sêng5dou1 成都 it is the same as the capital of the province Si3cuang1 四川 – the four rivers in Southwest China.