Literary & Colloquial Readings of Hokkien

There exists literary reading (boon3 thak1) and colloquial reading (paek3 thak1) of many words in Hokkien that is passed down to Penang Hokkien. As Penang Hokkien is largely an oral language used for everyday purposes, you will find that most of its common used words are pronounced with the colloquial reading. Having said there, you will also on occasion come across words that are given the literary reading - which often even a person who speaks Penang Hokkien might not be aware of. Most of the words that are given the literary reading are people's surnames, place names and formal proper nouns.

For example, the ancestral hall of the Khoo Kongsi, which in Chinese is 龍山堂 is called Leong3 San3 Tong2 [liɔŋ-san-tɔŋ] in Hokkien. That's the literary reading of Dragon Mountain Hall. If it were given the colloquial reading, the same would be Leng3 Snua3 Terng2 [leŋ-suã-təŋ]. The word terng2 is the same word that appears in kau1terng2 (church).

Similar, the name of the village in the Ah Hock story is Kim3 Leong3 San1, a literary reading used for place names.

In Penang Hokkien, we continue to use the literary and colloquial readings to express the numerals one and two. "It3" is the literary reading of "cit1", just as "jee33" is for "nor33". These are the two most commonly used in Penang Hokkien, while the literary reading of other numerals has largely dropped out of usage. For a more complete list, see Numbers in Penang Hokkien.

When expressing time, we often use both the literary and colloquial reading of the numeral one. The time 1:05 is expressed as it1 tiam4 cit3-leh3 ji33.

But why is there two readings? The colloquial reading reflects how the native Hokkiens speak while the literary reading reflects the pronunciation of words that are brought in from other Chinese languages. Of the two, the colloquial reading is the older, having been around as early as the Han Dynasty (206 BC- 220 AD). The words and pronunciation have evolved since then.

In comparison, the majority of literary readings originated in the Tang Dynasty (AD617-907), when formal, written words are pronounced differently from the words used by the common people in everyday speech.

Many words have the literary and colloquial reading, though most of the time, only the colloquial one is used in Penang Hokkien. The colloquial reading for the word 白, which means white (and vernacular) is paek1 [pɛʔ]; the literary reading [piak] is largely unfamiliar to most people speaking Penang Hokkien.

When Christian missionaries of the London Missionary Society created a form of romanization of Southern Min Language, the system was called Romanized Amoy Colloquial or Romanized Amoy Vernacular. The system also become known as Church Romanization, to reflect its origin. However, this system of romanization is today known most commonly as Pėh-ōe-jī (or in Penang Hokkien, Paek3 Wa3 Ji3), abbreviated as POJ. This is a misnomer, as it is not correct to describe this system of romanization as "vernacular", considering it includes both the literary and colloquial. Others oppose the association with Christianity, yet others are against the term "romanization".

Today the existence of literary and colloquial readings for words in Hokkien serves as a "good to know" for those learning Penang Hokkien. Your encounter with such words will be limited compared to your exposure to the same words in their colloquial reading.

How would you know the literary or colloquial readings of words in Penang Hokkien? Where the literary reading is sufficiently significant to show, I will list them within both the Penang Hokkien-English and English-Penang Hokkien portions of the online dictionary.

Penang Hokkien Grammar

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