Possessives in Penang Hokkien

Today we learn possessives. That means, how we show A belonging to B, or B belongs to A. Examples in English would be "Mr Tan's face", "the man's wife", "big boss's table", "the tail of the cat", "the colour of the dress", and so on.

In Penang Hokkien, we show possessives by affixing "eh2"

to the person/item to whom the item belongs. "Eh2" is linked to the possessor with a hyphen, like this:

Mr Tan's
Mr Tan-eh2

(alternatively, Tan2 Sin3sneah1-eh2

)

the man's
heh1-leh1 lang2-eh2

big boss's
tua33 tau3ke1-eh2

the cat's
heh1-leh1 niau1-eh2

the dress's
heh-leh1 sna1-eh2

When the possessee (the item possessed) is shown, eh2 sandhis to eh3

and followed by the possessee. There is no change to the structure, even when in English we invert the word order for "of the".

Mr Tan's face
Mr Tan-eh3 bin33

(alternatively, Tan2 Sin3sneah1-eh3 bin33

)

the man's wife
heh1-leh1 lang3-eh3 bor4

big boss's table
tua33 tau3ke1-eh3 tok1teng4

the cat's tail (or, the tail of the cat)
heh1-leh1 niau1-eh3 boey4

the colour of the dress
heh1-leh1 sna1-eh3 seik3

We also use eh2 with personal pronouns to create possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives.

Therefore, possessive pronouns look like this:

wah1-eh2

: mine
lu1-eh2

: yours
ie1-eh2

: his
ee1-eh2

: hers
i1-eh2

: its

wah1lang2-eh2

: ours
wang1-eh2

: ours

lu1lang2-eh2

: yours
luang1-eh2

: yours

ie1lang2-eh2

: theirs
iyang1-eh2

: theirs
ee1lang2-eh2

: theirs (feminine)
i1lang2-eh2