Hokkien numerals

Last updated
Numerals

The Hokkien language (incl. Taiwanese) has two regularly used sets of numerals, a colloquial/vernacular or native Hokkien system and literary system that came from Classical Chinese/Middle Chinese that was loaned in for formal written use during medieval times (e.g. Tang, Min, Southern Tang, Song times), similar to the Sino-Xenic pronunciations in Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, Jeju, Vietnamese, etc, but within the Sinitic family to the Min group. Literary and colloquial systems are not totally mutually independent; they are sometimes mixed used. The specific pronunciation of each number depends on the specific dialect of Hokkien (e.g. Amoy-Tong'an, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Longyan, etc.), which each dialect may either share or use slightly different phonemes and tones on how each dialect may properly count numbers in the Hokkien language for both vernacular and literary systems.

Contents

Basic numerals

Number Literary system [lower-alpha 1] Colloquial or vernacular systemNote
Hàn-jī Pe̍h-ōe-jī Tâi-lô Hàn-jī Pe̍h-ōe-jī Tâi-lô
0 lênglîng khòngkhòng
1 it / etit / et [1] chi̍t / che̍ttsi̍t / tse̍t
2 jī / lī / gījī / lī / gī nn̄g / nňg / nō͘nn̄g / nňg / nōo
3 samsamsaⁿsann
4 sù / sìr / sìsù / sìr / sì
5 ngó͘ / gó͘ / gúngóo / góo / gúgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňggōo / gǒo / ňg
6 lio̍klio̍kla̍kla̍k
7 chhit / chhet / sittshit / tshet / sitchhit / chhet / sit / chhiaktshit / tshet / sit / tshiak
8 patpatpoeh / peh / piēpueh / peh / piē
9 kiúkiúkáukáu
10 si̍p / se̍psi̍p / se̍pcha̍ptsa̍p
20 --- 廿 lia̍p / jia̍plia̍p / jia̍pThe sandhi for lī-cha̍p / jī-cha̍p (二十)
30 --- sa̍psa̍pThe sandhi for saⁿ-cha̍p (三十)
40 --- siapsiapThe sandhi for sì-cha̍p (四十)
100 pek / piakpik / piakpah / peehpah / peeh
1,000 chhiantshianchheng / chhuiⁿtshing / tshuinn
104 bānbān---
106 百萬pah-bānpah-bān桶* / 面桶*tháng / bīn-thángtháng / bīn-tháng*Used in Philippine Hokkien, instead of pah-bān (百萬)
108 ek / iakik / iak---
1012 tiāu / tiǎutiāu / tiǎu---From now on, see Chinese numerals
1016 kengking---
1020 kaikai---
1024 chítsí---
1028 jiôngjiông---
1032 ko͘ / kiokoo / kio---
1036 kànkàn---
1040 chèngtsìng---
1044 chàitsài---

Cardinal numbers

For cardinal numbers usage, the colloquial system is usually used. For example, one should use chi̍t ê lâng for the meaning of "a person" instead of using *it ê lâng. However, a notable exceptions for numerals 1 and 2 appears while the number is greater than 10.

Situation \ Numeral012345678910
Less than 10
lêngit / etjī / lī / gīsamsù / sìr / sìngó͘ / gó͘ / gúlio̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpatkiúsi̍p / se̍p
khòngchi̍t / che̍tnn̄g / nňg / nō͘saⁿgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňgla̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpoeh / peh / piēkáucha̍p
Greater than 10
lêngit / etjī / lī / gīsamsù / sìr / sìngó͘ / gó͘ / gúlio̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpatkiúsi̍p / se̍p
khòngchi̍t / che̍tnn̄g / nňg / nō͘saⁿgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňgla̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpoeh / peh / piēkáucha̍p

For "few hundred and ten, twenty or thirty" or "few thousand and few hundred", in Hokkien the prefixes pah- or chheng- are used instead of the lengthy way, which requires the speaker to state "how many chheng, how many pah, and how many cha̍p".

In the table, n is substituted by chi̍t, nn̄g/nňg, saⁿ, , gō͘/gǒ͘, la̍k, chhit, peh/poeh, káu
102030405060708090
Pah-
n-pah-itn-pah-lī / jīn-pah-saⁿn-pah-sìn-pah-gō͘ / gǒ͘n-pah-la̍kn-pah-chhitn-pah-poeh / pehn-pah-káu
100200300400500600700800900
Chheng-
n-chheng-itn-chheng-lī / jīn-chheng-saⁿn-chheng-sìn-chheng-gō͘ / gǒ͘n-chheng-la̍kn-chheng-chhitn-chheng-poeh / pehn-chheng-káu

Fractional numerals

For expressing fractions, one should use the sentence pattern like "cardinal number + hun-chi + cardinal number"; for example, gō͘ hun-chi it (五分之一) for "one fifth" (1/5). Note that the colloquial set of numerals is used in fractional numerals with still the exception of numerals 1 and 2, which should use the literary set as it and .

For expressing decimals, one should only use the literary numeral set with tiám (點) for the decimal mark. For example, one may say π equals sam tiám it-sù-it-ngó͘-kiú-jī-lio̍k-ngó͘-sam (3.141592653).

In addition, some special fraction can be expressed in other simpler forms. For percentage, one can still use the sentence pattern of hun-chi as pah hun-chi cha̍p (百分之十) for "ten percent" in most situations; however, for native speakers, the suffix -siâⁿ (成) for "n×10 percents" is used more commonly, so the "twenty percents" should be nn̄g-siâⁿ (兩成). Note that the numeral set used with the suffix -siâⁿ is totally the colloquial one with no exception.

In Taiwan, the term pha-sian-to͘ is also used for fractional numerals, but one should use the sentence term as "cardinal number + ê pha-sian-to͘"; for example, chhit-cha̍p ê pha-sian-to͘ (70%). The term was introduced in Japanese rule era from Japanese language; it's a Japanese loanword originating from English with the meaning of "percent" (paasento; パーセント). The use of pha-sian-to͘ is sometimes simplified as a suffix -pha; for example, cha̍p-peh-pha (18%).

Ordinal numbers

For ordinal numbers, when the numerals are preceded by the prefix (第), the colloquial set is used with the exception of numeral 1 and 2; when the numerals are preceded by the prefix thâu (頭), there is no exception to use the colloquial set when the number is smaller than 10, but once the number is greater than 10, the exception of numeral 1 and 2 appears again. Note that the system with prefix thâu is usually added by counter words, and it means "the first few"; for example, thâu-gō͘ pái means "the first five times". Thâu-chhit (number seven) sometimes means thâu-chhit kang (first seven days). It means the first seven days after a person died, which is a Hokkien cultural noun that should usually be avoided.

Smaller than 10

Prefix \ Numeral12345678910
tē-
it / etjī / lī / gīsamsù / sìr / sìngó͘ / gó͘ / gúlio̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpatkiúsi̍p / se̍p
chi̍t / che̍tnn̄g / nňg / nō͘saⁿgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňgla̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpoeh / peh / piēkáucha̍p
thâu-
it / etjī / lī / gīsamsù / sìr / sìngó͘ / gó͘ / gúlio̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpatkiúsi̍p / se̍p
chi̍t / che̍tnn̄g / nňg / nō͘saⁿgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňgla̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpoeh / peh / piēkáucha̍p

Greater than 10

Prefix \ Numeral123456789n×10
tē-
it / etjī / lī / gīsamsù / sìr / sìngó͘ / gó͘ / gúlio̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpatkiúsi̍p / se̍p
chi̍t / che̍tnn̄g / nňg / nō͘saⁿgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňgla̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpoeh / peh / piēkáucha̍p
thâu-
it / etjī / lī / gīsamsù / sìr / sìngó͘ / gó͘ / gúlio̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpatkiúsi̍p / se̍p
chi̍t / che̍tnn̄g / nňg / nō͘saⁿgō͘ / gǒ͘ / ňgla̍kchhit / chhet / sit / chhiakpoeh / peh / piēkáucha̍p

See also

Notes

  1. Based on Classical Chinese/Middle Chinese loaned for formal written use during medieval times (e.g. Tang, Min, Southern Tang, Song times), similar to Sino-Xenic pronunciations in Japanese, Okinawan, Korean, Jeju, Vietnamese, etc, but within the Sinitic family to the Min group.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taiwanese Hokkien</span> Variety of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan

Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as Taigi, Taigu, Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of Taiwanese people who descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.

Thai numerals are a set of numerals traditionally used in Thailand, although the Arabic numerals are more common due to extensive westernization of Thailand in the modern Rattanakosin period. Thai numerals follow the Hindu–Arabic numeral system commonly used in the rest of the world. In Thai language, numerals often follow the modified noun and precede a measure word, although variations to this pattern occur.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Min Chinese</span> Primary branch of Sinitic spoken in southern China and Taiwan

Min is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 70 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in Fujian province as well as by the descendants of Min-speaking colonists on the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan and by the assimilated natives of Chaoshan, parts of Zhongshan, three counties in southern Wenzhou, the Zhoushan archipelago, Taiwan, Singapore, and scattered in pockets or sporadically across Hong Kong, Macau, and several countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei. The name is derived from the Min River in Fujian, which is also the abbreviated name of Fujian Province. Min varieties are not mutually intelligible with one another nor with any other variety of Chinese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Min</span> Branch of the Min Chinese languages

Southern Min, Minnan or Banlam, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian, most of Taiwan, Eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and Southern Zhejiang. Southern Min dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Southern and Central Vietnam, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. Minnan is the most widely-spoken branch of Min, with approximately 48 million speakers as of 2017–2018.

Sino-Japanese vocabulary, also known as kango, is that subset of Japanese vocabulary that originated in Chinese or was created from elements borrowed from Chinese. Some grammatical structures and sentence patterns can also be identified as Sino-Japanese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penang Hokkien</span> Dialect of Hokkien spoken in parts of Malaysia

Penang Hokkien is a local variant of Hokkien spoken in Penang, Malaysia. It is spoken natively by 63.9% of Penang's Chinese community, and also by some Penangite Indians and Penangite Malays.

<i>Pe̍h-ōe-jī</i> Romanization system of Southern Min Chinese languages

Pe̍h-ōe-jī, sometimes known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philippine Hokkien</span> Dialect of Hokkien spoken in the Philippines

Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch of the Sinitic family, primarily spoken vernacularly by Chinese Filipinos in the Philippines, where it serves as the local Chinese lingua franca, primarily spoken as an oral language, within the overseas Chinese community in the Philippines and acts as the heritage language of a majority of Chinese Filipinos. The use of Hokkien in the Philippines is influenced by Philippine Spanish, Filipino (Tagalog) and Philippine English. As a lingua franca of the overseas Chinese community in the Philippines, the minority of Cantonese-/Taishanese-descended Chinese Filipinos also uses Philippine Hokkien for business purposes due to its status as "the Chinoy business language" [sic].

This article describes the grammar of the Khmer (Cambodian) language, focusing on the standard dialect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amoy dialect</span> Dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen

The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect, also known as Amoynese, Amoy Hokkien, Xiamenese or Xiamen Hokkien, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the southern part of Fujian province. Currently, it is one of the most widely researched and studied varieties of Southern Min. It has historically come to be one of the more standardized varieties.

Singaporean Hokkien is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu. It bears similarities with the Amoy spoken in Amoy, now better known as Xiamen, as well as Taiwanese Hokkien which is spoken in Taiwan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hokkien</span> Sinitic language spoken in East Asia

Hokkien is a variety of Chinese. It is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang, from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tâi-uân Lô-má-jī Phing-im Hong-àn</span> Transcription system

The official romanization system for Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwan is locally referred to as Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí Lô-má-jī Phing-im Hong-àn or Taiwan Minnanyu Luomazi Pinyin Fang'an, often shortened to Tâi-lô. It is derived from Pe̍h-ōe-jī and since 2006 has been one of the phonetic notation systems officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education. The system is used in the MoE's Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan. It is nearly identical to Pe̍h-ōe-jī, apart from: using ts tsh instead of ch chh, using u instead of o in vowel combinations such as oa and oe, using i instead of e in eng and ek, using oo instead of , and using nn instead of .

Differing literary and colloquial readings for certain Chinese characters are a common feature of many Chinese varieties, and the reading distinctions for these linguistic doublets often typify a dialect group. Literary readings are usually used in loanwords, names, literary works, and in formal settings, while colloquial/vernacular readings are usually used in everyday vernacular speech.

Hokkien, a Southern Min variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the Republic of China Ministry of Education including its Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan, but there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hokkien profanity</span>

Hokkien is one of the largest Chinese language groups worldwide. Profanity in Hokkien most commonly involves sexual references and scorn of the object's ancestors, especially their mother. The mentioning of sexual organs is frequently used in Hokkien profanity.

Etymology of <i>tea</i> History and origins of the word "tea"

The etymology of the various words for tea reflects the history of transmission of tea drinking culture and trade from China to countries around the world. Nearly all of the words for tea worldwide fall into three broad groups: te, cha and chai, present in English as tea, cha or char, and chai. The earliest of the three to enter English is cha, which came in the 1590s via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and picked up the Cantonese pronunciation of the word. The more common tea form arrived in the 17th century via the Dutch, who acquired it either indirectly from the Malay teh, or directly from the pronunciation in Min Chinese. The third form chai originated from a northern Chinese pronunciation of cha, which travelled overland to Central Asia and Persia where it picked up a Persian ending yi, and entered English via Hindustani in the 20th century.

The Hokkien language uses a broad array of honorific suffixes or prefixes for addressing or referring to people. Most are suffixes. Honorifics are often non-gender-neutral; some imply a feminine context while others imply a masculine one, and still others imply both.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hokkien culture</span> Culture of China

Minnan culture or Hokkien/Hoklo culture, also considered as the Mainstream Southern Min Culture, refers to the culture of the Hoklo people, a group of Han Chinese people who have historically been the dominant demographic in the province of Fujian in Southern China, Taiwan, and certain overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Southern Thailand, Cambodia, Southern Vietnam, etc.

References

  1. 閩南語詞彙. Archived from the original on 2016-03-14.