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Post by Ah Gin on Oct 18, 2010 22:48:24 GMT -5
Phillip, On the topic of Hoishanwa and related, thought I will reflect and recall: As a young grasshopper, I grew up in the Great City of Klang, where there biggest thing was the Bak Kut Teh (which I still have not tried seriously) or Hokien Mee (which I consume at every opportunity). ;D Klang was and probably still is a Hokien town. In those days, even within the Cantonese community we simply referred to ourselves as "Say Yup Yan" or at best, "Toishan Ah Pak". It was not until my teen years when I had the opportunity to visit THE Toishan Association at KL. I am not sure where it was located -- perhaps somewhere at Ampang Road? Perhaps I was infected with the Toishan Heritage bug then -- and the wish to discover more about my ancestral home started there. At home, my parents spoke to us in Hoishanwa and we coped well. But in a town of Hokiennese, and with school friends from all races, trying to retain ones Hoisanwa was very difficult indeed. It was not until I got to San Francisco that I reconnected with my Hoisanwah roots again, as my friends and family members are Trans Generational folks who spoke good Hoishanwa and of course perfect American English ;D -- that's not surprising, as there are all ABCs or TG who had lived in CA for many many years. Regards, Ah Gin
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Post by chak on Oct 19, 2010 8:18:04 GMT -5
Re: www.youmade.com/shufa/index.aspThat is such a great link. Does it work in reverse? Reason I ask is because - I have my youngest sister's chop now. I scanned it in and saved it as a bitmap which I loaded into the COCR2 program which gave me 9 different character possibilities. I put all of them into the shufa link but none of the results matched the chop. Sister's name...the way we remember it...sounded like joon gee (with oo sound like in "hood") PS I am amazed that so many of you speak so many different languages - including this "ancient" one. "It's all Chinese to me!" PPS The only other language I speak, besides Chinese, is sign language. Anyone know anything about Chinese sign language? Attachments:
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Post by philiptancl on Oct 19, 2010 9:57:25 GMT -5
Hi Carol,
This time I am more confident even when having to stick my neck out without assistance from my Chinese literate friends but with the tool referred by laohuaqiao and using nciku.com. I was lucky enough to get both characters correct upon the first try for both. Besides the surname which you already knew, the two characters are 仲ç ; Zhong Zhu in pinyin.
I am hopeless in languages even in any of the various Chinese dialects here. However a friend of mine is pretty good. On a stopover in Hong Kong many years ago, we were looking at some dried marine stuff in one of the many Chinese shop on a street in there. He engaged with a young shopkeeper in bargaining over some stuff in Cantonese. On the side we were conversing in Fujian dialect, Malay as well as English; switching from one to another besides the main conversation going on between my friend and the shopkeeper in Cantonese. The shopkeeper was quite amazed that my friend could speak so many languages and proceeded to test in the Hakka language. My friend responded back in Hakka as well. Then the shopkeeper then switch over to Mandarin and my friend shot back with even better spoken Mandarin. The shopkeeper got so fed-up that he said he would test my friend with another dialect which he was very sure my friend would not understand. He proceeded to speak with my friend in the Hainan dialect. To his great surprise my friend replied back in perfect Hainan dialect; not knowing my friend ancestors are from Hainan Island!
Philip
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Post by chak on Oct 19, 2010 16:54:54 GMT -5
My sisters and I thank you for the help. I enjoyed the story about your friend and the shopkeeper. Perhaps you are hopeless in language, compared to him, but you are way up there in my book. We, in my hometown here, just speak English - and maybe grade school French - or Spanish. Thanks again, Philip!
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Post by lachinatown on Mar 28, 2011 12:30:35 GMT -5
Interesting. There is a 常用汉å—钢笔五体å—å…¸, Chinese Characters dictionary in five styles, published by Shanghai University Press.
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Post by tyuti1668 on Mar 28, 2011 17:03:29 GMT -5
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