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Post by LJ on Jul 30, 2022 17:11:42 GMT -5
Thanks LJeung. Being Chinese illiterate, that really helps. Kristin, private message me with your contact. I have asked Ed Joe for permission to share the jiapu he has from the Zhou village in Hoiping. Based on LJeung's character 炳 there are several hits. However, you will need to do much more sleuthing in your family archives to find more Chinese characters, dates, names of grand Uncles in Chinese, etc, to narrow down a possible lineage. Chinese males have many many names. Look for artifacts, back of pictures for more clues. Of course, interview your family members. ~doug My pleasure, doug. I'm pretty Chinese illiterate myself. I did take almost three years of Cantonese and one semester of Mandarin though, but I was always at the first-grade or college freshman level. I just know enough about Chinese characters to identify them by radical (the semantic part of a character), stroke type, stroke count, and sometimes phonetic part. Cheers! LJeung
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Post by LJ on Jul 30, 2022 18:42:27 GMT -5
Hi all, My parents are not from Hoiping, but a number of cousins on both sides of the family are. There's a tendency in their dialect for what we Cantonese/Toishanese speakers would normally pronounce as "p-" as a leading consonant to become a "h-". Additionally, in some words ending with a "-ng" sound, they will shorten it to a "-n" sound. For example, some Hoipingese will call their county "Hoihin" in their native tongue as opposed to "Hoiping" in Cantonese pronunciation. For these reasons and considering what other members have proposed already, it seems probable that the village is 平山, Ping Shan (in Cantonese) or Hin San (in Hoipingese). Are there any Chinese-speaking relatives in the family who could confirm this? -Jason Hi Jason, Thanks for pointing out the tendencies of Hoipingese. My paternal grandparents, who were from Hoiping, called my maternal grandmother (who in turn was from Santa Clara County, CA), A Hu, rather than the Cantonese/Toishanese, A Po (亞婆). Incidentally, some of my DNA matches and I may have a most recent common paternal ancestor who was a Hom / Tam (譚) from a village called Song Gow Chu Long Ling in Hoiping, perhaps, in Sui Hou, Hoiping. At the Village DB, we haven't been able to find this village name and my guess at the pinyin equivalent. When seeing Tam elders next time, my DNA matches will ask them to write out the village name in Chinese characters. However, I was wondering if you can guess at the Chinese characters, the Cantonese romanization, or pinyin for this village name. Cheers! LJeung
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Post by Doug 周 on Jul 31, 2022 9:17:28 GMT -5
....I just know enough about Chinese characters to identify them by radical (the semantic part of a character), stroke type, stroke count..... Similar experience. I am without ANY Chinese language skills. However, using apps/programs allowing one to write out the strokes of a character with a mouse/finger, my deceased American born mother and conversational Cantonese wife were/are able to use what they knew about stroke order to be much more successful than I.
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Post by jasonwu on Aug 4, 2022 12:40:09 GMT -5
Hi Jason, Thanks for pointing out the tendencies of Hoipingese. My paternal grandparents, who were from Hoiping, called my maternal grandmother (who in turn was from Santa Clara County, CA), A Hu, rather than the Cantonese/Toishanese, A Po (亞婆). Incidentally, some of my DNA matches and I may have a most recent common paternal ancestor who was a Hom / Tam (譚) from a village called Song Gow Chu Long Ling in Hoiping, perhaps, in Sui Hou, Hoiping. At the Village DB, we haven't been able to find this village name and my guess at the pinyin equivalent. When seeing Tam elders next time, my DNA matches will ask them to write out the village name in Chinese characters. However, I was wondering if you can guess at the Chinese characters, the Cantonese romanization, or pinyin for this village name. Cheers! LJeung
Hi LJeung,
Thanks for your confirmation - my aunt's husband who was born in Chak Ham Town, Hoiping refers to my maternal grandmother as ah hoo, even though the rest of the family says ah puo, just as you've described.
In the immediate vicinity of Sui Hou Town, Hoiping, a former township called 紅花鄉 Hung Fa Heung is documented to have had 譚 Hom/Tam villages; however, I don't quite spot any matches to the romanized village name which you've provided. You can take a look here at the Village Database page: villagedb.friendsofroots.org/display.cgi/heung/283.
Otherwise, if we look a bit further, there are many more 譚 Hom/Tam villages in the vicinity of 長沙埠 Cheung Sar Harbour Town, upstream but a ways away from Sui Hou. There are some similarities to your provided village name, but still none are direct matches:
-Jason
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