Minnan phrasebook pronunciation · Pronunciation in Minnan phrasebook
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Pronunciation in Minnan phrasebook
Pronunciation in Minnan phrasebook
Like all other Chinese languages and their dialects, Minnan uses Chinese characters but employs its own 'unique' pronunciation. However, it should be noted that similar to Japanese kanji, most characters have two or more pronunciations in Minnan, which means that many characters would be pronounced differently depending on context, even if their Mandarin pronunciation remains the same in both instances.
This is partly due to the fact that, because standard written Chinese is based on Mandarin, many words in Minnan are written with characters of the same meaning in standard written Chinese.
For example, the words ài and beh both roughly mean 'want', so they are usually written with the character 要 (although they are also written with 愛 and 欲 respectively). Consequently, the pronouncation of the character 要 can change between ài, beh and iàu depending on context.
The ordinary word for person, lâng, is usually written with the character 人, which also has the reading jı̂n or lîn. The character 生 is is pronounced seⁿ or siⁿ as a verb used alone, but the word 人生 is pronounced lı̂n-seng.
Also, note how the words m̄ (is not, does not) and bē/bōe (cannot) are all often written with 不, so while 不要 might be read as m̄-ài or m̄-beh, 不能/不可 can be read as bē-sái or bōe-sái.
For refering to oneself, 我 góa is used in more informal context while 阮 gún is more formal and 恁爸 lı́n-pē is very derogatory but used very commonly. (No cognates exist in Mandarin or Cantonese although phrases with the same meaning do.) Similar to Malay, there are two equivalents of the English word "we", with lan-nang including the listener in the group, and goa-nang used to exclude the listener from the group.
Pronunciation varies from region to region (e.g. 你 (you) can be either lı́ and lú). This can make comprehension difficult sometimes even between 'native' speakers from different regions. It should also be kept in mind that most speakers of the dialect often mix Mandarin phrases into their speech due to the influence of Standard Mandarin.
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