66 replies to this topic

[Peter S]

Jiangmen is a prefecture-level city ("Capital" of Sze Yap). Heshan and Xinhui were actually known as "Xinhui County" but later separated into 2 counties. I've not heard of people saying "Ng Yap".

Sze Yap 4 counties = Taishan, Enping, Kaiping and Xinhui (consist of Xinhui and Heshan).

Several years ago, PRC included Si Yi (Sze Yap) into the Jiangmen District: so, now it is "Ng Yap"? I know a nice lady from Jiangmen city - she speaks Cantonese.

Guangdong ethnic groupings are complex. But I don't think that it is useful to use words like "Yue", or even "Nan-Yue". These are just generic words - similar to "Barbarian" and "Southern Barbarian" - which can be used to mean one of the many southern native groups or all the southern native groups combined.

[Andy Lau]

Here is a Taishanese song i found on the net, not the best song but better than nothing lol:
http://www.zuoqu.net...ing.asp?id=1201

Here are the lyrics to the song:

歌词：
新民歌《返家乡》
（台山话）

当年离乡背井，漂泊到外洋
苦况有谁体谅，全凭意志强

今日重返家乡，感受不一样
童年的朋友都变了样，见到了亲人我讲不出声 (note: 不出声 = M'chut siang = don'T say word)

家乡的饭菜特别香
家乡的水啊特别甜
家乡的土地我日思夜想
家乡的的亲人对我特别情长

侨乡人啊,心系家乡
侨乡人啊,自立自强

I have heard of Taishanese Muk yu = Taishanese folk song that use to be sung by the older Taishanese people, but i have never heard of it.. does anyone know where i can buy or listen to Taishanese Muk Yu? My great grandmother knew how to sing it, but i was just a baby before she died =(

I wonder out of all the words hakka have similarities with taishanese...

Edited by Andy Lau, 29 July 2007 - 06:05 PM.

[Monkey-King]

^I'd be kinda skeptical about Western sources and authors on Chinese history. A lot of them have agendas. Some of them even try to claim that Tang Dynasty founders were not ethnically Chinese, when it was clear they had Chinese patrilineal descent. They want to "de-Sinicize" Chinese history as much as possible and make us look effeminated. Be careful.

You're joking right?

I think you either need to broaden your reading horizons or simply stop feeling so persecuted and insecure.
There are plenty of western/non Chinese scholars who have contributed to research on Chinese and Ancient Chinese history. There are many that don't have the perverse agenda you're on about.
Going by your theory only Chinese people could teach Chinese history... and then by logical extension... only European people could teach European history... etc. etc. ad nauseam.

Obviously that isn't the case in reality.

[Andy Lau]

For those who don't know much about Taishan (台山), here is a informative video(in Putunghua) that talks about this city, which is the hometown of over 1.3 million overseas chinese (this does not include the overseas chinese who have origins from neighbouring Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui that speaks the same dialect) who mostly live in the US(majority), Canada, and Hong Kong. This was the Cantoense dialect (the business language) mostly spoken during the 1800 up to 1970s in all of North American chinatowns. Also in the 1950s (post-1949 communist take-over of mainland china) Taishanese or Si Yi People made up about almost 35% of Hong Kong's population, which is why there are many hkongers of Taishanese ancestry like Tony Leung Chiu Wai(梁朝偉), Danny Chan(陳百強), all the members of the very popular hk band Beyond, Karl Mak (麥嘉), Cheung Man Kwong (張文光) - member of Hong Kong Democratic Party and the chairman of Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union and so on... Enjoy http://www.tudou.com...ew/DNBE7SP8SEM/

By the way, does anyone know where this tv station and program is from? i assumed from the mainland, but when i saw Traditional Chinese characters on the screen, then i was like maybe it's from Taiwan?

Sources: http://zh.wikipedia....gory:å%...±±äºº

Edited by Andy Lau, 18 November 2007 - 11:09 PM.

[Andy Lau]

One prominent figure in Mainland China would be 雷洁琼 but the thing is i can't read much chinese >.< Can someone explain who she is from this site (i am serious) >.< http://zh.wikipedia..../wiki/é›·æ´�ç�¼

Found some pictures of her using google image (found a picture of her with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao)...



Found a nice video:

Edited by Andy Lau, 19 November 2007 - 03:52 AM.

[orangesunlight]

i wonder how Jiangmen dialect sounds like? Is Jiangmen city part of Sze Yap(SiYi) group of dialects or since recently Heshan was included it's now called Ng Yap(WuYi)?

Hello, my family is from Heshan and I grew up in both Heshan and Jiangmen. Most people probably don't know this but the people in Heshan actually have their own dialect, whereas in Jiangmen, pretty much everyone I grew up with spoke Cantonese. Then again, I'm speaking entirely from what I know and am very interested to find out more about Heshan, thus this is how I ended up here in this forum. My family speaks "hokshan wa" and I guess it's somewhat similar to toishan wa but with quite a few differences. Like I know from my toishanese friends, one is 'yeet' (right?) but in hokshan wa, one is 'yot' which is almost like 'yut' in cantonese, in a way hokshan wa is very similar to cantonese.

[qrasy]

My family speaks "hokshan wa" and I guess it's somewhat similar to toishan wa but with quite a few differences. Like I know from my toishanese friends, one is 'yeet' (right?) but in hokshan wa, one is 'yot' which is almost like 'yut' in cantonese, in a way hokshan wa is very similar to cantonese.

Actually, the difference between many Siyi dialects are quite big (and if I'm not wrong it can deter communications), though they might be closer to each other than to other forms of Chinese.
Only Taishanese doesn't seem to change the "small vowel" quality of the word one (一) into "-at" or other sounds with an "open vowel", which make it most different among its neithbors.