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I have stumbled upon Zhang Shaolin's Hoi-nam kai-fan. I asked three translation questions about it: 1, 2 and 3. THere you find the lyrics and a link to a video, and my translation attempt. This question is to ask about the strange pronunciations that are present in some points of the song. Precisely:

  1. 来 should be pronounced loi, and is sometimes pronounced lei;
  2. 两 should be pronounced liong according to my reference, but here it is pronounced lioeng, with the same sound as Cantonese loeng (Jyutping being the used romanisation scheme, without tone), save for the extra i;
  3. 歌 should be pronounced ko, and is pronounced kuo once and fo (or rather with a sound like English hard th where I wrote f) shortly after;
  4. 张惠妹 sounds like it's pronounced the mandarin way (Hakka sounds Cong Fui-moi);
  5. 你, in its last occurrence in the last repetition of part three, sounds like it's actually a 系.

Can someone give reasons for these facts? Is the final 你 a typo perhaps? And also, can someone provide me with tone marks (or tone numbers, and naturally an explanation of the contours) for the whole lyrics?

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MickG
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  • Hakka has four (quite) different major variants spoken by four groups of people. I suppose that the song is sung by one group and your dictionary uses another variant as standard. – user58955 Sep 20 '14 at 20:42
  • @user58955 my dictionary gives 5 different pronunciations and none of them matches that which I hear. Some guys on Facebook who speak a variety of Hakka give the same as the dictionary in these contexts. So I guess your guess does not apply :). Nice try :). – MickG Sep 20 '14 at 22:01
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    The singer is from Malaysia, where people speak mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka. It is possible that those dialects interfere each other so it is not surprising at all if his Hakka shows some Cantonese traits (such as your point 1 and 2). As to point 4, it is also common in Malaysia and Singapore, even in their daily speeches -- they pronounce certain words in a different dialect -- this is also a common phenomenon in mainland's Min dialect region and Taiwan (but rare in Cantonese-speaking regions). – user58955 Sep 20 '14 at 22:42
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    @user58955 now that explains points 2 and 4. However, point 1 is still not dealt with, since AFAIK 来 is lai in Mandarin, loi in Cantonese, lai in Hokkien and Teochew and loi in Hakka. So lei is still not justified. Could it be me mishearing? What about 3 and 5? – MickG Sep 21 '14 at 08:23
  • I listened to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VyazYfmmaY and didn't hear your point 1 and 3. As to point 5, what I heard was something like [he] and I don't really have an explanation. It might be a singing mistake. – user58955 Sep 21 '14 at 11:50
  • @user58955 that's strange. I just listened to the linked video and re-heard both points. Maybe point 3 is a singing mistake. But point 1 is the same mistake made by all the people singing with Zhang Shaolin and twice the number of repetitions… seems too unlikely. It is always in 来帮衬 that point 1 is heard. Maybe an expression? As for point 5, maybe there is a change in the lyrics which is not recorded in the subs, since he is if in Hakka (more precisely he-kong). – MickG Sep 21 '14 at 12:06
  • Could you specify the time points at which you hear point 1 and 3? – user58955 Sep 21 '14 at 12:24
  • I can specify the point in the lyrics, then you can follow the subs and find the time points @user58955. Point 3 is in 张惠妹称霸晒歌坛, at 歌坛 precisely, whereas point 1 is at 明星或歌星日日来帮衬, at 来帮衬 precisely, the first time it occurs and (I guess, from memory, but haven't verified it recently) every time 来帮衬 occurs. – MickG Sep 21 '14 at 12:54
  • As to point 3, to my ears all occurrences of 歌坛 sound okay, I didn't notice kuo or fo. As to point 1, they all sound loi as well, though the openness of o is not stable, sometimes closer to IPA [o] and sometimes closer to [ɔ]. I don't know whether [o] and [ɔ] are contrasted in Hakka or not. They seem not. – user58955 Sep 21 '14 at 18:10
  • @user58955 let's just drop this. ANyway my dad says he hears "le porta" ([le 'pɔrta]) where there is 来帮衬 and "pota" (['pota]) where there is 歌坛, so we are two who hear the wrong sounds. And "lo porta" makes sense too, so we can't say he is subconsciously trying to make sense of things and consequently altering the vowel sound which is what we are concerned with. In fact, this argument may apply to you more than to him. ANyway, as I said, let's just drop this: it isn't getting anywhere. – MickG Sep 21 '14 at 20:06
  • I hear lei too for 來. Kinda strange. – dda Sep 25 '14 at 13:32
  • @user58955 I forgot to report 或 pronounced "wak" instead of "fed", but I'm guessing that this falls into the point 2-4 category where dialects interfere, since Cantonese pronounces it waak6. – MickG Sep 25 '14 at 13:48
  • @dda good to see I'm not the only one hearing lei :). What about the "?o" for 歌, where ? is used to represent a sound somewhere between /f/ and /θ/? – MickG Sep 25 '14 at 13:50
  • Not sure. I'll put the mp3 through the Praat application (www.praat.org) to see if I can extract sonograms of the syllables in question. – dda Sep 30 '14 at 09:56
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    The entire 來帮衬 is in Cantonese. The phrase 帮衬 also exists in Hakka, but is pronounced "bong cin", not "bong chan". This seems to be the only Cantonese used in the whole song; I suspect it's a combination of two reasons: 1. Malaysian stars are predominantly Cantonese speaking, and thus he uses Cantonese when referring to them, just like he pronounces 张惠妹 in Mandarin; 2. pronouncing 衬 as "chan" matches the common end-of-sentence rhyme of those stanzas – Yang May 27 '15 at 09:23

1 Answers1

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I had a second (tenth?) listen, and extracted the sound to an mp3. Then I put this through Praat. I noticed something interesting:

This is the first occurrence of 來, around 72 seconds in:

齐家吃开晓来称赞

enter image description here

This is the second occurrence of 來, around 121 seconds in:

明星或歌星日日来帮衬

lei

The first one is definitely [lɔi], whereas the second one is definitely [lei], and the sonogram confirms it. The second image, with the dense formation in the middle, trailing off into a lighter line is an [ei].

In this case it could be an influence from Cantonese -- Zhang is from Selangor -- where 嚟 is often pronounced lei.

Same around 2mn14 where 来 in 按好吃讲只只来帮衬 is [lei]. So it seems Zhang alternates freely loi and lei.

As for 歌 I had a look with Praat at only the first one (最近做歌星讲好难) -- it's getting late here :-) -- but this one is go1. I confirmed it by listening to it isolately, and looking at its sonogram -- it has the same profile as 近 and 讲). But listening to the full sentence it comes out a little weird, as if it were spirantized.

I'll have a deeper look tomorrow.

ADDENDUM 1

  • 两 should be pronounced liong according to my reference, but here it is pronounced lioeng --> Seems like it indeed As you say, probable influence of Canto.
  • 张惠妹 sounds like it's pronounced the mandarin way --> Yup.
  • 你, in its last occurrence in the last repetition of part three, sounds like it's actually a 系.

That'd be at 4:41 thereabouts.

你 at 281 secs

If you compare this sonogram with the second one, [lei], you see it's kind of similar -- the vowel is basically the same, except it doesn't weaken into [-i]. It's [e:].

Compare this with the 你 at 4:13:

你 at 253 secs

No [e:] here. That's a nice [i:], quite long too. That's quite expected as 你 is ngi2.

As for the initial. In the suspicious 你, look at the initial in the sonogram, and compare it with the sonograms of [loi] and [lei], especially the latter. You have very similar patterns, albeit weaker for 你. I believe Zhang kind of reverted to Cantonese [lei]. The [l-] is there but devoiced (the lower dark line at the beginning of [lei] is barely there). I believe it's a voiceless [l], that can be heard as a [h].

ADDENDUM 2

Regarding Hakka tones, I used Dr Lau's PinFaa data to build a dictionary, which I added into my own little online tool. The tone contours are from [this page]:

Hakka tone contours

dda
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  • I guess this answers "lei" and, partly, "go". COuld you add the rest of the things I noticed, maybe just copying the comments? Then I'll accept your answer. And BTW I am guessing 嚟 is a Cantonese equivalent of 来. Is that right? – MickG Sep 30 '14 at 17:54
  • Yes, sorry, 嚟 [lai4 lei4] is the Cantonese equivalent of 來. – dda Oct 01 '14 at 02:49