[In the preceding stories about the Hakkas, the writer’s thesis is based partly on facts, and partly on his interpretation of, or deductions from facts.

In the following story about certain Chinese words, the tool or method he uses is the same : i.e., first, a look at the structure and meaning and sound of certain Chinese words, and then, once having properly distilled and digested these, the mind probes by asking - what could these words really tell us about their meaning or connection in context?

Sometimes the connection seems simple or obvious; sometimes not. Where someone more intrepid would hesitate, this writer takes a bold plunge and a liberal dose of liberty to interpret and deduce --- and so here they are, facts or fancies, as you please, and for whatever it is worth. Now you, too, are at liberty to accept, or fully reject, his findings! ]

Anyone who knows some rudimentary Chinese knows that Chinese words are basically:

1. a pictogram - i.e. the word stands for (and originally looks exactly like ) a picture of something, such as a bird, a man, a moon, a tree, a mountain, etc ;or

2. an ideogram - i.e. the word stands for an idea; the representation is derived from two or more pictograms or words or symbols, put together to express an idea.

Other words are formed to convey, say, a sound, by adding to an existing word or a root-word, an affix symbol ‘o ’ (now written as a square o) to mean ‘ it bears, or is the sound of such and such (animal, object or word) ’. And so on, with many other ingenious inventive varieties, which we need not fully explain here.

Let us, however, explain with some illustrations.

A pictogram.

ii) bird; 鸟 vii) door 门

iii) moon; 月 viii) wood 木

iv) man; 人 ix) up and down 上。下

v) day; 日 x) field 田

i) ‘ min ’ ( 鸣 ) ---.. sound from the mouth of a bird;

viii) ‘ chong ’ ( 从 ) *--- from; ‘ man following another ’; following from this.

ix ) ‘choong ’ ( 众 ) *--- a large gathering of men.

x) ‘ ker ’ ( 个 ) *--- unit value of ‘one ’, such as one man or one object.

* new word coined in the 20^th century.

With this basic concept or principle of Chinese word construction, let us now analyse some Chinese words to see whether we could see beyond the surface meanings - that is to say , whether they point to an undisclosed clue to some story about its original use and meaning that somehow has been lost or forgotten in the dust and mist of early Chinese history.

First, let us start with three Chinese words that denote the idea of kingship:-

What is the possible origin of these three words and what makes their meaning different?

To begin with, all three words ‘ wang ’, ‘ hwang ’ and ‘ huang ’ sound the same, more or less; and they mean the same, more or less. Yet, there must be some distinctive difference for each to be on its own.

I believe this is how the words have developed:

The yellow earth has been a cradle of Chinese civilisation since at least 5000 years ago.

Contributing to the yellow condition of this Chinese landscape is the erosion of land along the Yellow River, because of mismanagement of China ’s forests and land use around this great river, which flows through China ’s northern plains.

To say it simply denotes the idea of ‘ emperor ’, albeit the emperor of a much larger empire than an extended multiple kingdom, is bland and simply unimaginative! More likely, a megalomaniac king was dissatisfied with the existing words that denote kingship, dismissing them as lessor fellows or mere pretenders of the Chinese heavenly throne! So the order went out to the official scribe, ‘ Find me a more befitting word, or else! ’

What can this juxtaposition of words mean? Why is the word ‘ white ’ atop the word ‘ king ’?

Now, fortunately for us Malaysians, we are thoroughly familiar with the reign of a certain ‘ white rajah ’ over the state of Sarawak in recent history ………and so with this as a pointer, it should not be too difficult for us to imagine a ‘ white rajah ’ for China too!

And why not?

When we study the early history of China ( see my ‘ Story of the Hakkas ’) we are familiar with the fusion of tribes, from the steppe-land of Central Asia who were and are Caucasian or ‘ white ’, with the Chinese people of the Central Plain, at first through peaceful trade and border settlement, and later through invasions and wars.

We have definite history of foreign nomadic tribal chiefs, kings or ‘ khans ’( e.g. Ghengis Khan, Kublai Khan, the Manchus, etc) in relatively recent history who had defeated once mighty old China , but, by and large, these were fully ‘Mongolian ’ or ‘Mongoloid ’ people. As for half ‘white ’,or even wholly and fully ‘white ’ becoming masters of China - recorded history is not exactly precise or clear on this ( at least not for me ).

Such ‘ white ’ people are discernible today in China’s north-west borders - and why should one assume their ancestors were recent arrivals, and have nothing to do with ancient people of China? Could they not have arrived earlier – even pre-Han period, followed by more arrival all the way up to AD 1200, and continually even after, on the backs of camels, horses and mules from Central Asia?

Today, these nomadic people represent a polyglot of full and half whites, as multi-tribes of various nationalities, known variously as Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, etc, peoples who are distinctly different from the Chinese in complexion and origin, excepting some northern Chinese that bear their resemblance.

It is therefore my assertion that, some time in the early history of China, a ‘ white king’ had ascended the Chinese throne; and in order to set him apart from the defeated Chinese, he ordered the creation of a new word that would more befittingly describe him, even though he or his heirs were later to become absorbed by, assimilated and totally sinicized as ‘Han’.

Two words stand out most distinctly from this- the first was ‘ huang ’, which has been adequately covered above, and the second is the word ‘ mou ’.

Now if one were to look at the constituent parts of the word ‘ mou ’, the following will emerge:-

ii)2^nd component, right-hand side :

Now venturing further, we get expressions like: a top hat; a red hat; a yellow hat; a bad hat; or a green hat, the last , in Chinese, means a cuckold husband.

Then we also have a variety of hats and headgear to denote rank and status:-

• the emperor, wearing a protruding tall hat with pearl or diamond studded tassels ;

• the eunuch with his own brand of gear;

• the scholar with mickey-mouse ears sticking out;

• the chamberlain with one of his own;

• and so on and so forth..

And the idea of hat-wearing crosses over the national borders to other countries, such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and even Malaya (Malaysia) - it was borrowed , transformed and adapted to suit indigenous tastes, style and variety of colour or material preferences.

But what could be the original purpose of wearing a hat in China?

Is it primarily to protect the eyes?

YES.

But against what? The sun or the wind?

Sandstorm!

How would one know?

Well, based on the Chinese word ‘ mou’, the give-away clue is the word cloth, which is useless against the rain, and not much use against the sun unless it is many tiered or layered, as the wearing of turbans! Or the piece of cloth has been skilfully treated, starched, shaped and reinforced with cork, board or any similar hard underlay.

Note also that the purpose of its use is explained explicitly in the composition of the word itself—‘ a cloth to cover the eyes ’.

Next question: which province of China needs this type of hat?

Based on a basic understanding of China’s geography, we may safely infer that it is the Province of Shaanxi in north-west China ,which borders to-day’s Sinkiang Province, where sandstorms are not only frequent but a definite nuisance. So some quick fix shield against such sand and windstorms from the Gobi Deserts was needed to provide welcomed relief.

Today, the same sandstorm continues to be a blight on wide areas of northern China, irritating even the people living in faraway Beijing!

Next question, who were the first to invent its use - is it the turban people of the steppe-land, or the Chinese people in Shaanxi, the cradle of Chinese civilisation? Since nobody could know for sure, to avoid any intense debate on this, let me say again that it is an open question, and more research is necessary to settle the issue. But if one takes the view that necessity is the mother of invention, then one could conclude that the nomadic steppe-land people would most likely take this honour!

In the light of the foregoing, we can now summarise our findings as follows:

• the Chinese language evolves as a northern people’s language.

• its use is determined by northerners and so some of its words (pictogram and ideogram) were more appropriate for objects or conditions in the north..

• the cloth headgear or cover, such as a turban , is presumed to have been invented for conditions in, and worn by people from, the sandstorm stricken north;

• the straw hat is more likely to be a southern invention and worn by people in the south, where rainfall is more abundant;

• the straw hat is either an invention later than the cloth hat, or its use is not shared by northerners ; so there was no apt word for it in the language.

In Mandarin, these three Chinese words sound the same, more or less, with the second ‘Yeh’ departing slightly off from the other two.

On the surface, each word has a meaning of its own, and appears to be unrelated to each other, because each word looks so different from the other.

But when we probe deeper, there appear other interesting possibilities and interpretations.

• The word used for its meaning .

This word may be translated to mean’ limit’ or ‘extremity’; further or farther; exceeding or extending a reach- the idea of having more and more of something; or the concept of enlargement.

This use is appropriate in the following context:

Now, we all know that geographically, Vietnam lies to or beyond the southern extremity of China. Thus the term in Chinese is a geographical description of reality, and so is fittingly appropriate.

• The word used for designation of an ancient tribe (or tribes) in the south.

Why ?

A mere coincidence because of the limited choice of mono-syllabic sounds to express Chinese words? Or was there a hidden meaning and usage not widely known?

This might soon become obvious.- see below.

This word means ‘leaf or leaves’.

I suggest that this word was probably coined as a polite word to refer to the collective natives of the southern dialect group, the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Cantonese, who were known as the ‘Hundred Yeh’ of yesteryears, living in comparatively more forested areas of Southern China, that is, the ‘forests = yeh’ of the ‘extreme = yeh’ yonder South..

The need to observe political sensitivity means that the scholarly and educated Chinese officials took care not to touch on sensitive political issues with racial overtone, so they resorted to word subterfuge, such as creating new words to mean the same thing, to express their thoughts .

Now the case for bringing up for discussion this word ‘ Wu ’ is not the story of its origin, interesting though it is, but the way different Chinese dialect groups pronounce this word , and the letter 5.

In Mandarin wu wu sound A

In Cantonese mg mg sound B

In Hakka mg mg ,,

In Hokkien Goh goh sound C

Note:-

i)The consistent pattern of pronunciation of these two words by the above 4 dialect groups;

ii)There are 3 sound patterns: A; B; and C. These are 3 very different sounds, one from the other.

iii)The Cantonese and the Hakkas share the same vocalisation for these two words.

While mulling over what to make of the above findings, this writer remembers his visit in 1998 to Soochow ,(near Shanghai), where he was brought to an old fort, on which stood many flagpoles, and hoisted on top of these poles were flags carrying the emblem of a dragon’s foot ( or claws).

With these scattered or incomplete data, could or should one make any interpretation about them? Nevertheless, at the risk of being labelled reckless or foolhardy, I would like to venture with the following guesses:-

a)The fact that this was the old Wu Kingdom means there would be many people from this region bearing the surname Wu.

b)Wu’s ‘national’ emblem, the dragon foot , should exhibit 5 claws, and not 4 or any other number, to account for the same pronunciation for ‘ wu ’ as for the numeral

5 ( its ‘national’ symbol?), and this we have noted to be the case in at least 4 dialects as shown above. There could well be the same consistent pattern of pronunciation for these two words for other major Chinese dialects - indeed that would be a dream finding!

c)If (b) is true ,then the Wu Kingdom must have been a long and illustrious one, leaving their marks even in the way the above two words were consistently pronounced by different dialect groups.

d)The sameness in pronunciation has to do with common identity in meaning and

even though the three words are written differently.

What follows therefore is pure speculation on my part.

a)Fact no.1: The Yellow River flows eastward.

Now we all know that China’s ancient imperial city, Xian, is in Shaanxi Province, and the Yellow River flows below and near Xian, and then winds on a long journey eastward until it reaches Shangdong Province and finally into China’s eastern seas.

From this word comes the poorly pronounced ‘China’ by the English; in French, I am told, it is‘ Chine ’, pronounced simply as ‘chin’, with the ending ‘e’ remaining silent.

c)Fact no.3 :Chinese subjects forbidden to share surname with royalty.

Why?

What can we infer from this?

This is not an absurd scenario because, as I understand and recall from previous reading of some of Li Po ‘s works, spoken Hakka is said to rhyme very close to ancient poetry or poems.

Although Li Po lived during the Tang Dynasty, and Chin hsi huang-ti just before the Han Dynasty, they are not as wide apart as say between Confucius and the last emperor of the Ching Dynasty- a gap of only 600-800 years, compared with 2500 years in the second case. Yet the thoughts ( if not the spoken word or tongue) of Confucius is very much alive in the every day lives of the Chinese in all of China and the world!

The point I wish to make is that, despite wide gaps of dynastic years, the cultural and language history of the Chinese is, by and large, uniformly intact and not so distinctly different, between one dynasty and the next, quite unlike some other known civilisations of the world where an original spoken language of earlier dynasties has either completely disappeared ( e. g. Pharaonic Egyptian ) or become quite submerged by new layers of influences to become almost totally unrecognisable between the old and the new ( e.g, the English language ).

I believe the clues are given in

i) the suffix for the ear-shaped staff; and ,

ii) the keyword ‘east.’.

Let me be bold to give this interpretation:-

i) the ‘ear’ component symbolises obedience to, or loyalty to, or leaning towards someone;

ii) the ‘east’ component points to clans or groups of people living on the eastern side of the Yellow River, or east of Xian, the imperial city.

Another important observation: if the story I concocted makes sense, I would suggest that indeed today’s spoken Hakka cannot be very different or way off from the original CHIN Dynasty language sound, about which some research has already been done, I believe, to link the Hakka language sound with the rhyming pattern for ancient poetry of early Chinese dynasties.

The fame and name of the CHIN Dynasty was no doubt held in awe by people from different parts of China, so that all Chinese dialect groups pronounce the word CHIN the same way, just like the surname LEE was made famous by several Tang Dynasty emperors, which also explains why LEE is pronounced the same way by all dialect groups in China even to-day.

Now, not only was the CHIN Dynasty remembered and revered within China, it was equally well known and revered outside China- for example, the French calls China ‘ Chine’ and pronounce it as ‘chin’, dropping the ‘e’ sound altogether; in Urdu, China and Chinese are referred to as ‘Cheen’, a long sound for ‘chin’, while the Tamil Indians refer to the Chinese as ‘Sin-nan’, ‘sin’ being their way of pronouncing ‘chin’, which is quite acceptable, as it is not too far off from the original.

The English ‘s reference to China and the Chinese is correct textually- but they err in not pronouncing it as in ‘chin’, but as in ‘chives’- they being influenced by their own English pronunciation of the syllable ‘chi’,( chime, climb, time, fine, lime etc) the result of which is that it is way off from the original Chinese sound for that word!

From this, we can infer that if it is not a crucial word or a word of ‘universal’ import, recognition and acceptance, then anything goes - there are no fixed rules on how a dialect or language group will choose to pronounce that word, that ideogram or that syllable.

Another word will make this clearer. The Chinese word or ideogram for fish is

Some of the early ‘Chinese’ tribes or peoples that lived in old feudal China were:

These were people from the north-west of China, that is, from today’s Gangsu,

The other significant tribes at that time were:

General Observations.

The following are some very general observations about a few of these tribes, based on the words used to describe them:

These wild nomadic people may be presumed to be more hairy, have thick and straight eye-brows, large eyes and have more Caucasian features in them.

If Chen Sui Bian, Matin Lee and the likes of them in dialect-bias South China have their way, this might lead to an eventual break-up of China, thereby undoing the work of China’s greatest ‘helmsman’, Chin hsi huang-ti. Then democracy (and the United States), will have its greatest glee and grin!

However, despite some stirrings of independence from politicians in previously colonised territories of China, not all Fuchienese, (nor indeed all Cantonese) feel themselves less ethno-centric Chinese, even though they are ‘southern’ Chinese. For after more than 2000 years of living and blending with other Chinese peoples, they too have a fairly high percentage mix of northern Chinese blood in them ( at least something like 30%-40% ), so it should not be surprising that some, if not most of them, may not even look too differently from northern Chinese, or even think too differently from them, since the common Chinese culture and written language has also played a significant part in gelling them together as a common Han people.

Linguistically, however, the Min people share almost a common spoken tongue with the Teochews and the Hainanese, their close neighbours, who may be considered a sort of second or third cousins to them.

Another path of southern migration of the Min people is to the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, where they constitute the majority of the Chinese migrants in those countries.

Not too different in looks from the southern coastal Chinese were:

• in China, coastal people from Chekiang, Chiangnan and parts of Shangdong; and,
• across the China Seas, the Japanese and the Koreans.

Presumably all these were similar stock of Yi people who used to live inland, but were pushed towards the coastal areas, and even out of the Chinese coastline into different lands and isles away from the seas of China. As the latter group ( the Koreans and the Japanese) became more and more isolated from the mainstream, in time they became a nation by themselves ,with their own distinctive culture and language.

The way these two words are pronounced, is as follows:-

In Mandarin Ai Yau

In Hakka Oi Oi

In Cantonese Oi Yew

In Hokkien Ai Ai

Note:

i) A change in sound of the second word, ‘yau’ in Mandarin and Cantonese

ii) No change in sound for this word in Hakka and Hokkien.

ii) The second word Yau ( 要 ), meaning want or desire, is a composite of two words : Xi ( 西 ) meaning west and Nu ( 女 ) meaning female.

Allow me to concoct the following story:

In Imperial China, the Emperor had an official first wife, but many other wives and concubines. In an imperial court scene, the Emperor is seated on his throne with the Empress seated to his right. The rest of his concubines stand in ranking and flanking position to his left or right.

And who are these nymphs and sirens ? The female beauties from China’s North-west region, of course! They were the Eurasians of China .

Next, what accounts for the different pronunciation of these two words as noted earlier?

Applying the eyebrow test to Chinese in or from Singapore and Malaysia ( via much viewing of the TV screen or other means) this writer has found that the majority of the southerners and coastal Chinese have arched eye-brows, in contrast to say Chinese from the north in the mainland, or similar Mandarin speaking(mainland) actors and actresses from Taiwan TV!

Finally, this writer would like to summarise his findings and hypothesis, as follows :

How dialects become a separate speech - a reflection.

Within the context of Chinese history, there is always a major stream of dominant speech, called the standard or common or national speech, that runs for a defined period of time - say the ‘life ’ of a dynasty, or group of related dynasties- e.g. the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty, the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the Manchu Dynasty, or present day Republic of CHINA..

Side by side with this major dominant speech would exist other kinds of dialect group speech, some major, some minor. Within each dialect group also exist sub-dialect variances.

Since the Cantonese and the Hakka speech are fairly close to each other, it seems reasonable to speculate that:-

1. They parted company from a common stream, sharing almost a common speech from a prior dynasty e,g, the Han period ?. In other words, they could be close brothers or cousins from the same lineage say some 2000 years ago before parting company - with one branch going its way far to the south, to Canton., and the other remaining in the north.

2. The southern branch speech could of course be later modified by a dominant non - Han speech of local ‘natives’, adding new sounds and words to its original speech; so its original speech became different from the Hakkas, becoming a distinctive ‘Cantonese’ speech. In time, the Cantonese speech would be so different, being modified by many local tribal speeches(?), making it even unintelligible to the the Hakkas.

   .

3. In the north, The Hakka speech would also be modified or displaced by other northern tribal conquerors. Soon they would split too to form two or more major groups as follows :-

--the northern group into many northern speech groups; and

--the southern group ( migrants to the south) would take their speech pattern to different parts of the South..

In the South, the migrants would move and split into various sub-groups, and will absorb other southern influences along the way. Thus, each distinct speech might soon be unintelligible even among the various sub-groups, except for those living in close proximity with one another, or still maintaining some close ties with one another.

Each such distinctive speech that has evolved would be quite unintelligible to their long lost cousins in the North, or even to the Cantonese. closer to them , but who migrated to the South earlier than them.

The Hokkiens, the Foochows, the Teochews and the Hainanese formed another linguistic group of Chinese. Presumably, they had a strong language of their own even in Central or Northern China before being brought in as a Han people, and they too later absorbed many Han words to become a distinctive group of ‘Min’ people.

Another way of looking at dialect development is to model after the development of English- where the major speech stream is English ( Oxbridge or Received Accent). Over time and in different situations, other subsidiary streams will depart from this dominant speech stream, due to the pull of the borrower’s own original language ,or isolation from the mainstream. The lesser the borrowing, or the greater the resistance or ability to adopt or adapt; or, the greater the isolation into its own environment, the more pronounced the departure from the mainstream, becoming bad English or poorly pronounced English; or pidgin English.

In short, deviations into multi- dialects from a major speech are caused by many factors: some due to the absorption of new words or sounds by the original speakers; others due to poor imitation of sounds by new learners, say via mixed marriages or by a new community of another ethnic group; or strong external influences due to openness of society, or the reverse, isolation in backwaters from the main stream, etc

The absorption of new words, sounds or sound pattern influencing the original speech in the environment, old or new, keeps a speech constantly moving and changing, resulting in a ‘new speech’ or different speech for each era, or for each distinctive locality.

As new speeches or dialects are created, others that are old, with fewer and fewer speakers, may weaken and become transformed into something new; or the old will simply die and disappear altogether!

January I, 2001.