This Penangite Is on a Mission To Preserve the Penang Hokkien Language
While you may hear people conversing in Hokkien while out and about in Penang, the number of local youths who are able to speak the language has dwindled greatly over the years, with most of them choosing to converse in Bahasa Malaysia, English, or Mandarin.
Timothy Tye, a born-and-bred Penangite was one such person who noticed the declining use of Penang Hokkien. He decided to take measures for the past ten years to preserve the language including developing a Romanisation and creating its only online dictionary.
Rojak Daily spoke to 58-year-old Timothy, a social media influencer who has run a blog for over twenty years, Penang Travel Tips, which he says is one of the largest information sites about places in Malaysia managed by an individual as well as his own YouTube channel, Discover with Timothy.
Saving Penang Hokkien
With a Taishanese father (with roots from Taishan, Guangdong) who didn’t speak any Taishanese, and a Hokkien mother, Timothy learned that he was not actually Hokkien, but “like so many other Chinese in Penang, we used Penang Hokkien as our lingua franca.”
As an adult, he noticed the declining use of Penang Hokkien and realised that most people who spoke the language knew very little about it. Timothy started pondering, “Why do we speak Penang Hokkien? Where does it come from? Why is our Hokkien different from what is spoken in Klang and Singapore?”
He continued, “I decided that, if Penang Hokkien is to be saved from extinction, I have to be involved, if not the one to do it. My journey to save Penang Hokkien started in 2013. But I knew I couldn't do it alone, as I did not start off as an expert in the language. I do not even speak Mandarin Chinese, so I was quite handicapped when I needed to research Chinese characters. Also, I want it to be a community effort, with input from actual Penang Hokkien speakers.”
Timothy then founded the Learn Penang Hokkien Facebook Group, which today has over 18,000 members, not only from Penang but also Penang Hokkien speakers from all around the world. The group serves as Timothy’s “laboratory” to analyse words in Penang Hokkien as uncommon terms are discussed there such as varieties of potatoes or various cuts of meat so that the members can come up with definitions for them.
Timothy said, “I know that the first step to saving a language is to assemble all its words. And so, the words that we analysed were compiled, initially into a glossary which over time morphed into the Penang Hokkien Dictionary, which is today the only online dictionary for the language. Watch the user guide here:
History of Penang Hokkien
Timothy also started digging into the language’s history, “Until now, the general opinion has been that Hokkien seafaring merchants brought the language over. But that explanation leaves gaps that have not been adequately explained,” he said.
His research into Penang Hokkien also required research on the history of Chinese migration to Thailand, the Philippines, and Taiwan. It also required him to expand on his knowledge of the history of China, especially the period between the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the founding of the Qing Dynasty.
“According to my research, it was that period of turbulence that caused a wave of refugees to flee China to Southeast Asia, and the group of refugees from Zhangzhou settled in the northern part of the Malay peninsula, becoming the pioneers whose language eventually became present-day Penang Hokkien.”
“Penang Hokkien has been around longer than the settlement of Penang itself,” Timothy explained. “It was already spoken by Chinese migrants and their descendants when Francis Light founded the British colony of Penang in 1786. The language has been in use in Penang for over 200 years until now.”
“Whether it is Penang's heritage sites, famous hawker food, or Nyonya cuisine, they all developed in the presence of Penang Hokkien. To best appreciate the Penang identity, one has to understand the language that is an integral part of it, he elaborated.”
Developing the Taiji Romanisation System
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Hokkien does not have a unitary standardised writing system, which is why you may see some stalls selling ‘Char Koay Teow’ while others may promote it as ‘Char Kway Teow’. Vernacular Chinese is also less suited for writing texts spoken in Hokkien.
Out of necessity, Timothy developed the Taiji Romanisation system which is used in his dictionary. He said, “I first explored the possibility of using existing writing systems including Chinese characters, Church Romanisation, and Taiwanese Romanisation.
I eventually decided that in order to facilitate learning Penang Hokkien, I needed to use a writing system that is much easier to learn.” Additionally, in his online dictionary, he shows words in Taiji Romanisation and their corresponding appearances in Chinese characters, Church Romanisation, and Taiwanese Romanisation for easy reference.
His Taiji Romanisation leverages the existing knowledge of English, Malay and Mandarin, the three languages that are taught in schools in Penang. The spelling mirrors English and Malay spelling so that people who have no knowledge of Taiji Romanisation are more likely to pronounce the words correctly by intuition. The same cannot be said of Church or Taiwanese Romanisations which were developed separately from our local education systems.
Timothy said, “Secondly, the writing system had to be easy to write and can be easily written on any standard keyboard without the need for special characters. He gave the example of the word "sweat" in Penang Hokkien:
Taiji Romanisation: knua33
Church Romanisation: kōaⁿ
Taiwanese Romanisation: kuānn
Timothy explained: “The presence of the diacritic mark (ā) and the superscript ‘n’ in Church and Taiwanese Romanisation make these two earlier writing systems difficult to write, especially on present-day keyboards, thereby hampering the widespread learning of the language. In comparison, Taiji Romanisation uses numbers to denote tones. There are as mentioned five different tones, and they are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and 33. These tones correspond to the four tones in Mandarin. Tones 3 and 33 sound the same but have different characteristics.”
Learning the Lingo
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This writer speaks Hokkien (albeit only passably) so we asked the expert, “How long would it take for a non-speaker to learn the language?”. Timothy said that a native English speaker would possibly need around 24 weeks of serious learning to achieve working proficiency, less than the amount of time required to learn French or Spanish.
He also said that the grammar is simple, but the most challenging aspect of the language is intonation and classifiers. “This is a tonal language, so a good grounding in tones is essential for eventual fluency. In order to teach people the language, I first learned how the Hokkien language was previously taught, and that is how I simplified the learning process.
“The traditional method of teaching Hokkien lists seven different tones. This is because that method differentiates words ending in t, k, and h as separate tones. I found that unnecessary and reduced it to five tones. On top of that, these five tones can be mapped to correspond to the four tones in Mandarin. In doing so, I can leverage on people's existing knowledge of Mandarin to learn Penang Hokkien.”
Breathing life into Penang Hokkien
After nearly a decade of hard work in researching and documenting Penang Hokkien, as well as creating learning material to ensure the survival and modern development of the language, Timothy achieved a major milestone when the Penang State Government accepted his Penang Hokkien Dictionary and Taiji Romanisation in July 2023. At the time of writing, he has included around 6,000 words in the dictionary especially those of common use. His work nowadays involves expanding the entries with more details and adding audio for example sentences.
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He also shared that he is working closely with the government to have Penang Hokkien gazetted as a state heritage under the Penang Heritage Enactment 2011.
We really applaud Timothy for his hard (unpaid) work in preserving the language and as they say in Penang Hokkkien, “Lai2, thark3 Rojak Daily ta33-ta33 jit1!,” or please support Rojak Daily and enjoy our articles every day!