Look, Grandpa! I'm learning Diojiu.

When I was young, I heard a lot of Teochew going on in the house, but never understood it. Up till now, I still don't get a word what my dad and grandpa are talking about.

Then I was reading blogs.. And TADA! JasonO wrote about heritage! He had a link in his post, a website dedicated to Teochews. I don't know if 'dedicated' is the right word. But yeah, it's about TCs.

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I was pronouncing the compound vowels, and suddenly.. I felt as if I KNOW how to speak Teochew!

Then I went through the article and started reading about the consonants.

"Chik beh.." (七百)
"Sap.." (杀)
"Lak.." (六)

And then there are the practice phrases..,

"heu2 gai5 seu7 ua2 mai3 keu3 li2."
許個事我勿去理。
Those matters I don’t care for.

"jek8, no6, san1, si3, ngou6, lak8, chik4, boit4, gao2, jap8."
一两三四五六七八九十
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten

"na7 si6 ning2 mai3 gat8 ua2 keu3, ua2 ga1gi7 keu3 lo1."
喏是 恁勿甲我去，我家已去咯。
If you (plural) don’t want to come with me, I’ll go alone.


Here comes the hard part..

TONES!!



And there's Tone Sandhi (Tone change). Something like how in Mandarin, if you have the same pinyin in the same words, you change it. e.g. 老(lao3) 虎(hu3) --> 老(lao2) 虎(hu3).

Phew. *Wipes sweat* Learning Teochew is CRAZY!

If you can't master the tones, you can't master or speak Diojiu well enough!


Gaginang.org Peng'im Guide : http://www.gaginang.org/content/index.php?p=16