Listen to Podcast | Hokkien: How Do You Say “Favourite Country for Travel”

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New Words

Podcast Transcript | Hokkien: How Do You Say “Favourite Country for Travel”

Arrgh… would you agree with me if I say that holidays are always too short? So how do you usually spend your holidays? Personally, the one thing that I look forward to during holidays is to travel and experience different cultures. Speaking of travelling overseas, do you know how to ask someone what is their favourite country for travel? My name is Eugene from LearnDialect.sg and in today’s Hokkien – How Do You Say Podcast, we will be exploring more on this topic.

So first up, here are some new words that you will be learning today –

最 which means “most”;

佗一个 meaning “which one”;

国家 which means “country” and

𨑨迌 means “play”.

To ask someone where is their favourite country for travel, I would tap into words we have learnt on the podcast previously and say 你最舒合去佗一个国家𨑨迌? This translates literally into “You most like go which one country play?”

Now, we’ve learnt 舒合 in one of our earlier How Do You Say “I Love You” podcast. Just a quick recap for you, 舒合 means “like” or “love”. Combining this with the new word – 最 – we literally get “most like” and hence 最舒合 is one way to express “favourite” in Hokkien!

Apart from 舒合 which Singapore Hokkiens borrow from the Malay language, did you also know that 𨑨迌 is a term unique to Min language speakers, including Hokkiens and Teochews? If you are keen to learn more about the unique language features of Hokkien, let me sidetrack a little and shamelessly throw in an ad here… do join us on our Hokkien Workshop for Beginners. Just visit our website at LearnDialect.sg and look under the tab on “Upcoming Classes”.

Ok, back to today’s podcast. “Where is your favourite country for travel?” translated to Hokkien will be 你最舒合去佗一个国家𨑨迌?

We’ve now learnt that the phrase, 𨑨迌 means “play”. So why do we use this phrase to infer travel in this scenario? This is simply a colloquial language shortcut. After all, similar to playing, you’ll have lots of fun travelling to a country that you like, isn’t it?

So I really want to know, 你最舒合去佗一个国家𨑨迌? Please share with me in the comments. In our next podcast, I will teach you the names of some countries in Hokkien. My name is Eugene from LearnDialect.sg and see you the next week!

Love what you are reading? We’ve got lots more to share during our Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese express workshops. Join us to pick up words and phrases for everyday use in Singapore. More importantly, you can help to keep these languages alive!

Our Philosophy for Learning Hokkien in Singapore

The pronunciation of Hokkien words varies from one region to another. For example, Penang Hokkien sounds different from Taiwanese Hokkien. At LearnDialect.sg, we want to make learning Hokkien fun, easy and practical for daily conversations in Singapore. As such, we think it is important to listen to how Singaporeans speak Hokkien. To do that, we have an ongoing process of collecting audio recordings from at least 100 Hokkien-speaking seniors in Singapore and thereafter based our audio pronunciation on the most commonly-heard version.

In similar nature, rather than trying to figure out which Hokkien romanization system to use (e.g. Pe̍h-ōe-jī or Taiwan Romanization System), we encourage you to form your own phonics, so that you make an association with these Hokkien words in the quickest way possible. To illustrate, the formal romanization of the English word, “eat”, is “chia̍h” in Hokkien. However, in our “Have You Eaten” podcast transcript, you’ll find that we use “jiak”, which we think relates to us better. That said, you may use other romanization (e.g “chiah”, “jia”, etc), as long as it helps you to make sense of what you hear.