Listen to Podcast | Hokkien: How Do You Say “No Problem”

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Podcast Transcript | Hokkien: How Do You Say “No Problem”

Hi everyone! My name is Eugene and once again, welcome to Hokkien – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. In today’s podcast, we will be covering a useful Hokkien phrase for daily conversations that has dual meaning. This Hokkien phrase is 无问题. Once you learn how to pronounce this phrase, you can either use it to express “no problem” or to indicate that you have “no questions”. Talk about killing 2 birds with 1 stone!

Now, let’s start by learning how to express “no problem”. For example, if I wasn’t able to help you buy Hokkien noodles, but yet you are totally fine with it, this is how our conversation would sound like.

I’ll say 对唔住, 我无买你要食的福建面.

You’ll say 无问题!

Well, by now, you should be quite familiar with this word – 无 – as I’ve taught it a couple of times. 无 means “no” and 问题 – the new phrase today – refers to “problem”. So 无问题 literally means “No problem”.

Or the next time someone tells you that he/she is running a little late but you are ok to wait, you can practise saying – 无问题!

Besides referring to a problem, another meaning for 问题 is “question”. So sometimes, you may hear someone asking – 有问题无? This translates into, “Any questions?” If yes, you can respond by simply saying 有. However, if you have no further questions, you will say 无问题.

So how? 有问题无? I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s Hokkien – How Do You Say Podcast. Feel free to share with us your thoughts by leaving us a comment. My name is Eugene from LearnDialect.sg and see you the next week!

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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.