Listen to Podcast | Hokkien: How Do You Say “Thank You”

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Podcast Transcript | Hokkien: How Do You Say “Thank You”

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 commonly-used phrase in everyday life – thank you.

So yes, “thank you” 用福建话怎么讲?

There are a few ways to express “thank you”. We have:

感谢 which refers to “feeling thankful”. This Hokkien phrase is most commonly used in Singapore. I’ll repeat again – 感谢.

Sometimes, you may hear 多谢, which means “many thanks”, or 谢谢 which means “thanks”. These are more commonly used in Taiwan.

When responding to a word of thanks, Hokkien people will typically answer with 免客气. This is the Hokkien way of saying “You’re welcome” but translates more accurately into “There’s no need for formalities”. Let me say it one more time – 免客气.

A word of thanks to show appreciation – 感谢 – and knowing how to respond – 免客气 – in a polite manner goes a long way.

Hope this helps in your daily conversations and 感谢你 for listening in to Hokkien – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. My name is Eugene and see you the next time!

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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.