Listen to Podcast | Teochew: How Do You Say “Please, May I Ask?”

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Podcast Transcript | Teochew: How Do You Say “Please, May I Ask?”

Hi everyone, thank you for joining us on Teochew – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. My name is Eugene and today, we will learn a few helpful phrases that starts with 请问.

请问 means “Please, may I ask”.

The first word 请 refers to “Please” and 问 refers to “ask”. As such, combining 请 with 问 implies that you have a question to ask politely.

Let me give you a few examples.

If I am asking someone if the bowl of fishball noodle is tasty, I would say 请问你, 鱼圆面好食无?

If I am asking “please, how do you say ‘Eat’ in Teochew?”, I would say 请问你, Eat用潮州话做物呾?

做物 means “how to” and 呾 means “say”. Once again, 请问你, Eat用潮州话做物呾?

If I am asking for directions to the MRT, I would say 请问你, MRT做物行? Similarly, 做物 means “how to” and 行 means “walk”. I’ll repeat, 请问你, MRT做物行?

If I’m asking, “please, how do I do this?”, it’ll be 请问你, 做物做? – 做 means “do”.

If I’m asking, “please, how do I use this?”, it’ll be 请问你, 做物用? – 用 means “use”.

You get the drift now? As you can tell, 请问 is a very versatile and polite way of asking people for help!

Now let’s practise by combining some of these with what we learnt in the previous podcasts.

How would you say the following in Teochew,

“How are you? My name is Eugene. My Teochew is not good. Can you teach me? Please, how do you say ‘Eat‘ in Teochew?”

Now pause the audio and give it a try. Go on.

So did you get it right?

“How are you? My name is Eugene. My Teochew is not good. Can you teach me? Please, how do you say ‘Eat’ in Teochew?”

你好, 我个名是Eugene. 我个潮州话不好, 你会得教我无? 请问你, Eat用潮州话做物呾?

Awesome, we are making good progress, aren’t we?

Keep practising, as that’s the only way to learn a new dialect.

Don’t forget, if you have specific phrases that you’ll like to learn, please leave us a comment on our Facebook page. We want to know how we can help you!

Thank you for listening in to Teochew – How Do You Say Podcast on LearnDialect.sg. My name is Eugene and see you the next time.

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 Teochew in Singapore

While we include formal romanization for Teochew words, we are advocates of easy learning. Hence, we encourage you to form your own phonics so that you make an association with these Teochew words quickly. To illustrate, the formal romanization of “Teochew” is “diê ziu“. However, in our ”Can You Teach Me” podcast transcript, you’ll find that we use “teo chew”, which we think relates to us better. That said, you may use other romanization (e.g “dio chew”, “dio jiu“, etc), as long as it helps you to make sense of what you hear.