Hokkien, Amoy.
Our take
Okay, let’s dive into this. Hokkien, Amoy… the names themselves ripple with the kind of linguistic history that makes your brain do a little happy dance. This little pendant piece, drawing from Carstairs Douglas's 1873 dictionary, isn't just about cataloging words; it's about mapping a specific space – a vernacular, a spoken language – within the vast, often intimidating, landscape of Chinese dialects. It’s a reminder that language isn't monolithic; it’s a shimmering, fractal thing, branching and evolving, influenced by trade, migration, and the ever-shifting tides of cultural contact. We’ve been circling around the edges of this concept with posts like Imperial Gateway, exploring the colonial intersections that shaped linguistic landscapes, and conversations about language acquisition through immersive experiences like video games For those that learned/practiced another language through video games – and this feels like a crucial piece of the puzzle. Because understanding the *why* behind dialectical divergence is key to appreciating the richness of multilingualism, and the sheer tenacity of language in the face of forces that would homogenize it.
Douglas's dictionary, and the preface quoted, highlights something vital: the attempt to capture the *spoken* language. That's a significant distinction. So much linguistic study historically has focused on the written form, the formalized, often more “official” language. But the real life of a language—its slang, its nuances, its very pulse—lives in the everyday conversations of its speakers. The fact that Douglas dedicated such a substantial work to Amoy, and its surrounding dialects, speaks to a period where linguistic documentation was, arguably, more attuned to the local and the specific. Think about it: this dictionary wasn’t aimed at mastering Mandarin; it was aimed at understanding the language of a particular coastal community, a hub of trade and cultural exchange. And that focus, that granular attention to detail, is precisely what we find so compelling. It’s the razor clam of linguistics – the thing hidden just below the surface, easily overlooked, but holding a universe of meaning. The sheer ambition of attempting such a comprehensive documentation effort in 1873, when linguistic methodologies were still being solidified, is…well, it’s a bit feral, isn’t it? A wonderfully defiant act of preservation.
The context of this piece also shines a light on the evolving understanding of language learning. We see echoes of this in discussions about accent blending tried to speak my 2nd language in the accent of my 3rd language. People are experimenting, mixing, creating new linguistic forms. Douglas’s work, though rooted in a different era, reminds us that language is never static. It’s a constant negotiation between tradition and innovation, between regional identity and broader communication. The very existence of these dialectal variations—Hokkien, Amoy, Chang-chew, Chin-chew—demonstrates the dynamism of language, its capacity to adapt and evolve in response to specific social and geographical conditions. It's a living organism, not a fossilized artifact. And trying to pin it down, to categorize it, is both a necessary and an inherently imperfect endeavor. We're attempting to capture something that's constantly moving, shifting, squirting, if you will.
So, where does this leave us? Looking ahead, it's clear that the increasing accessibility of historical linguistic resources—like the digitized version of Douglas’s dictionary—opens up exciting new avenues for research and appreciation. It allows us to trace the evolution of languages in ways previously unimaginable. But perhaps more importantly, it encourages us to reconsider our own assumptions about language. To recognize that there isn’t a single, “correct” way to speak, and that every dialect, every variation, holds a unique and valuable perspective. The question becomes: how can we best leverage these digital archives to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation for the world’s linguistic diversity, especially as globalization continues to reshape the landscape of communication? And more urgently, how do we ensure that these vibrant, often marginalized, languages continue to thrive in the digital age? Stay spooty.
A pendant to yesterday’s thread, in which both Min/Hokkien and Xiamen/Amoy were discussed; first, the beginning of the preface to Carstairs Douglas’s Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular Or Spoken Language of Amoy: With the Principal Variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects (Trübner & Co., 1873):
The vernacular or spoken language of Amoy, which this Dictionary attempts to make more accessible. than formerly, has been also termed by some “The Amoy Dialect” or “The Amoy Colloquial;” and it partially coincides with the so-called “Hok-kien Dialect,” illustrated by the Rev. Dr. Medhurst in his quarto Dictionary under that title. But such words as “Dialect” or “Colloquial” give an erroneous conception of its nature. It is not a mere colloquial dialect or patois; it is spoken by the highest ranks just as by the common people, by the most learned just as by the ignorant; learned men indeed add a few polite or pedantic phrases, but these are mere excrescences (and even they are pronounced according to the Amoy sounds), while the main body and staple of the spoken language of the most refined and learned classes is the same as that of coolies, labourers, and boatmen.
Nor does the term “dialect” convey anything like a correct idea of its distinctive character; it is no mere dialectic variety of some other language; it is a distinct language, one of the many and widely differing languages which divide among them the soil of China.
The so-called “written language” of China is indeed uniform throughout the whole country; but it is rather a notation than a language; for this universal written language is pronounced differently when read aloud in the different parts of China, so that while as written it is one, as soon as it is pronounced it splits into several languages. And still further, this written language, as it is read aloud from books, is not spoken in any place whatever under any form of pronunciation. The most learned men never employ it as a means of ordinary oral communication even among themselves. It is in fact a dead language, related to the various spoken languages of China somewhat as Latin is to the languages of South-western Europe.
A very considerable number of the spoken languages of China have been already more or less studied by European and American residents in the country, such as the Mandarin, the Hakka, the vernaculars of Canton and Amoy, and several others. These are not dialects of one language; they are cognate languages, bearing to each other a relation similar to that which subsists between the Arabic, the Hebrew, the Syriac, the Ethiopic, and the other members of the Semitic family; or again between English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, &c.
There is another serious objection to the use of the term “dialect” as applied to these languages, namely, that within each of them there exist real dialects. For instance, the Mandarin, the greatest of all, contains within itself at least three very marked “dialects,” the Northern, spoken at Pekin; the Southern, spoken at Nanking and Soo-chow; and the Western, spoken in the provinces of Sze-chuen, Hoo-peh, &c.
In like manner the language which for want of a better name we may call the Amoy Vernacular or spoken language, contains within itself several real dialects, especially those of Chang-chew, Chin-chew, Tung-an, and of Amoy itself. In this Dictionary the form of the language spoken at Amoy itself is taken as the standard, and the principal variations of the Chang-chew and Cliin-chew dialocus are marked, as also a considerable number of the variations occurring in Tung-an, Chang-poo, and some other regions.
I call that an extraordinarily sophisticated understanding of language for the year 1873, and it makes me want to shake Douglas’s hand and buy him a drink. And as for the name Amoy (which I will always prefer to the currently fashionable but unpronounceable in English Xiamen), this Wiktionary page finally gave me an understanding of what was going on with the various names:
Mandarin: Xiàmén
Cantonese: haa6 mun4
Hakka: ha4 mun2
Northern Min (KCR): Hā-mo̤̿ng
Eastern Min (BUC): Â-muòng
Puxian Min (Pouseng Ping’ing): or5 muei2 / or5 mui2
Southern Min
(Hokkien, POJ): Ē-mn̂g / Ēe-mûi / Ěe-mûi
(Teochew, Peng’im): ê6 mung5
Wu (Shanghai, Wugniu): 6gho-men
Which explains why what I heard in the Hou movie sounded like Ē-mn̂g, and suggests that the A in Amoy was originally intended to represent “long a” (AY-moy); compare the (obsolete) Spanish name Emuy. And I note that Japanese has both Shiamen [ɕia̠mẽ̞ɴ] and Amoi [áꜜmòì], both, of course, written with the same characters (廈門). Furthermore, the traditional Swatow for what is now called Shantou is explained here: the Southern Min form is Sòaⁿ-thâu.
(Should you happen to want a nicely detailed 1915 map of Amoy, here you go.)
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