Bungieen kab peqoe

Bungieen kab peqoe 🔊 / Bunpek ixthok 🔊 (文白異讀; Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters)

Literary vs colloquial

• Colloquial readings (pegthok (白讀)) are usually used in normal speech.
• Literary readings (bunthok (文讀)) of Harnji are usually used in formal loan words or names, when reading aloud and in formal settings.
• For example, 白 has two readings:
  • Colloquial: peh 🔊, as in peqzhaix 🔊 (Chinese cabbage)
  • Literary: pek 🔊, as in zuxpek 🔊 (confession)
• Some characters have multiple and unrelated pronunciations, adapted to represent Hokkien words. For example, the word baq ("meat") may be written with the character 肉, which has etymologically unrelated colloquial and literary readings:
  • Colloquial: hek 🔊
  • Literary: jiok 🔊, as in kutjiok (骨肉 flesh and blood; kindred)
• Vernacular readings, marked siok (俗), are relatively rare. See pof (埠), lok (錄), kiok (劇), for example.

More examples

Most Hokkien numerals have both literary and colloquial readings. Literary readings are typically used when the numerals are read out loud (e.g. telephone numbers), while colloquial readings are used for counting items.

The following chart, from Amoy_dialect#Literary_and_colloquial_readings, illustrates some of the more commonly seen sound shifts:

Colloquial	Literary	Example
[p-], [pʰ-]	[h-]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	divide
[ts-], [tsʰ-], [tɕ-], [tɕʰ-]	[s-], [ɕ-]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	to become
[k-], [kʰ-]	[tɕ-], [tɕʰ-]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	finger
[-ã], [-uã]	[-an]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	to see
[-ʔ]	[-t]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	to eat
[-i]	[-e]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	world
[-e]	[-a]	Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	family
[-ia]	[-i]	徛† / Template:Th	Template:X2	Template:X2	to stand

More details

• Dictionaries such as the MoeDict use the labels 文 (buun) for literary readings, and 白 (pek / peh) for colloquial readings.

The following is adapted from Hokkien#Literary_and_colloquial_readings:

• The bulk of literary readings are based on pronunciations of the vernacular during the Tang dynasty and mainly used in formal phrases and written language (e.g. philosophical concepts, surnames, and some place names).
• Literary readings tend to be more similar to the pronunciations of the Tang standard of Middle Chinese than their colloquial equivalents.
• The colloquial (or vernacular) readings are basically used in spoken language and vulgar (ordinary/common) phrases.
• The divergence between literary and colloquial is due to several "strata" in the Min lexicon. See Proto-Min_language#Strata

See also

• theaji
• MoeDict thex, peh, buun, siok