• The Waves Carrying The Waveforms: The Tones of Sarawak Hokkien and Its Cross-Peninsular Relation to Penang Hokkien

Hokkien is a Sinitic language that sees much linguistic variety, largely owing to the seafaring history of its speakers. Despite being widely spoken in Malaysia, among other Southeast Asian countries, the Sarawakian variety of Malaysia has yet to be documented. In this study, the tones of Sarawak Hokkien were analysed in a way that builds on existing research of Penang Hokkien, a more well-documented Malaysian Hokkien variety which is lexically similar but tonally dissimilar to Sarawak Hokkien. Drawing upon speech data collected from four Sarawak Hokkien speakers and three Penang Hokkien speakers, the tones of Sarawak Hokkien were documented and the differences to Penang Hokkien analysed. Findings revealed that Sarawak Hokkien has six tones, consisting of four smooth tones and two checked tones. Differences to Penang Hokkien emerged on four fronts – checked tones, tone sandhi, the high falling tone and perceptual mismatches. There were clear tonal differences between the two Hokkien varieties when it came to checked tones and the high falling tone, while the perceptual mismatches can be attributed in part to lexical differences. While no inter-variety difference could be deduced on the front of tone sandhi, it appears that both varieties permit free variation between the citation tone and sandhi tone when tokens are produced in isolation. Ultimately, Sarawak Hokkien is concluded to be a hybrid of Northern and Southern Malaysia Hokkien.