Gua si Hokkien

This last Sunday, my family's typical food gatherthon night, my aunt asked me to look up a youtube video for her and to show my parents. Quirking an eyebrown at her search word of "Hokkien Funny Song", she explained quickly that she was informed that it was supposedly hysterical. Unfortunately, before she could offer any further explanantion for this odd video search request she had to bounce out of my house, as one of my little cousins started getting rather ill and needed to be herded home. Well, my interest piqued I decided to take a looksee myself. The video appeared to beone of a drag queen performer singing a traditional Hokkien song (which I recognized, as my father insists on importing traditional Hokkien folk music from Malaysia and playing them incessantly in the car...this or his other preferred music choices of Celine Dion, Abba and various country).

While I appreciated the comedic appeal of a drag queen singing tunes from my father's childhood, I didn't really see what all the hoop-la was about,as I am sad to say unable to understand most of it. So I called over my mom to take a look. She spent about 30 seconds watching, before chuckling and claiming she couldn't see anymore. "What? What's so funny? I don't get it?" Was my query to my mom. Her reply, "It's a dirty song. Tsch. Dirty." This lead my mother to urge me to call my dad over to take a look, as Hokkien happens to be his primary language. He also watched the video for about 30 seconds before responding with the same reaction. A bit irked that there was a dirty joke that my parent's got and I didn't (something that hasn't happened since I was 10) I decided to take matters into my own hands. I googled learning Hokkien.

Now for those of you who are not in the know about my personal ethnic heritage, my family is ethnically chinese, but culturally Malaysian. My father's side of the family is almost entirely settled in Malaysia or Singapore, as is the majority of my mothers. While I never realized the extent of my inablity to speak Hokkien the most common Chinese dialect of Malaysia, I didn't realize it was this bad. Well since it bothers, mortifies and annoys me that I can't effectively communicate with half of my family (overseas) and that there's a large component of my cultural literacy missing I have decided to learn Hokkien. I'd also like to point out that it appears that Hokkien is pretty slangy and used in some rather deragotory ways, so hopefully I'll pick it up quick enough.

Note: Apparently chee-bye means vajayjay. Who knew?

Here's the video for those of you who are curious.