Old folks tend to believe that the adult should beat the floor and mumble a few words whenever a child fell down. This is to drive away the "fear" from the kid.
Here's what the adult should say (while hitting the floor (same spot where the child fell) at the same time):
gia1 hee3 boh3 gia1 dah4,
pang4 sai4 kim1 ga2 nah4.
This literally translate to the following (in English):
scared the ears but dont scare the guts,
pass out motion as gold olive.
Hokkien is a dialect that is spoken widely by Chinese all over the world, mainly in China (Fujian), Taiwan and Singapore.
Over the years, different countries might adopt their own unique way of speaking the language.
Being a Singaporean, I have decided to write this Blog to share the unique Hokkien langugage that is spoken in Singapore today.
This blog is not inteneded to state the correct word or how it should be spoken. If you are pursuing in that direction, I would suggest you to search and research further in Google or Wiki instead.
The idea of my blog is to share the conversational Hokkien commonly heard in Singapore.
Singapore, being a multi-cultural country, it is highly possible that certain words that you see here are not 100% Hokkien origin. It could be a mixture from other languages or dialects. For example, the word "Sa-lah" is commonly understood as "wrong" in Hokkien. It is a Malay word in actual fact.
You can also find more of these words in this Wiki website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singaporean_Hokkien
If you come across any words that it should be presented in another way, please feel free to drop your comments here.
