Post by NZBC on Sept 4, 2007 22:18:25 GMT 12
For those readers who may not quite follow along in your pursuit of the Ng/Wu surname, here are some short extracts from my book "Cane Reapers." "Since most of the emigrants from China departed from the south the predominant language of Chinese overseas has been Cantonese along with other locally-based southern dialects such as Taishan (Toisan), Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew, and Fujian (Foochow). After World War II, Mandarin, spoken mainly in the north, became the official dialect in China with Beijing pronunciation taken as the standard. . . . In most instances the Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations for the same character are completely different and confusion can result if the dialect is not known. To illustrate, in going from Mandarin to Cantonese, Wu becomes Ng and Hu changes to Woo. The Mandarin "Wu" and the Cantonese "Woo" are similar sounds so that the dialect, or else the written form, would need to be known to get the correct surname. To complicate matters, Hu (Woo) i!
s also written "O" or "U" with a pronunciation somewhat like "Ooh" in the English expression "Ooh and Ah."" I have listed the names of a number of Chinese immigrants to Guyana on my website along with the village whence they came. The website address is www.rootsweb.com/~guycigtr You can go to the Passengers link and this will lead you to the 39 ships that transported the Chinese labourers between 1853 and 1879. Click on the name of any ship and that will take you to the passenger list. There you can see if there is any tie between Ng/Wu and Tongkong (Dong Guan).
s also written "O" or "U" with a pronunciation somewhat like "Ooh" in the English expression "Ooh and Ah."" I have listed the names of a number of Chinese immigrants to Guyana on my website along with the village whence they came. The website address is www.rootsweb.com/~guycigtr You can go to the Passengers link and this will lead you to the 39 ships that transported the Chinese labourers between 1853 and 1879. Click on the name of any ship and that will take you to the passenger list. There you can see if there is any tie between Ng/Wu and Tongkong (Dong Guan).
