I have finally figured out the sentence
thau-ci-le-si-hO-i-sin-sim-tui-hut-huat-ceng. It
is 頭蜀個是與伊信心對佛,法,僧
haN, which translates to "the first thing is to give them
confidence/faith towards the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha".
Buddha-Dharma-Sangha is the Triple Gem of Buddhism, and breaks down
Buddhism more specifically.
regarding "night time", my Hokkien is also
暗暝 am3-miN5 or 下昏
e7-hng1 or 暝时 miN5-si0. i
too have not heard of
eng1(sandhi-tone)-am3 and this is not
recorded in the Hokkien resources that I have too. I note a very
big possibility that this particular Taiwanese may have lost the
general word 暝 for words pertaining to "night" because this
word is part of the basic stock of 闽 words that cannot be easily
replaced unless the individual's 闽 language is impaired due to
external influences.
regarding 南無本師釋迦牟尼佛 na2-mo2-ben3-shi1-shi4-jia1-mou2-ni2-fo2,
it's a more usual expression to use "Homage to..." instead of "I
submit to..."
regarding seh8, the character is 踅.
iN5-iN5-seh8 "to go around in a circle" is
圆圆踅 / 圓圓踅
regarding thai2-ko1 "leprosy", it is 癞哥 /
癩哥 (widely used, but etymologically unrelated - based on semantic
correspondence for the 1st character & sound correspondence for
the 2nd character)
regarding ia5-sO1-kau3, in Singapore,
Christianity = all branches of Protestantism. Instead of
耶稣教 ia5-sO1-kau3, I use simply
奉教 hong7-kau3 for that sense. Only
Catholicism is separately called 天主教
thien1-cu2-kau3. Embracing Christianity or
Catholicism is called 食教 ciah8-ka3 /
ciah8-kau3
regarding tO7-long5 "help", we have the
exact same pronunciation including same tone contour
[tO(21)-long(24)] here in Singapore but I don't
use this Malay borrowing as robustly as
tau3-kha1-chiu2. In addition to "help",
tO7-long5 is frequently used as an
interjection eg. "tO7-long5 la !" equating to
"Please lah!" / "拜托啦！" or "tO7-long5 li0,
..." equating to "For god's sake, ..." / "拜托你好不好，．．．"
regarding khi1(sandhi-tone)-sien7 "to pity
/ pityful", I do not have this Malay borrowing in my Hokkien. My
Malay dictionary shows "kasihan": "to symphatize with" / "to pity"
/ "poor thing!". The root of "kasihan" seems to be "kasih" : "to
love"
regarding kiaN1-jit8, it exists in Singapore
Hokkien too but I chose not to reflect it in the previous post. i
also have another 2 spoken
variations kin1-nit8 and
kiaN1-nit8
regarding "j-", "l-", "d-" in Hokkien, it is an interesting
topic in Hokkien to be discussed. there is another one more
variation which falls between "l" and "d" called the alveolar tap
which has the IPA symbol of "ɾ" which exist in
many other languages too: (reference) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_tap
