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Hokkien

Topic: Social

 From HandWiki - Reading time: 38 min
Short description: Sinitic language spoken in East Asia
Hokkien
Min Nan
閩南話／福建話／咱人話／福佬話
Bân-lâm-ōe / Hok-kiàn-ōe/ōa / Lán-lâng-ōe / Ho̍h-ló-ōe
農場相褒歌.jpg
Koa-á books, featuring Hokkien written in Chinese characters
Native toChina (Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Longyan, and surrounding counties) and Taiwan (Formosa, Penghu, Kinmen), Singapore, Malaysia (Perlis, Kedah, Penang, Klang, Malacca, Johor, Kelantan, Terengganu, Kuching, Sarawak), Indonesia (Medan, Riau, Riau islands, Java), Philippines (Binondo, Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao, Iloilo City, Bacolod, Zamboanga City, Jolo, Olongapo City, Angeles City, Baguio City, Cagayan de Oro, Naga, Tacloban City, Catarman, Butuan City, Sorsogon City, Tuguegarao), Brunei, Thailand (Surat Thani, Pattani, Narathiwat, Yala, Songkhla, Satun), Cambodia (Battambang, Phnom Penh), Myanmar (Yangon, Myeik District), Vietnam (Chợ Lớn, Hội An, Huế), Hong Kong (North Point, Causeway Bay, Kowloon Bay)
RegionEast and Southeast Asia
EthnicityHokkien people
Early form
Dialects
  • Amoy (Xiamen)
  • Quanzhou
  • Zhangzhou
  • Longyan
  • Taiwanese (Hái-kháu accent, Lāi-po͘ accent, Phian-hái accent, Phian-lāi accent)
  • Singaporean[2]
  • Penang (Penang, Kedah, Perlis)[2]
  • Medan (North Sumatra)[2]
  • Philippine[2] (Chuanchiu-based, Amoy-based)
  • Southern Peninsular Malaysian (Johor, Klang, Muar, Malacca)[2]
  • Riau Hokkien (Riau Province, Riau islands, Jambi)[2]
  • Kelantan Hokkien (Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Southern Thailand)[2]
  • Kuching Sarawak Hokkien (Kuching, Sarawak)[2]
  • Java Hokkien (Jakarta, Semarang, Surakarta, etc.)
  • Hong Kong Hokkien (North Point, Causeway Bay, Kowloon Bay)
  • Yangon Hokkien (Yangon Region)[2]
  • Phuket Hokkien (Phuket province)[2]
  • Saigon Hokkien (Chợ Lớn, Ho Chi Minh City)[2]
Chinese script (see written Hokkien)
Latin script (Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Tâi-lô)
Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols
Official status
Official language in
 Taiwan[3][4][5] (also a statutory language for public transport announcements in Taiwan)[6]
Regulated byThe Republic of China Ministry of Education and some NGOs are influential in Taiwan
Language codes
ISO 639-3nan for Southern Min (hbl is proposed[7])
Glottologhokk1242[8]
Banlamgu.svg
Distribution of Southern Min languages, with Hokkien in dark green
Hokkien Speakers in Asia.png
Polities by number of Hokkien speakers
  ≥1,000,000
  ≥500,000
  ≥100,000
  ≥50,000
  Significant minority populations
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Hokkien
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Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/ HOK-ee-en)[9] is a variety of Chinese. It is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang (Chinese: 泉漳; pinyin: Quánzhāng), from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines , Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam elsewhere across the world. The mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity.[2]

In maritime Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia. This applied to a lesser extent to mainland Southeast Asia.[10] The Betawi Malay language, spoken by some five million people in and around the Indonesian capital Jakarta, includes numerous Hokkien loanwords due to the significant influence of the Chinese Indonesian diaspora, most of whom are of Hokkien ancestry and origin. Hokkien Kelantan in northern Malaya of Malaysia and Hokaglish spoken sporadically across the Philippines , especially Metro Manila are also mixed languages with Hokkien as the base lexifier.

Names

Various populations of Hokkien speakers refer to the language as:

  • Bân-lâm-gú / Bân-lâm-gí / Bân-lâm-gír / Bân-lâm-ú (Template:Zhi, literally 'Southern Min language') in China, Taiwan,[11] and Malaysia
  • Bân-lâm-ōe / Bân-lâm-ōa / Bîn-lâm-ōe (Template:Zhi, literally 'Southern Min language') in China, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia
  • Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú (臺語, literally 'Taiwanese language') or Ho̍h-ló-ōe / Hô-ló-ōe (福佬話, literally 'Hoklo Speech') in Taiwan
  • Lán-lâng-ōe / Lán-nâng-ōe / Nán-nâng-ōe (咱人話／咱儂話, literally 'Our people's language') in the Philippines
  • Hok-kiàn-ōe / Hok-kiàn-ōa (Template:Zhi, literally 'Hokkien language') in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines

In parts of Southeast Asia and in the English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien ([hɔk˥kiɛn˨˩]) is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian (Template:Zhi), the province from which the language hails. In Southeast Asia and the English press, Hokkien is used in common parlance to refer to the Southern Min dialects of southern Fujian, and does not include reference to dialects of other Sinitic branches also present in Fujian such as the Fuzhou language (Eastern Min), Pu-Xian Min, Northern Min, Gan Chinese or Hakka.

The word Hokkien first originated from Walter Henry Medhurst when he published the Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language, According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms in 1832. This is considered to be the earliest English-based Hokkien Dictionary and the first major reference work in POJ, although the romanization within was quite different from the modern system. In this dictionary, the word "Hok-këèn" was used. In 1869, POJ was further revised by John Macgowan in his published book A Manual Of The Amoy Colloquial. In this book, "këèn" was changed to "kien" as "Hok-kien" and from then on, the word "Hokkien" began to be used more often.

Historically, Hokkien was also known as Amoy, after the Hokkien name for Xiamen, the principal port in southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty, as one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking.[12] By 1873, Rev. Carstairs Douglas would publish his "Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, With the Principal Variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects." where he would call the language the "Language of Amoy"[13] or "The Amoy Vernacular"[12] and by 1883, Rev. John Macgowan would publish another dictionary, the "English and Chinese Dictionary of the Amoy Dialect".[14] Due to confusion with differentiating the Amoy dialect of Hokkien from Xiamen with the general language itself, many proscribe this usage though many old books and media may still be observed to be labeled with "Amoy" to refer to the language in general, besides the specific dialect of Hokkien from Xiamen.

Geographic distribution

Hokkien is spoken in the southern seaward quarter of Fujian, southeastern Zhejiang, as well as the eastern part of Namoa in China; Taiwan; Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao and other cities in the Philippines ; Singapore; Brunei; Medan, Riau and other cities in Indonesia; and from Perlis, Kedah, Penang and Klang in Malaysia.

Hokkien originated in the southern area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration, and has since become one of the most common Chinese varieties overseas. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is nearby Taiwan, where immigrants from Fujian arrived as workers during the 40 years of Dutch rule, fleeing the Qing dynasty during the 20 years of Ming loyalist rule, as immigrants during the 200 years of Qing dynasty rule, especially in the last 120 years after immigration restrictions were relaxed, and even as immigrants during the period of Japanese rule. The Taiwanese dialect mostly has origins with the Tung'an, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect, also known as the Xiamen dialect, has become the modern prestige representative for the language in China. Both Amoy and Xiamen come from the Chinese name of the city (Chinese: 厦门; pinyin: Xiàmén; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ē-mûi); the former is from Zhangzhou Hokkien, whereas the latter comes from Mandarin.

There are many Min Nan speakers among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, as well as in the United States (Hoklo Americans). Many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia (the former Dutch East Indies) and present day Malaysia and Singapore (formerly Malaya and the British Straits Settlements). Most of the Min Nan dialects of this region have incorporated some foreign loanwords. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the ethnic Chinese people in the Philippines, among which is known locally as Lán-nâng-uē ("Our people's speech"). Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines.[citation needed]

Classification

Map of Fujian and adjacent areas, with markers for the locations of Hokkien varieties
Quanzhou
Quanzhou
Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou
Xiamen
Xiamen
class=notpageimage|
Locations of Hokkien varieties in Fujian

Southern Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects: Chiangchew, Chinchew, Tung'an, and Amoy,[15] originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, historical Tung'an County (Template:Zhi, now Xiamen and Kinmen) and her own Port of Amoy, respectively.

In the late 1800s, the Amoy dialect attracted special attention, because Amoy was one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking, but before that it had not attracted attention.[16] The Amoy dialect is adopted as the 'Modern Representative Min Nan'. The Amoy dialect cannot simply be interpreted as a mixture of the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou dialects, but rather it is formed on the foundation of the Tung'an dialect with further inputs from other sub-dialects.[17] It has played an influential role in history, especially in the relations of Western nations with China, and was one of the most frequently learnt dialect of the Hokkien variety by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

The Modern Representative form of Hokkien spoken around the Taiwanese city of Tainan (Template:Zhi) heavily resembles the Tung'an dialect.[18][19] All Hokkien dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien, or Holo locally, although there is a tendency to call these Taiwanese language for historical reasons. It is spoken by more Taiwanese than any Sinitic language except Mandarin, and it is known by a majority of the population;[20] thus, from a socio-political perspective, it forms a significant pole of language usage due to the popularity of Holo-language media. Douglas (1873/1899) also noted that Formosa (Taiwan) has been settled mainly by emigrants from Amoy (Xiamen), Chang-chew (Zhangzhou), and Chin-chew (Quanzhou). Several parts of the island are usually found to be specially inhabited by descendants of such emigrants, but in Taiwan, the various forms of the dialects mentioned prior are a good deal mixed up.[21]

Southeast Asia

The varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. Douglas (1873–1899) notes that

Singapore and the various Straits Settlements [such as Penang and Malacca], Batavia [Jakarta] and other parts of the Dutch possessions [Indonesia], are crowded with emigrants, especially from the Chang-chew [Zhangzhou] prefecture; Manila and other parts of the Philippines have great numbers from Chin-chew [Quanzhou], and emigrants are largely scattered in like manner in Siam [Thailand], Burmah [Myanmar], the Malay Peninsula [peninsular Malaysia], Cochin China [Southern Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos], Saigon [Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam], &c. In many of these places there is also a great mixture of emigrants from Swatow [Shantou]."[21]

In modern times though, a mixed dialect descended from the Quanzhou, Amoy, and Zhangzhou dialects, leaning a little closer to the Quanzhou dialect, possibly due to being from the Tung'an dialect, is spoken by Chinese Singaporeans, Southern Malaysian Chinese, and Chinese Indonesians in Indonesia's Riau province and Riau Islands. Variants include Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien and Singaporean Hokkien in Singapore.

Among Malaysian Chinese of Penang, and other states in northern mainland Malaysia and ethnic Chinese Indonesians in Medan, with other areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia, a distinct descendant dialect form of Zhangzhou Hokkien has developed. In Penang, Kedah and Perlis, it is called Penang Hokkien while across the Malacca Strait in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as Medan Hokkien.

As for Chinese Filipinos in the Philippines, a variant known as Philippine Hokkien, which is also mostly derived from Quanzhou Hokkien, particularly the Jinjiang and Nan'an dialects with a bit of influence from the Amoy (Xiamen) dialect, is still spoken amongst families as most also profess ancestors from the aforementioned areas.

There are also Hokkien speakers scattered throughout other parts of Indonesia (such as Jakarta and around the island of Java), Thailand (especially Southern Thailand on the border with Malaysia), Myanmar, other parts of Malaysia (such as insular Malaysia), Brunei, Cambodia, and Southern Vietnam (such as in Ho Chi Minh City), though there are notably more of Teochew/Swatow background among descendants of Chinese migrants in regions such as parts of Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Southern Vietnam.

History

Variants of Hokkien dialects can be traced to 2-4 main principal dialects of origin: the original two being, the Quanzhou (泉州; Choân-chiu / Chôaⁿ-chiu) and Zhangzhou (漳州; Chiang-chiu / Cheng-chiu) dialects, and in later centuries Xiamen/Amoy (廈門; Ē-mn̂g / Ēe-mûi) and Tong'an (同安; Tâng-oaⁿ) as well. The Amoy and Tong'an dialects are historically mixtures of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, since they are the geographic and linguistic midpoint between the two, while the rest of the Hokkien dialects spoken in Taiwan and Southeast Asia are respectively derived from varying proportions of the above principal dialects in southern Fujian.

Southern Fujian

During the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China, there was constant warfare occurring in the Central Plains of China. Ethnic Han Chinese gradually migrated from Henan to the mouth of the Yangtze to the coasts of Zhejiang and later began to enter into the Fujian region, which in ancient times was originally Minyue (閩越; Bân Oa̍t country, populated with non-Chinese Minyue peoples, causing the region for the first time in ancient times to incorporate Old Chinese dialects of which would later become Min Chinese. The massive migration of Han Chinese into Fujian region mainly occurred after the Disaster of Yongjia. The Jìn court fled from the north to the south, causing large numbers of Han Chinese to move into Fujian region. They brought the Old Chinese spoken in the Central Plain of China from the prehistoric era to the 3rd century into Fujian that later became Min, which later split off into its respective branches, of which Hokkien descends from the Southern Min branch of it.

In 677 (during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang), Chen Zheng, together with his son Chen Yuanguang, led a military expedition to suppress a rebellion of the She people. In 885, (during the reign of Emperor Xizong of Tang), the two brothers Wang Chao and Wang Shenzhi, led a military expedition force to suppress the Huang Chao rebellion.[22] Waves of migration from the north in this era brought the language of Middle Chinese into the Fujian region, which gave Hokkien and all the other Min languages its literary readings.

Xiamen (Amoy)

During around the late 17th century when sea bans were lifted, the Port of Xiamen (Amoy), which overshadowed the old port of Yuegang, became Fujian's main port where trade was legalized. From then, the Amoy dialect became the main principal dialect spoken overseas, such as in Qing-ruled Taiwan, British Malaya, British Straits Settlements (e.g. British Singapore), British Hong Kong, Spanish Philippines, American Philippines, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), French Cochinchina (e.g. Saigon), etc. Historically, Port of Xiamen had always been part of Tung'an country until after 1912 of Republic of China era.[17] The Amoy dialect was the main prestige form of Hokkien that was mainly known from the late 17th century to around the Republic of China era and varyingly dated these days. Due to that, dictionaries and bibles and other books about Hokkien from recent centuries and even to this day in certain places, like schools and churches, of certain countries, the Hokkien language is still known as "Amoy".

Early sources

Several playscripts survive from the late 16th century, written in a mixture of Quanzhou and Chaozhou dialects. The most important is the Romance of the Litchi Mirror, with extant manuscripts dating from 1566 and 1581.[23][24]

In the early 17th century, Spanish friars in the Philippines produced materials documenting the Hokkien varieties spoken by the Chinese trading community who had settled there in the late 16th century:[23][25]

  • Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china (1593), a Hokkien version of the Doctrina Christiana.[26][27][28]
  • Dictionarium Sino Hispanicum (1604), by Pedro Chirino[29]
  • Vocabulario de la Lengua Española y China / Vocabulario Hispanico y Chinico[29]
  • Bocabulario de la lengua sangleya por las letraz de el A.B.C. (1617), a Spanish–Hokkien dictionary, with definitions.[29]
  • Arte de la Lengua Chiõ Chiu (1620), a Spanish–Hokkien grammar.[30]
  • Dictionario Hispanico Sinicum (1626–1642), a primarily Spanish-Hokkien dictionary (with additional incomplete Mandarin part), giving equivalent words, but not definitions.[31]
  • Vocabulario de letra china (1643), by Francisco Diaz[29]

These texts appear to record a primarily Zhangzhou-descended dialect with some attested Quanzhou and Teo-Swa features, from the old port of Yuegang (modern-day Haicheng, an old port that is now part of Longhai).[32]

19th century sources

Chinese scholars produced rhyme dictionaries describing Hokkien varieties at the beginning of the 19th century:[33]

  • Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi "Understanding of the collected sounds") was written around 1800 by Huang Qian (Template:Zhi), and describes the Quanzhou dialect. The oldest extant edition dates from 1831.
  • Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi "Compilation of the fifteen elegant and vulgar sounds") by Xie Xiulan (Template:Zhi) describes the Zhangzhou dialect. The oldest extant edition dates from 1818.

Rev. Walter Henry Medhurst based his 1832 dictionary, "A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language", on the latter work.[34]

Other popular 19th century works are also like those of Rev. John Macgowan's 1883 dictionary, "English and Chinese Dictionary of the Amoy Dialect",[14] and Rev. Carstairs Douglas's 1873 dictionary, "Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, with the Principal Variations of the Chang-Chew and Chin-Chew Dialects",[35] and its 1899 New Edition with Rev. Thomas Barclay.[15]

Phonology

Hokkien has one of the most diverse phoneme inventories among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin and Cantonese. Vowels are more-or-less similar to that of Mandarin. Hokkien varieties retain many pronunciations that are no longer found in other Chinese varieties. These include the retention of the /t/ initial, which is now /tʂ/ (pinyin Template:Zhi) in Mandarin (e.g. Template:Zhi is Template:Zhi, but Template:Zhi in Mandarin), having disappeared before the 6th century in other Chinese varieties.[36] Along with other Min languages, which are not directly descended from Middle Chinese, Hokkien is of considerable interest to historical linguists for reconstructing Old Chinese.

Initials

Southern Min has aspirated, unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. For example, the word Template:Zhi and Template:Zhi have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and nasality of the vowel. In addition, Southern Min has labial initial consonants such as Template:Zhi in Template:Zhi.

Another example is Template:Zhi and Template:Zhi, which for the cha-po͘-kiáⁿ and cha-bó͘-kiáⁿ pronunciation differ only in the second syllable in consonant voicing and in tone.

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Stop plain p t k ʔ
aspirated pʰ tʰ kʰ
voiced b
(m) 		d[37]~l
(n) 		ɡ
(ŋ)
(nasalized)
Affricate plain ts
aspirated tsʰ
voiced dz[38]~l~ɡ
Fricative s h
Semi-vowels w j
  • All consonants but ʔ may be nasalized; voiced oral stops may be nasalized into voiced nasal stops.
  • Nasal stops mostly occur word-initially.[39]
  • Quanzhou and nearby may pronounce ⟨j⟩/⟨dz⟩ as ⟨l⟩ or ⟨g⟩.[citation needed]
  • ⟨l⟩ is often interchanged with ⟨n⟩ and ⟨j⟩/⟨dz⟩ throughout different dialects.[40]
  • ⟨j⟩, sometimes into ⟨dz⟩, is often pronounced very 'thick' so as to change to ⟨l⟩, or very nearly so.[21]
  • Some dialects may pronounce ⟨l⟩ as ⟨d⟩, or a sound very like it.[37]
  • Approximant sounds [w] [j], only occur word-medially, and are also realized as laryngealized [w̰] [j̰], within a few medial and terminal environments.[41]

Finals

Unlike Mandarin, Hokkien retains all the final consonants corresponding to those of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the [n] and [ŋ] finals, Southern Min also preserves the [m], [p], [t] and [k] finals and has developed the glottal stop [ʔ].

The vowels of Hokkien are listed below:[42]

Hokkien Finals
Oral Nasal Stops
Medial ∅ e i o u ∅ m n ŋ i u p t k ʔ
Nucleus Vowel a a ai au ã ãm ãn ãŋ ãĩ ãũ ap at ak aʔ
i i io iu ĩ ĩm ĩn ĩŋ ĩũ ip it ik iʔ
e e ẽ ẽŋ* ek* eʔ
ə ə ə̃m* ə̃n* ə̃ŋ* əp* ət* ək* əʔ*
o o õŋ* ot* ok* oʔ
ɔ ɔ ɔ̃ ɔ̃m* ɔ̃n* ɔ̃ŋ ɔp* ɔt* ɔk ɔʔ
u u ue ui ũn ũĩ ut uʔ
ɯ ɯ* ɯ̃ŋ*
Diphthongs ia ia iau ĩã ĩãm ĩãn ĩãŋ ĩãũ iap iat iak iaʔ
iɔ ĩɔ̃* ĩɔ̃ŋ iɔk
iə iə ĩə̃m* ĩə̃n* ĩə̃ŋ* iəp* iət*
ua ua uai ũã ũãn ũãŋ* ũãĩ uat uaʔ
Others ∅ m̩ ŋ̍

(*)Only certain dialects

  • Oral vowel sounds are realized as nasal sounds when preceding a nasal consonant.

Dialectal sound shifts

The following table illustrates some of the more commonly seen vowel shifts between various dialects. Further example character that features the same vowel shift is shown in parentheses.

Gloss Chinese Accent Hokkien Teochew
Pe̍h-ōe-jī IPA Pe̍h-ūe-jī IPA
'two' Template:Zhi Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei /li˦˩/ Template:Zhi /d͡zi˧˥/
Zhangzhou, Tainan /d͡ʑi˨˨/
'sick' Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei /pĩ˦˩/ /pẽ˩˩/
Zhangzhou, Tainan /pẽ˨˨/
'rice' Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan /pŋ̍˦˩/ /pɯŋ˩˩/
Zhangzhou, Yilan[43] /puĩ˨˨/
'pig' Quanzhou /tɯ˧˧/ /tɯ˧˧/
Xiamen, Taipei /tu˦˦/
Zhangzhou, Tainan /ti˦˦/
'speech' Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan /ue˦˩/ /ue˩˩/
Zhangzhou /ua˨˨/
'skin' Quanzhou /pʰə˨˦/ /pʰue˥˥/
Xiamen, Taipei /pʰe˨˦/
Zhangzhou, Tainan /pʰue˩˧/
'chicken' Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei /kue˧˧/ /koi˧˧/
Zhangzhou, Tainan /ke˦˦/
'hair' Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan /mŋ̍˨˦/ /mo˥˥/
Zhangzhou, Taiwan /mɔ̃˧˧/
'prawn' Template:Zhi Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan /he˨˦/ Template:Zhi /he˥˥/
Zhangzhou Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) /hɛ˨˦/

Tones

According to the traditional Chinese system, Hokkien dialects have 7 or 8 distinct tones, including two entering tones which end in plosive consonants. The entering tones can be analysed as allophones, giving 5 or 6 phonemic tones. In addition, many dialects have an additional phonemic tone ("tone 9" according to the traditional reckoning), used only in special or foreign loan words.[44] This means that Hokkien dialects have between 5 and 7 phonemic tones.

Tone sandhi is extensive.[45] There are minor variations between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou tone systems. Taiwanese tones follow the patterns of Amoy or Quanzhou, depending on the area of Taiwan.

Tones level rising departing entering
dark level light level dark rising light rising dark departing light departing dark entering light entering
Tone Number 1 5 2 6 3 7 4 8
Tone contour Xiamen, Fujian ˦˦ ˨˦ ˥˧ – ˨˩ ˨˨ ˧˨ ˦
Template:Zhi taŋ1 Template:Zhi taŋ5 Template:Zhi taŋ2 – Template:Zhi taŋ3 Template:Zhi taŋ7 Template:Zhi tak4 Template:Zhitak8
Taipei, Taiwan ˦˦ ˨˦ ˥˧ – ˩˩ ˧˧ ˧˨ ˦
–
Tainan, Taiwan ˦˦ ˨˧ ˦˩ – ˨˩ ˧˧ ˧˨ ˦˦
–
Zhangzhou, Fujian ˧˦ ˩˧ ˥˧ – ˨˩ ˨˨ ˧˨ ˩˨˩
–
Quanzhou, Fujian ˧˧ ˨˦ ˥˥ ˨˨ ˦˩ ˥ ˨˦
–
Penang, Malaysia[46] ˧˧ ˨˧ ˦˦˥ – ˨˩ ˧ ˦
–

Dialects

Minnan is spoken in a variety of accents and dialects across the Minnan region. The Hokkien spoken in most areas of the three counties of southern Zhangzhou have merged the coda finals -n and -ng into -ng. The initial consonant j (dz and dʑ) is not present in most dialects of Hokkien spoken in Quanzhou, having been merged into the d or l initials.

The -ik or -ɪk final consonant that is preserved in the native Hokkien dialects of Zhangzhou and Xiamen is also preserved in the Nan'an dialect (Template:Zhi, Template:Zhi, Template:Zhi) but are pronounced as -iak in Quanzhou Hokkien.[47]

*Haklau Min (Hai Lok Hong, including the Haifeng and Lufeng dialect), Chaw'an / Zhao'an (詔安話), Leng'na / Liongna / Longyan Min, and controversially, Taiwanese, are sometimes considered as not Hokkien anymore, besides being under Southern Min (Min Nan). On the other hand, those under Leng'na / Liongna / Longyan Min, Teo-Swa Min, Zhenan Min have some to little mutual intelligibility with Hokkien, while Datian Min, Zhongshan Min, and Qiong-Lei Min also have historical linguistic roots with Hokkien, but are significantly divergent from it in terms of phonology and vocabulary, and thus have almost little to no mutual intelligibility with Hokkien.

Comparison

The Amoy dialect (Xiamen) is a variant of the Tung'an dialect. Majority of Taiwanese, from Tainan, to Taichung, to Taipei, is also heavily based on Tung'an dialect while incorporating some vowels of Zhangzhou dialect, whereas Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien, including Singaporean Hokkien, is based on the Tung'an dialect, with Philippine Hokkien on the Quanzhou dialect, and Penang Hokkien & Medan Hokkien on the Zhangzhou dialect. There are some variations in pronunciation and vocabulary between Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. The grammar is generally the same.

Additionally, extensive contact with the Japanese language has left a legacy of Japanese loanwords in Taiwanese Hokkien. On the other hand, the variants spoken in Singapore and Malaysia have a substantial number of loanwords from Malay and to a lesser extent, from English and other Chinese varieties, such as the closely related Teochew and some Cantonese. Meanwhile, in the Philippines , there are also a few Spanish and Filipino (Tagalog) loanwords, while it is also currently a norm to frequently codeswitch with English, Tagalog, and in some cases other Philippine languages, such as Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Bicol Central, Ilocano, Chavacano, Waray-waray, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, Northern Sorsogonon, Southern Sorsogonon, etc.

Mutual intelligibility

Tong'an, Xiamen, Taiwanese, Singaporean dialects as a group are more mutually intelligible, but it is less so amongst the forementioned group, Quanzhou dialect, and Zhangzhou dialect.[48]

Although the Min Nan varieties of Teochew and Amoy are 84% phonetically similar including the pronunciations of un-used Chinese characters as well as same characters used for different meanings,[citation needed] and 34% lexically similar,[citation needed], Teochew has only 51% intelligibility with the Tong'an Hokkien|Tung'an dialect (Cheng 1997)[who?] whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar[citation needed] and 15% lexically similar.[citation needed] In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar.[49]

Hainanese, which is sometimes considered Southern Min, has almost no mutual intelligibility with any form of Hokkien.[48]

Grammar

Hokkien is an analytic language; in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning.[50] A basic sentence follows the subject–verb–object pattern (i.e. a subject is followed by a verb then by an object), though this order is often violated because Hokkien dialects are topic-prominent. Unlike synthetic languages, seldom do words indicate time, gender and plural by inflection. Instead, these concepts are expressed through adverbs, aspect markers, and grammatical particles, or are deduced from the context. Different particles are added to a sentence to further specify its status or intonation.

A verb itself indicates no grammatical tense. The time can be explicitly shown with time-indicating adverbs. Certain exceptions exist, however, according to the pragmatic interpretation of a verb's meaning. Additionally, an optional aspect particle can be appended to a verb to indicate the state of an action. Appending interrogative or exclamative particles to a sentence turns a statement into a question or shows the attitudes of the speaker.

Hokkien dialects preserve certain grammatical reflexes and patterns reminiscent of the broad stage of Archaic Chinese. This includes the serialization of verb phrases (direct linkage of verbs and verb phrases) and the infrequency of nominalization, both similar to Archaic Chinese grammar.[51]

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Choice of grammatical function words also varies significantly among the Hokkien dialects. For instance, (Template:Zhi) (denoting the causative, passive or dative) is retained in Jinjiang (also unique to the Jinjiang dialect is Template:Zhi and in Jieyang, but not in Longxi and Xiamen, whose dialects use Template:Zhi instead.[52]

Pronouns

Hokkien dialects differ in the pronunciation of some pronouns (such as the second person pronoun Template:Zhi, Template:Zhi, or Template:Zhi), and also differ in how to form plural pronouns (such as Template:Zhi or Template:Zhi). Personal pronouns found in the Hokkien dialects are listed below:

Singular Plural
1st person Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi 		Template:Zhi1
Template:Zhi

Template:Zhi2 or Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi or Template:Zhi

Template:Zhi1,3
Template:Zhi
2nd person Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi 		Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi

Template:Zhi3
Template:Zhi
3rd person Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi 		Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi

Template:Zhi3
Template:Zhi
1 Exclusive
2 Inclusive
3 Template:Zhi is typically suffixed in Southeast Asian Hokkien dialects (with the exception of Philippine Hokkien)

Possessive pronouns can be marked by the particle Template:Zhi), in the same way as normal nouns. In some dialects, possessive pronouns can also be formed with a nasal suffix, which means that possessive pronouns and plural pronouns are homophones:[53]

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

The most common reflexive pronoun is Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi). In formal contexts, Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) is also used.

Hokkien dialects use a variety of demonstrative pronouns, which include:

The interrogative pronouns include:

Copula

States and qualities are generally expressed using stative verbs that do not require a verb meaning 'to be':

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With noun complements, the verb Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) serves as the verb 'to be'.

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

To indicate location, the words Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi), Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi), which are collectively known as the locatives or sometimes coverbs in Chinese linguistics, are used to express '(to be) at':

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Negation

Hokkien dialects have a variety of negation particles that are prefixed or affixed to the verbs they modify. There are six primary negation particles in Hokkien dialects (with some variation in how they are written in characters):

  1. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi)
  2. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi)
  3. Template:Zhi (Be-tw.svg)
  4. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi)
  5. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi)
  6. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) – literary

Other negative particles include:

  1. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi)
  2. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi)
  3. Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi)

The particle Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi) is general and can negate almost any verb: Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

The particle Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi，Template:Zhi), a concatenation of Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) is used to negate imperative commands: Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

The verb 'to have', Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) is replaced by Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) when negated (not Template:Zhi): Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

The particle Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) is used infrequently, mostly found in literary compounds and phrases: Script error: No such module "Interlinear".

Vocabulary

The majority of Hokkien vocabulary is monosyllabic.[54][better source needed] Many Hokkien words have cognates in other Chinese varieties. That said, there are also many indigenous words that are unique to Hokkien and are potentially not of Sino-Tibetan origin, while others are shared by all the Min dialects (e.g. 'congee' is Template:Zhi Template:Zhi, Template:Zhi, Template:Zhi, not Template:Zhi Template:Zhi, as in other dialects).

As compared to Mandarin, Hokkien dialects prefer to use the monosyllabic form of words, without suffixes. For instance, the Mandarin noun suffix Template:Zhi) is not found in Hokkien words, while another noun suffix, Template:Zhi) is used in many nouns. Examples are below:

In other bisyllabic morphemes, the syllables are inverted, as compared to Mandarin. Examples include the following:

In other cases, the same word can have different meanings in Hokkien and Mandarin. Similarly, depending on the region Hokkien is spoken in, loanwords from local languages (Malay, Tagalog, Burmese, among others), as well as other Chinese dialects (such as Southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese and Teochew), are commonly integrated into the vocabulary of Hokkien dialects.

Literary and colloquial readings

The existence of literary and colloquial readings is a prominent feature of some Hokkien dialects and indeed in many Sinitic varieties in the south. The bulk of literary readings (Template:Zhi), based on pronunciations of the vernacular during the Tang dynasty, are mainly used in formal phrases and written language (e.g. philosophical concepts, given names, and some place names), while the colloquial (or vernacular) ones (Template:Zhi) are usually used in spoken language, vulgar phrases and surnames. Literary readings are more similar to the pronunciations of the Tang standard of Middle Chinese than their colloquial equivalents.

The pronounced divergence between literary and colloquial pronunciations found in Hokkien dialects is attributed to the presence of several strata in the Min lexicon. The earliest, colloquial stratum is traced to the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE); the second colloquial one comes from the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589 CE); the third stratum of pronunciations (typically literary ones) comes from the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) and is based on the prestige dialect of Chang'an (modern day Xi'an), its capital.[55]

Some commonly seen sound correspondences (colloquial → literary) are as follows:

  • p- ([p-], [pʰ-]) → h ([h-])
  • ch-, chh- ([ts-], [tsʰ-], [tɕ-], [tɕʰ-]) → s ([s-], [ɕ-])
  • k-, kh- ([k-], [kʰ-]) → ch ([tɕ-], [tɕʰ-])
  • -ⁿ ([-ã], [-uã]) → n ([-an])
  • -h ([-ʔ]) → t ([-t])
  • i ([-i]) → e ([-e])
  • e ([-e]) → a ([-a])
  • ia ([-ia]) → i ([-i])

This table displays some widely used characters in Hokkien that have both literary and colloquial readings:[56][57]


This feature extends to Chinese numerals, which have both literary and colloquial readings.[57] Literary readings are typically used when the numerals are read out loud (e.g. phone numbers, years), while colloquial readings are used for counting items.

Numeral Reading Numeral Reading
Literary Colloquial Literary Colloquial
1 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi 6 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi
Template:Zhi 7 Template:Zhi
3 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi 8 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi
4 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi 9 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi
5 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi 10 Template:Zhi Template:Zhi

Semantic differences between Hokkien and Mandarin

Quite a few words from the variety of Old Chinese spoken in the state of Wu, where the ancestral language of Min and Wu dialect families originated, and later words from Middle Chinese as well, have retained the original meanings in Hokkien, while many of their counterparts in Mandarin Chinese have either fallen out of daily use, have been substituted with other words (some of which are borrowed from other languages while others are new developments), or have developed newer meanings. The same may be said of Hokkien as well, since some lexical meaning evolved in step with Mandarin while others are wholly innovative developments.

This table shows some Hokkien dialect words from Classical Chinese, as contrasted to the written Mandarin:

Gloss Hokkien Mandarin
Hanji POJ Hanzi Pinyin
'eye' 目睭／目珠 眼睛
'chopstick' 箸 筷子
'to chase' 逐 追
'wet' 澹[58] 濕
'black' 烏 黑
'book' 冊 書

For other words, the classical Chinese meanings of certain words, which are retained in Hokkien dialects, have evolved or deviated significantly in other Chinese dialects. The following table shows some words that are both used in both Hokkien dialects and Mandarin Chinese, while the meanings in Mandarin Chinese have been modified:

Word Hokkien Mandarin
POJ Gloss
(and Classical Chinese) 		Pinyin Gloss
走 'to flee' 'to walk'
細 'tiny', 'small, 'young' 'thin', 'slender'
鼎 'pot' 'tripod'
食 'to eat' 'to eat' (largely superseded by Template:Zhi)
懸 'tall', 'high' 'to hang', 'to suspend'
喙 'mouth' 'beak'

Words from Min Yue

Some commonly used words, shared by all[citation needed][dubious – discuss] Min Chinese languages, came from the Old Yue languages. Jerry Norman suggested that these languages were Austroasiatic. Some terms are thought be cognates with words in Tai Kadai and Austronesian languages. They include the following examples, compared to the Fuzhou dialect, a Min Dong language:

Word Hokkien POJ Foochow Romanized Gloss
骹 Template:Zhi [kʰa˥] kă [kʰa˥] 'foot and leg'
囝 Template:Zhi [kjã˥˩] giāng [kjaŋ˧] 'son', 'child', 'whelp', 'a small amount'
睏 Template:Zhi [kʰun˨˩] káung [kʰɑwŋ˨˩˧] to sleep
骿 Template:Zhi [pʰjã˥] piăng [pʰjaŋ˥] 'back', 'dorsum'
厝 Template:Zhi [tsʰu˨˩] chuó, chió [tsʰwɔ˥˧] 'home', 'house'
刣 Template:Zhi [tʰaj˨˦] tài [tʰaj˥˧] 'to kill', 'to slaughter'
(肉) Template:Zhi [baʔ˧˨] — 'meat'
媠 Template:Zhi [sui˥˧] — 'beautiful'
檨 Template:Zhi [suãi˨˨] suông [suɔŋ˨˦˨] 'mango' (Austroasiatic)[59][60]

Loanwords

Loanwords are not unusual among Hokkien dialects, as speakers readily adopted indigenous terms of the languages they came in contact with. As a result, there is a plethora of loanwords that are not mutually comprehensible among Hokkien dialects.

Taiwanese Hokkien, as a result of linguistic contact with Japanese[61] and Formosan languages, contains many loanwords from these languages. Many words have also been formed as calques from Mandarin, and speakers will often directly use Mandarin vocabulary through codeswitching. Among these include the following examples:

  • 'toilet' – Template:Zhi (便所) from Japanese benjo (便所)
    Other Hokkien variants: 屎礐 (sái-ha̍k), 廁所 (chhek-só͘)
  • 'car' – Template:Zhi (自動車) from Japanese jidōsha (自動車)
    Other Hokkien variants: 風車 (hong-chhia), 汽車 (khì-chhia)
  • 'to admire' – Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) from Japanese kanshin (感心)
    Other Hokkien variants: 感動 (kám-tōng)
  • 'fruit' – Template:Zhi (水果) from Mandarin (Template:Zhi)
    Other Hokkien variants: 果子 (ké-chí / kóe-chí / kér-chí)

Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien and other Malaysian Hokkien dialects tend to draw loanwords from Malay, English as well as other Chinese dialects, primarily Teochew. Examples include:

Philippine Hokkien, as a result of centuries-old contact with both Philippine languages and Spanish also incorporate words from these languages. Speakers today will also often directly use English and Filipino (Tagalog), or other Philippine languages like Bisaya, vocabulary through codeswitching. Examples include:

Philippine Hokkien usually follows the 3 decimal place Hindu-Arabic numeral system used worldwide, but still retains the concept of Template:Zhi from the Chinese numeral system, so 'ten thousand' would be Template:Zhi, but 'eleven thousand' would be Template:Zhi instead of Template:Zhi, and so on. Philippine Hokkien additionally has words for 'million': Template:Zhi or Template:Zhi, instead of Template:Zhi, so 'one million' would be Template:Zhi or Template:Zhi; sometimes 'one hundred million' would be Template:Zhi or Template:Zhi.

Comparison with Mandarin and Sino-Xenic pronunciations

Gloss Characters Mandarin Yue Hokkien[64] Korean Vietnamese Japanese
'book' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi chaek tập/sách saku/satsu/shaku
'bridge' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi kyo cầu/kiều kyō
'dangerous' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi wiheom nguy hiểm kiken
'flag' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi ki cờ/kỳ ki
'insurance' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi boheom bảo hiểm hoken
'news' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi shinmun tân văn shinbun
'student' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi haksaeng học sinh gakusei
university' Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi Template:Zhi (Template:Zhi) daehak đại học daigaku

Culture

Quanzhou was historically the cultural center for Hokkien, as various traditional Hokkien cultural customs such as Nanguan music, Beiguan music, glove puppetry, and the kaoka and lewan genres of Hokkien opera originated from Quanzhou. This was mainly due to the fact that Quanzhou had become an important trading and commercial port since the Tang dynasty and had prospered into an important city. After the Opium War in 1842, Xiamen became one of the major treaty ports to be opened for trade with the outside world. From the mid-19th century onwards, Xiamen slowly developed to become the political and economical center of the Hokkien-speaking region in China. This caused the Amoy dialect to gradually replace the position of dialects from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. From the mid-19th century until the end of World War II, [citation needed] western diplomats usually learned Amoy as the preferred dialect if they were to communicate with the Hokkien-speaking populace in China or Southeast Asia. In the 1940s and 1950s, Taiwan[who?] also tended towards the Amoy dialect.

The retreat of the Republic of China to Taiwan in 1949 drove party leaders to seek to both culturally and politically assimilate the islanders. As a result, laws were passed throughout the 1950s to suppress Hokkien and other languages in favor of Mandarin. By 1956, speaking Hokkien in ROC schools or military bases was illegal. However, popular outcry from both older islander communities and more recent Mainlander immigrants prompted a general wave of education reform, during which these and other education restrictions were lifted. The general goal of assimilation remained, with Amoy Hokkien seen as less 'native', and therefore preferred.[65]

However, from the 1980s onwards, the development of Taiwanese Min Nan pop music and media industry in Taiwan caused the Hokkien cultural hub to shift from Xiamen to Taiwan.[citation needed] The flourishing Taiwanese Min Nan entertainment and media industry from Taiwan in the 1990s and early 21st century led Taiwan to emerge as the new significant cultural hub for Hokkien.

In the 1990s, marked by the liberalization of language development and mother tongue movement in Taiwan, Taiwanese Hokkien had developed quickly. In 1993, Taiwan became the first region in the world to implement the teaching of Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwanese schools. In 2001, the local Taiwanese language program was further extended to all schools in Taiwan, and Taiwanese Hokkien became one of the compulsory local Taiwanese languages to be learned in schools.[66] The mother tongue movement in Taiwan even influenced Xiamen (Amoy) to the point that in 2010, Xiamen also began to implement the teaching of Hokkien dialect in its schools.[67] In 2007, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan also completed the standardization of Chinese characters used for writing Hokkien and developed Tai-lo as the standard Hokkien pronunciation and romanization guide. A number of universities in Taiwan also offer Taiwanese degree courses for training Hokkien-fluent talents to work for the Hokkien media industry and education. Taiwan also has its own Hokkien literary and cultural circles whereby Hokkien poets and writers compose poetry or literature in Hokkien.

Thus, by the 21st century, Taiwan had become one of the most significant Hokkien cultural hubs of the world. The historical changes and development in Taiwan had led Taiwanese Hokkien to become the most influential pole of the Hokkien dialect after the mid-20th century. Today, the Taiwanese prestige dialect (台語優勢腔／通行腔) is heard on Taiwanese media.

Writing systems

Further information: Social:Comparison of Hokkien writing systems

Chinese script

Hokkien dialects are typically written using Chinese characters (Template:Zhi. However, the written script was and remains adapted to the literary form, which is based on classical Chinese, not the vernacular and spoken form. Furthermore, the character inventory used for Mandarin (standard written Chinese) does not correspond to Hokkien words, and there are a large number of informal characters (Template:Zhi which are unique to Hokkien, as is the case with written Cantonese. For instance, about 20 to 25% of Taiwanese morphemes lack an appropriate or standard Chinese character.[56]

While most Hokkien morphemes have standard designated characters, they are not always etymological or phono-semantic. Similar-sounding, similar-meaning or rare characters are commonly borrowed or substituted to represent a particular morpheme. Examples include "beautiful" (Template:Zhi is the literary form), whose vernacular morpheme Template:Zhi is represented by characters like Template:Zhi (an obsolete character), Template:Zhi (a vernacular reading of this character) and even Template:Zhi (transliteration of the sound Template:Zhi), or (Template:Zhi is the literary form), whose morpheme Template:Zhi is Template:Zhi.[68] Common grammatical particles are not exempt; the negation particle Template:Zhi is variously represented by Template:Zhi, Template:Zhi or Template:Zhi, among others. In other cases, characters are invented to represent a particular morpheme (a common example is the character Template:Zhi, which represents the personal pronoun 'they'). In addition, some characters have multiple and unrelated pronunciations, adapted to represent Hokkien words. For example, the Hokkien word Template:Zhi) has been reduced to the character Template:Zhi, which have etymologically unrelated colloquial and literary readings Template:Zhi and Template:Zhi, respectively).[69][70] Another case is the word Template:Zhi, which is often transcribed in Taiwanese newspapers and media as Template:Zhi (a Mandarin transliteration Template:Zhi, to approximate the Hokkien term), even though its recommended character in dictionaries is Template:Zhi.[71]

Moreover, unlike Cantonese, Hokkien does not have a universally accepted standardized character set. Thus, there is some variation in the characters used to express certain words and characters can be ambiguous in meaning. In 2007, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China formulated and released a standard character set to overcome these difficulties.[72] These standard Chinese characters for writing Taiwanese Hokkien are now taught in schools in Taiwan.

Latin script

Hokkien, especially Taiwanese Hokkien, is sometimes written in the Latin script using one of several alphabets. Of these the most popular is POJ, developed first by Presbyterian missionaries in China and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Use of this script and orthography has been actively promoted since the late 19th century. The use of a mixed script of Han characters and Latin letters is also seen, though remains uncommon. Other Latin-based alphabets also exist.

Min Nan texts, all Hokkien, can be dated back to the 16th century. One example is the Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china, presumably written around 1593 by the Spanish Dominican friars in the Philippines. Another is a Ming dynasty script of a play called Tale of the Lychee Mirror (1566), supposedly the earliest Southern Min colloquial text, although it is written in Teochew dialect.

Taiwan has developed a Latin alphabet for Taiwanese Hokkien, derived from POJ, known as Tai-lo. Since 2006, it has been officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and taught in Taiwanese schools. Xiamen University has also developed an alphabet based on Pinyin called Bbánlám pìngyīm.

Computing

The character for the third-person pronoun 'they' in some Hokkien dialects, Template:Zhi, is now supported by the Unicode Standard, at U+2A736.

Hokkien is registered as "Southern Min" per RFC 3066 as zh-min-nan.[73]

When writing Hokkien in Chinese characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it impossible to use directly or borrow existing ones; this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in Cantonese, Vietnamese chữ Nôm, Korean hanja and Japanese kanji. Some of these are not encoded in Unicode, thus creating problems in computer processing.

All Latin characters required by Pe̍h-ōe-jī can be represented using Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), using precomposed or combining (diacritics) characters. Prior to June 2004, the vowel akin to but more open than o, written with a dot above right, was not encoded. The usual workaround was to use an (stand-alone; spaced) interpunct (U+00B7, ·) or less commonly the combining character dot above (U+0307). As these are far from ideal, since 1997 proposals have been submitted to the ISO/IEC working group in charge of ISO/IEC 10646—namely, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2—to encode a new combining character dot above right. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see documents N1593, N2507, N2628, N2699, and N2713).

Cultural and political role

Hokkien (or Min Nan) can trace its roots through the Tang dynasty and also even further to the people of the Minyue, the indigenous non-Han people of modern-day Fujian.[74] Min Nan (Hokkien) people call themselves "Tang people," (唐人; Tn̂g-lâng) which is synonymous to "Chinese people". Because of the widespread influence of the Tang culture during the great Tang dynasty, there are today still many Min Nan pronunciations of words shared by the Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In 2002, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party with about 10% of the Legislative Yuan seats at the time, suggested making Taiwanese a second official language.[75] This proposal encountered strong opposition not only from mainland Chinese groups but also from Hakka and Taiwanese aboriginal groups who felt that it would slight their home languages. Because of these objections, support for this measure was lukewarm among moderate Taiwan independence supporters, and the proposal did not pass.

Hokkien was finally made an official language of Taiwan in 2018 by the ruling DPP government.

See also

  • Hokkien Kelantan
  • Hokkien people
  • Languages of China
  • Languages of Taiwan
  • List of Hokkien dictionaries
  • List of Hokkien people
  • Amoy Min Nan Swadesh list

References

  1. ↑ Hokkien at Ethnologue (23rd ed., 2020)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 "Reclassifying ISO 639-3 [nan: An Empirical Approach to Mutual Intelligibility and Ethnolinguistic Distinctions"]. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/KIRINPUTRA/reclassifying-ISO-639-3-nan/main/Reclassifying_ISO_639-3_%5Bnan%5D__An_Empirical_Approach_to_Mutual_Intelligibility_and_Ethnolinguistic_Distinctions.pdf. 
  3. ↑ "Draft National Language Development Act Clears Legislative Floor". Focus Taiwan. CNA. 25 December 2018. http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aedu/201812250018.aspx. 
  4. ↑ "Lì yuàn sān dú "guójiā yǔyán fāzhǎn fǎ" gōng guǎng jítuán kě shè Táiyǔ diànshìtái" (in zh). Píngguo Rìbao. 25 December 2018. https://tw.news.appledaily.com/politics/realtime/20181225/1489328/. 
  5. ↑ Zhou, Siyu 周思宇 (25 December 2018). ""Guójiā yǔyán fāzhǎn fǎ" lì yuàn sān dú! zhèngfǔ dé shè Táiyǔ zhuānshǔ píndào" (in zh). ltn.com.tw (Yahoo!). https://tw.news.yahoo.com/amphtml/%E5%9C%8B%E5%AE%B6%E8%AA%9E%E8%A8%80%E7%99%BC%E5%B1%95%E6%B3%95-%E7%AB%8B%E9%99%A2%E4%B8%89%E8%AE%80-%E6%94%BF%E5%BA%9C%E5%BE%97%E8%A8%AD%E5%8F%B0%E8%AA%9E%E5%B0%88%E5%B1%AC%E9%A0%BB%E9%81%93-062038323.html. 
  6. ↑ "Dàzhòng yùnshū gōngjù bòyīn yǔyán píngděng bǎozhàng fǎ" (in zh). zh.wikisource.org. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%9C%BE%E9%81%8B%E8%BC%B8%E5%B7%A5%E5%85%B7%E6%92%AD%E9%9F%B3%E8%AA%9E%E8%A8%80%E5%B9%B3%E7%AD%89%E4%BF%9D%E9%9A%9C%E6%B3%95. 
  7. ↑ "Change Request Documentation: 2021-045". 31 August 2021. https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2021-045. 
  8. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds (2017). "Quanzhang". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. http://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/hokk1242. 
  9. ↑ "Hokkien, adjective & noun". https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hokkien_adj. 
  10. ↑ West, Barbara A. (2009). "Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania". Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Facts on File. pp. 289–290. ISBN 978-0-8160-7109-8.  eBook: ISBN:978-1438119137.
  11. ↑ (in zh) Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ hànzì zhī xuǎnyòng yuánzé, http://ws.moe.edu.tw/001/Upload/6/RelFile/0/1459/guantsik_960523.pdf 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Douglas, Carstairs (1899). "Extent of the Amoy Vernacular, and its Sub-division into Dialects." (in English & Amoy Hokkien). Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. pp. 609. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/609/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  13. ↑ Douglas, Carstairs (1899). "Variations of Spelling in Other Books on the Language of Amoy" (in English & Amoy Hokkien). Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. pp. 607. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/607/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Macgowan, John (1883) (in English & Amoy Hokkien). English and Chinese Dictionary of the Amoy Dialect. London: London Missionary Society. https://archive.org/details/cu31924023550878/page/n5/mode/2up. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Douglas, Carstairs (1899). Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/n12/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  16. ↑ Douglas, Carstairs (1899). Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/609/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 張屏生. 《第十屆閩方言國際學術研討會》. http://www.chinese.nsysu.edu.tw/uploads/chapter/file/5dd65c90babd2904d3000343/全文下載__16_.pdf. 
  18. ↑ 吳, 守禮. 臺南市福建省同安方言的色彩較濃. https://www.ylib.com/author/wusoli/article-1.htm. 
  19. ↑ 吳, 守禮. 經歷台南同安腔與員林漳州腔的異同. http://olddoc.tmu.edu.tw/chiaushin/ling-1.htm. 
  20. ↑ "2010 Population and Household Census in Taiwan" (in zh-TW). Taiwan Ministry of Education. https://www.stat.gov.tw/public/Attachment/21081884771.pdf. 
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Douglas, Carstairs (1899). "Extent of the Amoy Vernacular, and its Sub-division into Dialects." (in English & Amoy Hokkien). Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. pp. 610. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/610/mode/1up?view=theater&q=J.. 
  22. ↑ Yan, Margaret Mian (2006). Introduction to Chinese Dialectology. Berlin: LINCOM Europa. p. 120. ISBN 978-3-89586-629-6. 
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chappell, Hilary; Peyraube, Alain (2006). "The analytic causatives of early modern Southern Min in diachronic perspective". in Ho, D.-a.. Linguistic Studies in Chinese and Neighboring Languages. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. pp. 973–1011. https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00180707. 
  24. ↑ Lien, Chinfa (2015). "Min languages". in Wang, William S.-Y.. The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford University Press. pp. 160–172. ISBN 978-0-19-985633-6. 
  25. ↑ Klöter, Henning (2011). The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-18493-0. [page needed]
  26. ↑ Yue, Anne O. (1999). "The Min translation of the Doctrina Christiana". Contemporary Studies on the Min Dialects. Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series. 14. Chinese University Press. pp. 42–76. 
  27. ↑ Van der Loon, Piet (1966). "The Manila Incunabula and Early Hokkien Studies, Part 1". Asia Major. New Series 12 (1): 1–43. http://www2.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/file/1716usrgSxY.pdf. Retrieved 15 August 2016. 
  28. ↑ Cobo, Juan (1593) (in Early Modern Spanish & Zhangzhou Hokkien). Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua China, compuesta por los padres ministros de los Sangleyes, de la Orden de Sancto Domingo. Manila: Keng Yong. http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000165702&page=1. 
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 Lee, Fabio Yuchung; José, Regalado Trota; Caño, José Luis Ortigosa; Chang, Luisa (August 12, 2023). "1. Taiwan. Mesa Redonda. Fabio Yuchung Lee, José Regalado, Luisa Chang" (in Spanish, Mandarin). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcp2wQZGyNk&t=1224s&ab_channel=%40Fundaci%C3%B3nDuquesdeSoria. 
  30. ↑ Mançano, Melchior; Feyjoó, Raymundo (1620). Arte de la Lengua Chiõ Chiu. https://bipadi.ub.edu/digital/collection/manuscrits/id/29622/rec/1. 
  31. ↑ Zulueta, Lito B. (8 February 2021). "World's Oldest and Largest Spanish-Chinese Dictionary Found in UST". Philippine Daily Inquirer. https://lifestyle.inquirer.net/378777/worlds-oldest-and-largest-spanish-chinese-dictionary-found-in-ust/. 
  32. ↑ Van der Loon, Piet (1967). "The Manila Incunabula and Early Hokkien Studies, Part 2". Asia Major. New Series 13 (1): 95–186. http://www2.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/file/1745sWSSKnQ.pdf. Retrieved 15 August 2016. 
  33. ↑ Klöter, Henning (2005). Written Taiwanese. Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 64–65. ISBN 978-3-447-05093-7. 
  34. ↑ Medhurst, Walter Henry (1832) (in English, Hokkien). A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language, According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms: Containing About 12,000 Characters. Accompanied by a Short Historical and Statistical Account of Hok-këèn. Macao: The Honorable East India Company's Press, by G.J. Steyn and Brother. https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofhokk00medhrich/. 
  35. ↑ Douglas, Carstairs (1873) (in English, Hokkien). Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, with the Principal Variations of the Chang-Chew and Chin-Chew Dialects. 57 & 59 Ludgate Hill, London: Trübner & Co.. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglish00doug/page/n3/mode/2up. 
  36. ↑ Kane, Daniel (2006). The Chinese Language: Its History and Current Usage. Tuttle Publishing. pp. 100–102. ISBN 978-0-8048-3853-5. 
  37. ↑ 37.0 37.1 Douglas, Carstairs (1899). "D." (in English & Amoy Hokkien). Chinese-English dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. pp. 99. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/99/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  38. ↑ Douglas, Carstairs (1899). "dz" (in English & Amoy Hokkien). Chinese-English dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. pp. 99. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/99/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  39. ↑ Fang, Meili (2010). Spoken Hokkien. London: SOAS. p. 13. 
  40. ↑ Douglas, Carstairs (1899). "L." (in English & Amoy Hokkien). Chinese-English dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. pp. 288. https://archive.org/details/chineseenglishdict00doug/page/288/mode/1up?view=theater. 
  41. ↑ Tay, Mary W. J. (1970). "Hokkien Phonological Structure". Journal of Linguistics 6 (1): 81–88. doi:10.1017/S0022226700002371. 
  42. ↑ Fang, Meili (2010). Spoken Hokkien. London: SOAS. pp. 9–11. 
  43. ↑ "Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ chángyòng cí cídiǎn" (in zh). Ministry of Education, R.O.C.. 2011. https://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict_new/index/fulu_fangyan_all.jsp?condition=cuankho. 
  44. ↑ Zhou, Changji 周長楫 (2006) (in zh). Mǐnnán fāngyán dà cídiǎn. Fujian renmin chuban she. pp. 17, 28. ISBN 7-211-03896-9. 
  45. ↑ "Shēngdiào xìtǒng" (in zh). 1 August 2007. http://www.ntcu.edu.tw/tailo/g_in/form/f_05.html. 
  46. ↑ Chang, Yueh-chin; Hsieh, Feng-fan (2013), Complete and Not-So-Complete Tonal Neutralization in Penang Hokkien, https://www.academia.edu/5132554 
  47. ↑ "Nán'ān fāngyán fùcí fēnxī". Fujian Normal University. 2010. https://max.book118.com/html/2014/1216/10683867.shtm. 
  48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 "Chinese, Min Nan". https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nan. 
  49. ↑ "German". http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=deu. 
  50. ↑ Ratte, Alexander T. (2009). A Dialectal and Phonological Analysis of Penghu Taiwanese (PDF) (BA thesis). Williams College. p. 4.
  51. ↑ Li, Y. C. (1986). "Historical Significance of Certain Distinct Grammatical Features in Taiwanese". in McCoy, John. Contributions to Sino-Tibetan Studies. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 393. ISBN 90-04-07850-9. https://books.google.com/books?id=jdYUAAAAIAAJ&q=mccoy+%22Contributions+to+Sino-Tibetan+studies%22&pg=PA393. 
  52. ↑ Lien, Chinfa (2002). Papers from the Third International Conference on Sinology (National Tsing Hua University): 179–216. http://intranet.ling.sinica.edu.tw/eip/FILES/journal/2007.6.23.25251406.1786841.pdf. Retrieved 3 July 2011. 
  53. ↑ Klöter, Henning (2005). Written Taiwanese. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 978-3-447-05093-7. [page needed]
  54. ↑ Lim, Beng Soon; Teoh, Boon Seong (2007). "Malay Lexicalized Items in Penang Peranakan Hokkien". SEALSVIII: 8th Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society (1998). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. p. 165. http://sealang.net/sala/archives/pdf8/soon1998malay.pdf. 
  55. ↑ Chappell, Hilary; Alain Peyraube. "The Analytic Causatives Of Early Modern Southern Min In Diachronic Perspective". Linguistic Studies in Chinese and Neighboring Languages (Paris, France: Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l'Asie Orientale): 1–34. http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/18/07/07/PDF/causatives_early_S_MIN.pdf. 
  56. ↑ 56.0 56.1 Mair, Victor H. (2010). "How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language". University of Pennsylvania. http://www.pinyin.info/readings/mair/taiwanese.html. 
  57. ↑ 57.0 57.1 "Táiwān Mǐnnányǔ chángyòng cí cídiǎn". Ministry of Education, R.O.C.. 2011. http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict_new/index.html. 
  58. ↑ "濕". 17 September 2022. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%BF%95&oldid=69295622. 
  59. ↑ "檨". 5 April 2022. https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=%E6%AA%A8&oldid=66357509. 
  60. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "Teochew, another Minnan language – Oung-Heng HENG | PG 2019". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmUpNeIlfg4. 
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  65. ↑ Wong, Ting-Hong (May 2020). "Education and National Colonialism in Postwar Taiwan: The Paradoxical Use of Private Schools to Extend State Power, 1944–1966". History of Education Quarterly 60 (2): 156–184. doi:10.1017/heq.2020.25. 
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  75. ↑ Lin, Mei-chun (10 March 2002). "Hokkien Should Be Given Official Status, Says Tsu". Taipei Times: p. 1. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2002/03/10/0000127068. 

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