HOME
*



picture info

Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in Taiwan, and it is also widely spoken within the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia; and by other overseas Chinese beyond Asia and all over the world. The Hokkien 'dialects' are not all mutually intelligible, but they are held together by ethnolinguistic identity. Taiwanese Hokkien is, however, mutually intelligible with the 2 to 3 million speakers in Xiamen and Singapore. In 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, Indonesia, Philippines and some parts of Indochina ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Singaporean Hokkien
Singaporean Hokkien is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu. It bears similarities with the Amoy spoken in Amoy, now better known as Xiamen, as well as Taiwanese Hokkien which is spoken in Taiwan. Hokkien is the Min Nan pronunciation for the province of Fujian, and is generally the term used by the Chinese in Southeast Asia to refer to the 'Banlam' dialect. Singaporean Hokkien generally uses Amoy as its standard, and its accent is predominantly based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech, with a greater inclination towards the former. Like many spoken languages in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced by other languages or dialects spoken in Singapore. For instance, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew, and is sometimes regarded as a combined Hokkien–Teochew speech. In addition, it has many loanwords from Si ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Penang Hokkien
Penang Hokkien (; Tâi-lô: ''Pin-siânn Hok-kiàn-uā''; ; ) is a local variant of Hokkien spoken in Penang, Malaysia. It is spoken as a mother tongue by 63.9% of Penang's Chinese community, and also by some Penangite Indians and Penangite Malays as a third language spoken by these two other ethnic groups. It was once the '' lingua franca'' among the majority Chinese population in Penang, Kedah, Perlis and northern Perak. However, since the 1980s, many young speakers have shifted towards Malaysian Mandarin, under the Speak Mandarin Campaign in Chinese-medium schools in Malaysia, even though Mandarin was not previously spoken in these regions. Mandarin has been adopted as the only language of instruction in Chinese schools and, from the 1980s to mid-2010s, the schools had rules to penalize students and teachers for using non-Mandarin varieties of Chinese. Penang Hokkien is a subdialect of Zhangzhou (漳州; ''Tsiang-tsiu'') Chinese, with widespread use of Malay a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Taiwanese Hokkien
Taiwanese Hokkien () (; Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-uân-uē''), also known as Taigi/Taigu (; Pe̍h-ōe-jī/ Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú''), Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by about 70%+ of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of Taiwanese people descended from immigrants of southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan. Taiwanese is generally similar to spoken Amoy Hokkien, Quanzhou Hokkien, and Zhangzhou Hokkien, as well as their dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia, such as Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien, Philippine Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, & Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. It is mutually intelligible with Amoy Hokkien and Zhangzhou Hokkien at the mouth of the Jiulong River (九龍) immediately to the west in mainland China and with Philippine Hokkien to the south, spoken altogether by about 3 million people. The mass p ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hokkien In The Philippines
Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch, primarily spoken vernacularly by Chinese Filipinos in the Philippines, where it serves as the local Chinese ''lingua franca'', primarily spoken as an oral language, within the overseas Chinese community in the Philippines and acts as the heritage language of a majority of Chinese Filipinos. The use of Hokkien in the Philippines is influenced by Philippine Spanish, Filipino (Tagalog) and Philippine English. Terminology The term ''Philippine Hokkien'' is used when differentiating the variety of Hokkien spoken in the Philippines from those spoken in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries. Historically, it was also known in Philippine English, Filipino (Tagalog), and other Philippine languages as ''Fookien'' or ''Fukien'' across the country, derived from the Chinese postal romanization of the Nanjing court dialect Mandarin reading of Fujian province ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Written Hokkien
Hokkien, a Min Nan variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the Republic of China Ministry of Education including its Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan, but there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in the Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music. History Prior to the modern era, the main written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on Old Chinese used in ancient times. Whilst the written form of Chinese mostly remained static, the spoken varieties of Chinese diverged from Old Chinese. In the early 20th century, reformers in China saw the need for language reform and ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan (many citizens are descendants of settlers from Fujian), Eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and Southern Zhejiang. The Minnan dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. It is the most populous branch of Min Chinese, spoken by an estimated 48 million people in c. 2017–2018. In common parlance and in the narrower sense, Southern Min refers to the Quanzhang or Hokkien-Taiwanese variety of Southern Min originating from Southern Fujian in Mainland China. This is spoken mainly in Fujian, Taiwan, as well as certain parts of Southeast Asia. The Quanzhang variety is often called simply "Minnan Proper". It ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hoklo People
The Hoklo people or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such as Banlam (Minnan) people () or Hokkien people (). There are significant overseas populations in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Americas. Etymology In Taiwan, there are three common ways to write ''Hoklo'' in Chinese characters, although none have been established as etymologically correct: * mistakenly used by outsiders to emphasize their native connection to Fujian province. It is not an accurate transliteration in terms from Hokkien itself although it may correspond to an actual usage in Hakka. * emphasizes their purported long history originating from the area south of the Yellow River. This term does not exist in Hokkien. The transliteration is a phonologically inaccurate folk etymology, though the Mand ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien
Southern Malaysian Hokkien () is a local variant of the Min Nan Chinese variety spoken in Central and Southern Peninsular Malaysia ( Klang, Melaka, Muar, Tangkak, Segamat, Batu Pahat, Pontian and Johor Bahru). Due to geographical proximity, it is heavily influenced by Singaporean Hokkien. This dialect is based on Quanzhou-accented varieties of Min Nan, including the Eng Choon (Yongchun) dialect. It is markedly distinct from Penang Hokkien and Medan Hokkien, which are based on the Zhangzhou dialect. Similar to the situation in Singapore, the term ''Hokkien'' is generally used by the Chinese in South-east Asia to refer to Min Nan Chinese (闽南语). Southern Malaysian Hokkien is based on the Quanzhou dialect with some influence from the Amoy dialect. Phonology This section is based on Eng Choon (Yongchun) Hokkien spoken in Melaka. Vowels There are eight phonemic vowels: Tones There are seven tones, five of which are long tones and two are checked tones. Like other ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Medan Hokkien
Medan Hokkien is a local variety of Hokkien spoken among Chinese Indonesians in Medan and Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the ''lingua franca'' in Medan as well as other northern city states of North Sumatra surrounding it, and is a subdialect of the Zhangzhou (漳州) dialects, together with widespread use of Indonesian and English borrowed words. It is predominantly a spoken dialect: it is rarely written in Chinese characters as Indonesia had banned the use of Chinese characters back in New Order era. Comparing Medan Hokkien to other Hokkien dialects in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, Medan Hokkien is still understandable to a certain extent. Medan Hokkien speakers may have a similar accent as Malaysian and Singaporean speakers. The closest comparison to Medan Hokkien is Penang Hokkien. Both are so similar that it is hard to tell the difference between the two if the Medan Hokkien speaker does not mix Indonesian language borrowings in their conversation. See also * Hokl ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Amoy Dialect
The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect (), also known as Amoynese, Amoy Hokkien, Xiamenese or Xiamen Hokkien, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen (historically known as "Amoy") and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the southern part of Fujian province. Currently, it is one of the most widely researched and studied varieties of Southern Min. It has historically come to be one of the more standardized varieties. Amoynese and Taiwanese are both historically mixtures of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. As such, they are very closely aligned phonologically. There are some differences between the two, especially lexical, as a result of physical separation and the differing histories of mainland China and Taiwan during the 20th century. Amoynese and Taiwanese are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility with other Hokkien, especially inland, is more difficult. By that standard, Amoynese and Taiwanese may be considered dialects of a single language. Ethnolinguisticall ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pe̍h-ōe-jī
(; ; ), also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionary, missionaries working among the Chinese emigration, Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the ''Taiwan Church News''. During Taiwan under Japanese rule (1895–1945), the use of was suppressed and Taiwanese kana encouraged; it faced further suppression during the Kuomintang Martial law in Taiwan, martial law period (1947� ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Varieties Of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese. Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns i ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]