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102-644: 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 , and elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity. In maritime Southeast Asia , Hokkien historically served as

204-617: A Chinese official suggested sending victims to Taiwan and provide "for each person three taels of silver and for each three people one ox". Although this plan was never carried out, the Zheng family maintained an interest in Taiwan that would have dire consequences for the Dutch Empire , who ruled Taiwan as Dutch Formosa at the time. In 1624 and 1626, the Dutch and Spanish forces occupied

306-619: A distinct descendant dialect form of Zhangzhou Hokkien has developed. In Penang , Kedah and Perlis , it is called Penang Hokkien while across the Strait of Malacca in Medan , an almost identical variant is known as Medan Hokkien . Many Chinese Filipinos profess ancestry from Hokkien-speaking areas; Philippine Hokkien is also largely derived from the Quanzhou dialect, particularly Jinjiang and Nan'an dialects with some influence from

408-437: A final consonant ⟨p⟩ , ⟨t⟩ , or ⟨k⟩ may appear. When this happens, it is impossible for the syllable to be nasal. Indeed, these are the counterpart to the nasal final consonants ⟨m⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , and ⟨ng⟩ , respectively, in other tones. However, it is possible to have a nasal 4th or 8th tone syllable such as ⟨siahⁿ⟩ , as long as there

510-457: A group are more mutually intelligible , but it is less so amongst the forementioned group, Quanzhou dialect, and Zhangzhou dialect. 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, and 34% lexically similar ,, Teochew has only 51% intelligibility with

612-441: A large number of Japanese loanwords into its language. Examples of such loanwords (some which had in turn been borrowed from English) include piān-só͘ from benjo ( 便所 , "toilet") , phêng from tsubo ( 坪 , " pyeong ", an areal measurement) (see also Taiwanese units of measurement ), ga-suh from gasu ( 瓦斯 , "gas") , o͘-tó͘-bái from ōtobai ( オートバイ , "autobicycle", motorcycle) . All of these caused

714-682: A military force again composed of fellow hometown hoklo soldiers of Southern Fujian, attacked Taiwan in the Battle of Penghu , ending the Tungning era and beginning Qing dynasty rule (until 1895). In the first decades of the 18th century, the linguistic differences between the Qing imperial bureaucrats and the commoners were recorded by the Mandarin-speaking first Imperial High Commissioner to Taiwan (1722), Huang Shujing : In this place,

816-581: A mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou Hokkien. A similar phenomenon occurred in Xiamen (Amoy) after 1842, when the mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou Hokkien displaced the Quanzhou dialect to yield the modern Amoy dialect . During the Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan , Taiwan began to hold Amoy Hokkien as its standard pronunciation; the Japanese called this mixture Taiwanese ( 臺灣語 , Taiwango ) . Due to

918-571: 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. 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 . During around

1020-436: A result of following the tone change rule twice, these syllables are all pronounced as tone number 1 . Apart from the normal tone sandhi rules described above, there are two special cases where a different set of tone sandhi apply. In a noun with the noun suffix ' 仔 ' ( á ), the penultimate syllable is governed by the following rules: Finally, in the case of a single-syllable adjective triplication (for added emphasis),

1122-407: A result of physical separation and the differing histories of mainland China and Taiwan during the 20th century. Amoyese and Taiwanese are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility with other Hokkien, especially inland, is more difficult. By that standard, Amoyese and Taiwanese may be considered dialects of a single language. Ethnolinguistically, however, Amoyese is part of mainland Hokkien. In 1842, as

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1224-651: A result of the signing of the Treaty of Nanking , Amoy was designated as a trading port in Fujian . Amoy and Kulangsu rapidly developed, which resulted in a large influx of people from neighboring areas such as Quanzhou and Zhangzhou . The mixture of these various accents formed the basis for the Amoy dialect. Over the last several centuries, a large number of Southern Fujianese people from these same areas migrated to Taiwan during Dutch and Qing rule. The "Amoy dialect"

1326-840: 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. Taiwanese Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien ( / ˈ h ɒ k i ɛ n / HOK -ee-en , US also / ˈ h oʊ k i ɛ n / HOH -kee-en ; Chinese : 臺灣話 ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī : Tâi-oân-ōe ; Tâi-lô : Tâi-uân-uē ), or simply Taiwanese , also known as Taiuanoe , Taigi , Taigu ( Chinese : 臺語 ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī / Tâi-lô : Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú ), Taiwanese Minnan ( Chinese : 臺灣閩南語 ), Hoklo and Holo ,

1428-404: A stop consonant and two tones in syllables which do end in a stop consonant (the checked tones ). The tones are traditionally numbered from 1 through 8, with 4 and 8 being the checked tones. The distinction between tones 2 and 6 has been lost among most speakers. Amoy has extremely extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by

1530-522: Is mutually intelligible with the Amoy and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in mainland China, and with Philippine Hokkien to the south in the Philippines , spoken altogether by about 3 million people. The mass popularity of Hokkien entertainment media from Taiwan has given prominence to the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien, especially since the 1980s. Taiwanese Hokkien

1632-503: Is a ninth tone which is used for three main purposes: contractions, triplicated adjectives, and loan words . The writing conventions for this tone vary, but the most common are with a breve accent (U+0306, ⟨◌̆⟩) in POJ and with a double acute accent (U+030B, ⟨◌̋⟩) in Tai-lo. A syllable requires a vowel (or diphthong or triphthong ) to appear in the middle. All consonants can appear at

1734-516: 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; 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

1836-470: Is a variety of Hokkien , a Southern Min language. Like many varieties of Min Chinese , it has distinct literary and colloquial layers of vocabulary, often associated with formal and informal registers respectively. The literary layer can be traced to the late Tang dynasty , and as such is related to Middle Chinese . In contrast, the colloquial layers of Min varieties are believed to have branched from

1938-737: Is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan . It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian . It is one of the national languages of Taiwan . Taiwanese is generally similar to Hokkien spoken in Amoy , Quanzhou , and Zhangzhou , as well as dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia , such as Singaporean Hokkien , Penang Hokkien , Philippine Hokkien , Medan Hokkien , and Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien . It

2040-1068: Is also a great mixture of emigrants from Swatow [ Shantou ] . 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 Riau province and the 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,

2142-548: 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

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2244-719: Is also preserved in the Nan'an dialect ( 色 , 德 , 竹 ) but are pronounced as -iak in Quanzhou Hokkien. * Haklau Min ( Hai Lok Hong , including the Haifeng and Lufeng dialect), Chaw'an / Zhao'an (詔安話), 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 Longyan Min , Datian Min , Zhenan Min have some to little mutual intelligibility with Hokkien, while Teo-Swa Min ,

2346-478: Is comparable to the on and kun readings of the Japanese language . The vernacular readings are generally thought to predate the literary readings, as is the case with the Min Chinese varieties; the literary readings appear to have evolved from Middle Chinese . The following chart illustrates some of the more commonly seen sound shifts: The Swadesh word list, developed by the linguist Morris Swadesh ,

2448-477: Is complex and, at times, controversial, even regarding its name. The language has no official name in Taiwan. Some dislike the name "Taiwanese" as they feel that it belittles other languages spoken on the island such as Mandarin, Hakka , and the indigenous languages . Others prefer the names Southern Min , Minnan or Hokkien as this views Taiwanese as a form of the Chinese variety spoken in Fujian province in mainland China . Others dislike those names for precisely

2550-476: 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

2652-419: Is no final consonant other than ⟨h⟩ . In the dialect spoken near the northern coast of Taiwan, there is no distinction between tones number 8 and number 4 – both are pronounced as if they follow the tone sandhi rules of tone number 4. Tone number 0, typically written with two consecutive hyphens (--a) or a point (·a) before the syllable with this tone, is used to mark enclitics denoting

2754-471: Is non-nasal, and ⟨aⁿ⟩ is the same vowel with concurrent nasal articulation. This is similar to French , Portuguese , Polish , and many other languages. There are two pronunciations of vowel ⟨o⟩ . In the south (e.g., Tainan and Kaohsiung ) it is [ ɤ ] ; in the north (e.g., Taipei ) it is [ o ] . Due to the development of transportation and communication, both pronunciations are common and acceptable throughout

2856-442: Is not affected by the rules. What an ' utterance ' (or ' intonational phrase ') is, in the context of this language, is an ongoing topic for linguistic research, but some general rules apply: The following syllables are unaffected by tone sandhi: The following rules, listed in the traditional pedagogical mnemonic order, govern the pronunciation of tone on each of the syllables affected (that is, all but those described according to

2958-521: Is now largely extinct. However, literary readings of the numbers are used in certain contexts, such as reciting telephone numbers (see Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters ). During the Yuan dynasty , Quanzhou became a major international port for trade with the outside world. From that period onwards, many people from the Hokkien -speaking regions (southern Fujian) started to emigrate overseas due to political and economic reasons. One of

3060-658: Is the Romance of the Litchi Mirror , with extant manuscripts dating from 1566 and 1581. 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: These texts appear to record a primarily Zhangzhou-descended dialect with some attested Quanzhou and Teo-Swa features, from

3162-429: Is used as a tool to study the evolution of languages. It contains a set of basic words which can be found in every language. Amoy grammar shares a similar structure to other Chinese dialects, although it is slightly more complex than Mandarin. Moreover, equivalent Amoy and Mandarin particles are usually not cognates . Amoy complement constructions are roughly parallel to Mandarin ones, although there are variations in

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3264-745: The English and Chinese Dictionary of the Amoy Dialect . Due to possible conflation between the language as a whole with its Xiamen dialect , many proscribe referring to the former as "Amoy", a usage that is more commonly found in older media and some conservative institutions. In the classification used by the Language Atlas of China , the Quanzhang branch of Southern Min consists of the Min varieties originating from Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Xiamen and

3366-535: The Fujian region, which in ancient times was originally Minyue country, populated with non-Chinese Baiyue , 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

3468-717: The Fuzhou language ( Eastern Min ), Pu-Xian Min , Northern Min , Gan Chinese or Hakka . The term Hokkien was first used by Walter Henry Medhurst in his 1832 Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language, According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms , considered to be the earliest English-based Hokkien dictionary and the first major reference work in POJ, though its romanization system differs significantly from modern POJ. In this dictionary,

3570-479: The Kingdom of Tungning . Koxinga originated from the Quanzhou region. Chen Yonghua , who was in charge of establishing the education system of Tungning, also originated from Tong'an county of Quanzhou Prefecture. Because most of the soldiers he brought to Taiwan came from Quanzhou, the prestige variant of Hokkien on the island at the time was the Quanzhou dialect . In 1683, Chinese admiral Shi Lang , marshaling

3672-512: The Mandarin cognate, zǒu , means "to walk". Moreover, cognates may have different lexical categories ; for example, the morpheme phīⁿ ( 鼻 ) means not only "nose" (a noun, as in Mandarin bí ) but also "to smell" (a verb, unlike Mandarin). Among the apparently cognate-less words are many basic words with properties that contrast with similar-meaning words of pan-Chinese derivation. Often

3774-456: 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

3876-582: 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

3978-790: The Philippines , Indonesia , Brunei , Thailand , Cambodia , Myanmar . The spoken Amoy dialect preserves many of the sounds and words from Old Chinese . However, the vocabulary of Amoy was also influenced in its early stages by the Minyue languages spoken by the ancient Minyue peoples. Spoken Amoy is known for its extensive use of nasalization . Unlike Mandarin , the Amoy dialect distinguishes between voiced and voiceless unaspirated initial consonants (Mandarin has no voicing of initial consonants). Unlike English , it differentiates between unaspirated and aspirated voiceless initial consonants (as Mandarin does too). In less technical terms , native Amoy speakers have little difficulty in hearing

4080-446: 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. Tong'an, Xiamen, Taiwanese, Singaporean dialects as

4182-744: The Qing dynasty , as one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking . In 1873, Carstairs Douglas published the Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, With the Principal Variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects , where the language was referred to as the "Language of Amoy" or as the "Amoy Vernacular" and by 1883, John Macgowan would publish another dictionary,

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4284-469: The Sanxiang dialect of 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 practical face-to-face mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. The Xiamen dialect is a variant of the Tung'an dialect. Majority of Taiwanese , from Tainan , to Taichung , to Taipei ,

4386-476: The Tainan and Keelung areas, respectively. During the 40 years of Dutch colonial rule of Taiwan , the Dutch recruited many Chinese from the regions around Quanzhou and Zhangzhou in southern Fujian to help develop Taiwan. In the 1661 Siege of Fort Zeelandia , Chinese general Koxinga , marshaling a military force composed of fellow hometown hoklo soldiers of Southern Fujian, expelled the Dutch and established

4488-501: The cha-po͘-kiáⁿ and cha-bó͘-kiáⁿ pronunciation differ only in the second syllable in consonant voicing and in tone . Unlike Mandarin, Hokkien retains all the final consonants corresponding to those of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the [n] and [ŋ] finals, Hokkien also preserves the [m] , [p] , [t] and [k] finals and has developed the glottal stop [ʔ] . The vowels of Hokkien are listed below: (*)Only certain dialects The following table illustrates some of

4590-498: 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 , and Brunei . This applied to a lesser extent to mainland Southeast Asia . As a result of the significant influence and historical presence of its sizable overseas diaspora, certain considerable to ample amounts of Hokkien loanwords are also historically present in

4692-458: The relations of Western nations with China , and was one of the most frequently learned dialects of Hokkien 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 heavily resembles the Tung'an dialect. All Hokkien dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien, or Holo locally, although there

4794-399: 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

4896-454: The 200 years of rule by the Qing dynasty , 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

4998-590: The Amoy Dialect" , 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" , and its 1899 New Edition with Rev. Thomas Barclay . Hokkien has one of the most diverse phoneme inventories among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin and Cantonese . Hokkien varieties retain many pronunciations that are no longer found in other Chinese varieties. These include

5100-552: The Amoy dialect. There are also Hokkien speakers scattered throughout other parts of Indonesia—including Jakarta and the island of Java —Thailand, Myanmar , East Malaysia , Brunei, Cambodia , and Southern Vietnam, though there is notably more Teochew and Swatow background among descendants of Chinese migrants in Peninsular Malaysia , Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Southern Vietnam. Variants of Hokkien dialects can be traced to 2-4 main principal dialects of origin:

5202-701: 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 ] , &c. In many of these places there

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5304-617: The English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien ( [hɔk˥kiɛn˨˩] ) is etymologically derived from the Hokkien pronunciation of Fujian ( Hok-kiàn ), 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

5406-463: The Taiwanese to deviate from Hokkien used elsewhere. During Kōminka of the late Japanese colonial period, the Japanese language appeared in every corner of Taiwan. The Second Sino-Japanese War beginning in 1937 brought stricter measures into force, and along with the outlawing of romanized Taiwanese , various publications were prohibited and Confucian-style private schools which taught Classical Chinese with literary Southern Min pronunciation –

5508-503: The Tong'an Hokkien|Tung'an dialect (Cheng 1997) whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar and 15% lexically similar. In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar. Hainanese , which is sometimes considered Southern Min, has almost no mutual intelligibility with any form of Hokkien. Hokkien is an analytic language ; in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning. A basic sentence follows

5610-587: The basic vocabulary of the colloquial Taiwanese with the Austronesian and Tai language families; however, such claims are controversial. The literary form of Hokkien once flourished in Fujian and was brought to Taiwan by early emigrants. Tale of the Lychee Mirror , a manuscript of a series of plays published during the Ming dynasty in 1566, is one of the earliest known works. This form of language

5712-464: The belligerents usually grouped around the language they used. History has recorded battles between Hakka speakers and Hokkien speakers, between these and the aborigines , and even between those who spoke different variants of Hokkien. In the early 20th century, the Hoklo people in Taiwan could be categorized as originating from modern-day Xiamen , Quanzhou , Zhangzhou , and Zhangpu . People from

5814-433: The character for big/great , 大 , has a vernacular reading of tōa ( [tua˧] ), but a literary reading of tāi ( [tai˧] ). Because of the loose nature of the rules governing when to use a given pronunciation, a learner of Amoy must often simply memorize the appropriate reading for a word on a case-by-case basis. For single-syllable words, it is more common to use the vernacular pronunciation. This situation

5916-474: 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

6018-445: The country. / i / is a diphthong [ i ɪ ] before -k or -ng (POJ: ek, eng), and is slightly shortened and retracted before -p or -t to something more like [ í̞ ]. Similarly, / u / is slightly shortened and retracted before -t or -n to something more like [ ʊ ]. In the traditional analysis, there are eight "tones", numbered from 1 to 8. Strictly speaking, there are only five tonal contours . But as in other Sinitic languages,

6120-450: The death of Peter and another pirate, Li Dan of Quanzhou, Zheng sought to dominate the Strait of Taiwan . By 1628, he had grown so powerful that the Ming court bestowed him the official title, "Patrolling Admiral". In 1624, the number of Chinese on the island was about 25,000. During the reign of Chongzhen Emperor (1627–1644), there were frequent droughts in the Fujian region. Zheng and

6222-591: The destinations for the emigrants was the island of Taiwan (formerly Formosa), starting around 1600. They brought with their native Hokkien language with them. During the late Ming dynasty , the political chaos pushed more migrants from southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong to Taiwan. The earliest immigrants involved in Taiwan's development included pirate-merchants Pedro Yan Shiqi and Zheng Zhilong . In 1621, Chinese Peter and his forces, hailing from Zhangzhou , occupied Ponkan (modern-day Beigang, Yunlin ) and started to develop Tirosen (modern-day Chiayi ). After

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6324-583: The difference between the following syllables: However, these fully voiced consonants did not derive from the Early Middle Chinese voiced obstruents, but rather from fortition of nasal initials. A comparison between Amoy and other Southern Min languages can be found there. Amoy is similar to other Southern Min variants in that it largely preserves the Middle Chinese tone system of six distinct tones in syllables which do not end in

6426-555: The eastern counties of Longyan ( Xinluo and Zhangping ). 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

6528-403: The extent of a verb action, the end of a noun phrase, etc. A frequent use of this tone is to denote a question, such as in "Chia̍h-pá--bōe?", literally meaning 'Have you eaten yet?'. This is realized by speaking the syllable with either a low-falling tone (3) or a low stop (4). The syllable prior to the ⟨--⟩ maintains its original tone. Although uncommon in written Taiwanese, there

6630-542: The first syllable is governed by the following rules (the second syllable follows the normal tone sandhi rules above): See Tiuⁿ (2001) , Chiung (2003) and the work of Robert L. Cheng (鄭良偉; Tēⁿ Liông-úi) for modern linguistic approaches to tones and tone sandhi in Taiwanese. Modern linguistic studies (by Robert L. Cheng and Chin-An Li, for example) estimate that most (75% to 90%) Taiwanese words have cognates in other Sinitic languages. False friends do exist; for example, cháu ( 走 ) means "to run" in Taiwanese, whereas

6732-451: The following vowels : The vowel ⟨o⟩ is akin to a schwa ; in contrast, ⟨ o͘ ⟩ (with dot) is a more open vowel . In addition, there are several diphthongs and triphthongs (for example, ⟨iau⟩ ). The consonants ⟨m⟩ and ⟨ng⟩ can function as a syllabic nucleus and are therefore included here as vowels. The vowels may be either plain or nasal : ⟨a⟩

6834-536: The former group lacks a standard Han character, and the words are variously considered colloquial, intimate, vulgar, uncultured, or more concrete in meaning than the pan-Chinese synonym. Some examples: lâng ( 人 or 儂 , person, concrete) vs. jîn (人, person, abstract); cha-bó͘ ( 查某 , woman) vs. lú-jîn (女人, woman, literary). Unlike the English Germanic/Latin contrast , however, the two groups of Taiwanese words cannot be as strongly attributed to

6936-575: The former two areas (Quanzhou-speaking) were dominant in the north of the island and along the west coast, whereas people from the latter two areas ( Zhangzhou -speaking) were dominant in the south and perhaps the central plains as well. Although there were conflicts between Quanzhou- and Zhangzhou speakers in Taiwan historically, their gradual intermingling led to the mixture of the two accents . Apart from Lukang city and Yilan County , which have preserved their original Quanzhou and Zhangzhou accents, respectively, almost every region of Taiwan now speaks

7038-417: The influences of two disparate linguistic sources. Amoy dialect The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect ( Chinese : 廈門話 ; pinyin : Xiàménhuà ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī : Ē-mn̂g-ōe ), also known as Amoyese , 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

7140-424: The influx of Japanese loanwords before 1945 and the political separation after 1949, Amoy Hokkien and Taiwanese Hokkien began to diverge slightly. Later, in the 20th century, the conceptualization of Taiwanese was more controversial than most variations of Chinese because, at one time, it marked a clear division between the mainlanders who arrived in 1949 and the pre-existing majority native Taiwanese. Although

7242-423: The initial position. The consonants ⟨p, t, k⟩ and ⟨m, n, ng⟩ (and some consider ⟨h⟩ ) may appear at the end of a syllable. Therefore, it is possible to have syllables such as ⟨ngiau⟩ ("(to) tickle") and ⟨thng⟩ ("soup"). Taiwanese has extremely extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced

7344-422: 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. The varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. Douglas (1873) notes that Singapore and the various Straits Settlements [such as Penang and Malacca ] , Batavia [Jakarta] and other parts of

7446-562: The language in China. Both Amoy and Xiamen come from the Chinese name of the city ( 厦门 ; Xiàmén ; 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

7548-439: The language is as birdcall – totally unintelligible! For example: for the surname Liú , they say 'Lâu'; for Chén , 'Tân'; Zhuāng , 'Chng'; and Zhāng is 'Tioⁿ'. My deputy's surname Wú becomes 'Ngô͘'. My surname Huáng does not even have a proper vowel: it is 'N̂g' here! It is difficult to make sense of this. ( 郡中鴃舌鳥語，全不可曉。如：劉呼「澇」、陳呼「澹」、莊呼「曾」、張呼「丟」。余與吳待御兩姓，吳呼作「襖」，黃則無音，厄影切，更為難省。 ) The tone of Huang's message foretold

7650-555: 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

7752-411: The languages it has had historical contact with in its sprachraum , such as Thai . Kelantan Peranakan Hokkien , 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 . Hokkien speakers in different regions refer to the language as: In parts of Southeast Asia and in

7854-484: The largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Southern Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects: Chiangchew , Chinchew , Tung'an , and Amoy , originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, historical Tung'an County ( 同安縣 , now Xiamen and Kinmen ) and the Port of Amoy , respectively. In the late 1800s, the Amoy dialect attracted special attention, because Amoy

7956-675: The late 17th century when sea bans were lifted, the Port of Xiamen , which overshadowed the old port of Yuegang , became Fujian's main port where trade was legalized. From then, the Xiamen dialect, historically "Amoy", became the main principal dialect spoken overseas, such as in Taiwan under Qing rule , British Malaya , the Straits Settlements ( British Singapore ), British Hong Kong , Spanish Philippines (then later American Philippines ), Dutch East Indies ,and French Cochinchina , etc. Historically, Xiamen had always been part of Tung'an County until after 1912. The Amoy dialect

8058-438: The lifting of martial law in 1987 and the mother tongue movement in the 1990s did Taiwan finally see a true revival in Taiwanese Hokkien. Today, there are a large number of Taiwanese Hokkien scholars dedicated to researching the language. Despite this, however, according to census data, the number of people speaking Taiwanese continued to drop. The history of the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien and its interaction with Mandarin

8160-628: The mainstream of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty . Regional variations within the Taiwanese variant may be traced back to Hokkien variants spoken in Southern Fujian, specifically those from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou , and later from Amoy . Taiwanese also contains loanwords from Japanese and native Formosan languages . Recent work by scholars such as Ekki Lu, Toru Sakai, and Li Khin-hoann, based on former research by scholars such as Ong Iok-tek , has gone so far as to associate part of

8262-494: The more commonly seen sound shifts between various dialects. Pronunciations are provided in Pe̍h-ōe-jī and IPA . 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

8364-485: The old port of Yuegang (modern-day Haicheng , an old port that is now part of Longhai ). Chinese scholars produced rhyme dictionaries describing Hokkien varieties at the beginning of the 19th century: Rev. Walter Henry Medhurst based his 1832 dictionary, "A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language" , on the latter work. Other popular 19th century works are also like those of Rev. John Macgowan's 1883 dictionary, "English and Chinese Dictionary of

8466-411: 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

8568-594: The political and linguistic divisions between the two groups have blurred considerably, the political issues surrounding the Taiwanese have been more controversial and sensitive than for other varieties of Chinese . After the First Sino-Japanese War , due to military defeat to the Japanese, the Qing dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan, causing contact with the Hokkien -speaking regions of mainland China to stop. During Japanese rule, Japanese became an official language in Taiwan, and Taiwanese began to absorb

8670-617: 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. 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

8772-553: The retention of the /t/ initial, which is now /tʂ/ (pinyin zh ) in Mandarin (e.g. 竹 ; 'bamboo' is tik , but zhú in Mandarin), having disappeared before the 6th century in other Chinese varieties. 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. Hokkien has aspirated , unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. For example,

8874-417: The rules listed above): An example of the normal tone sandhi rule is: There are a number of a single syllable words that undergo double tone sandhi, that is, they follow the tone change rule twice and are pronounced according to the second tone change. These syllables are almost always a 4th tone ending in -h , and include the words 欲 (beh), 佮 (kah), 閣 (koh), 才 (chiah), as well as the 3rd tone verb 去 khì. As

8976-535: The rules. What an ' utterance ' is, in the context of this language, is an ongoing topic for linguistic research. For the purpose of this article, an utterance may be considered a word , a phrase , or a short sentence . The diagram illustrates the rules that govern the pronunciation of a tone on each of the syllables affected (that is, all but the last in an utterance): [REDACTED] Like other languages of Southern Min , Amoy has complex rules for literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters . For example,

9078-803: The same reason. In the American Community Survey run by the United States Census Bureau , Taiwanese was referred to as "Formosan" from 2012 to 2015 and as "Min Nan Chinese" since 2016. Phonologically , Hokkien is a tonal language with extensive tone sandhi rules. Syllables consist maximally of an initial consonant , a vowel , a final consonant, and a tone. Unlike many other varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin, Cantonese , Hakka , etc., there are no native labiodental phonemes (i.e. [ f ] , [ v ] , [ ʋ ] , etc.). Taiwanese has

9180-402: 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

9282-426: 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. Amoyese 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

9384-401: The traditional reckoning), used only in special or foreign loan words. This means that Hokkien dialects have between 5 and 7 phonemic tones. Tone sandhi is extensive. 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. Hokkien is spoken in a variety of accents and dialects across

9486-535: The two kinds of stopped syllables are also considered to be tones and assigned numbers 4 and 8. Words of tone 6 have merged into either tone 2 or tone 7 in most Taiwanese variants, and thus tone 6 is duplicated in the count. Here the eight tones are shown, following the traditional tone class categorization, named after the tones of Middle Chinese : See (for one example) the modern phonological analysis in Chiung (2003) , which challenges these notions. For tones 4 and 8,

9588-477: The uneasy relationships between different language communities and colonial establishments over the next few centuries. During the 200 years of Qing dynasty rule, thousands of immigrants from Fujian arrived yearly; the population was over one million in the middle of the 18th century. Civil unrest and armed conflicts were frequent. In addition to resistance against governments (both Chinese and later Japanese), battles between ethnic groups were also significant:

9690-456: The use of written Taiwanese Hokkien (e.g. Pe̍h-ōe-jī , a phonetic rendering of spoken Hokkien using the Latin alphabet) as part of its general policy of political repression. In 1964 the use of spoken Taiwanese Hokkien or Hakka in schools or in official settings was forbidden; violations of the prohibition in schools often resulted in physical punishments, fines, or humiliation. Only after

9792-482: 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 ; from then on, "Hokkien" is used more often. Historically, Hokkien was also known as " Amoy ", after the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation of Xiamen ( Ēe-mûi ), the principal port in southern Fujian during

9894-450: The word 開 ; khui ; 'open' and 關 ; kuiⁿ ; 'close' have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and nasality of the vowel. In addition, Hokkien has labial initial consonants such as m in 命 ; miā ; 'life'. Another example is 查埔囝 ; cha-po͘-kiáⁿ / ta-po͘-kiáⁿ / ta-po͘-káⁿ ; 'boy' and 查某囝 ; cha-bó͘-kiáⁿ / cha̋u-kiáⁿ / cha̋u-káⁿ / chő͘-kiáⁿ ; 'girl', which for

9996-546: Was a brief cultural exchange with mainland China followed by further oppression. The Chinese Civil War resulted in another political separation when the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) government retreated to Taiwan following their defeat by the communists in 1949. The influx of two million soldiers and civilians caused the population of Taiwan to increase from 6 million to 8 million. The government subsequently promoted Mandarin while suppressing, but short of banning,

10098-456: Was closed down in 1939. Taiwanese thus was reduced to a common daily language . In 1937 the colonial government introduced a concept called "National Language Family" ( 国語 の 家 ), which meant that families that proved that they adopted Japanese as their daily language enjoyed benefits such as greater access to education. After the handover of Taiwan to the Republic of China in 1945, there

10200-526: Was considered the vernacular of Taiwan. Eventually, the mixture of accents spoken in Taiwan became popularly known as Taiwanese during Imperial Japanese rule . As in American and British English , there are subtle lexical and phonological differences between modern Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien; however, these differences do not generally pose any barriers to communication. Amoy dialect speakers also migrated to Southeast Asia , mainly in Singapore , Malaysia ,

10302-462: Was one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking , but before that it had not attracted attention. 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. It has played an influential role in history, especially in

10404-507: Was the main prestige form of Hokkien known from the late 17th century to the Republican era. Due to this, dictionaries, 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". Several playscripts survive from the late 16th century, written in a mixture of Quanzhou and Chaozhou dialects. The most important

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