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104-511: The Quanzhou dialects are classified as Hokkien , a group of Southern Min varieties. In Fujian , the Quanzhou dialects form the northern subgroup ( 北片 ) of Southern Min. The dialect of urban Quanzhou is one of the oldest dialects of Southern Min, and along with the urban Zhangzhou dialect , it forms the basis for all modern varieties. When compared with other varieties of Hokkien, the urban Quanzhou dialect has an intelligibility of 87.5% with

208-461: A common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as Guānhuà ( 官話 / 官话 'officer speech'). While never formally defined, knowledge of this language was essential for a career in the imperial bureaucracy. In the early years of the Republic of China , Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese , which was based on northern dialects. In the 1930s,

312-488: A rime dictionary published in 601, noted wide variations in pronunciation between regions, and was created with the goal of defining a standard system of pronunciation for reading the classics. This standard is known as Middle Chinese , and is believed to be a diasystem , based on a compromise between the reading traditions of the northern and southern capitals. The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, which resulted in relative linguistic homogeneity over

416-500: A tone split conditioned by syllabic onsets. Syllables with voiced initials tended to be pronounced with a lower pitch, and by the late Tang dynasty , each of the tones had split into two registers conditioned by the initials, known as "upper" ( 阴 / 陰 yīn ) and "lower" ( 阳 / 陽 yáng ). When voicing was lost in all dialects except in the Wu and Old Xiang groups, this distinction became phonemic, yielding eight tonal categories, with

520-602: A branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family , many of which are not mutually intelligible . Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin , Wu , Min , Xiang , Gan , Jin , 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 have

624-678: A classification of Li Rong , distinguishing three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect (northwestern Hainan ), Mai (southern Hainan), Waxiang (northwestern Hunan ), Xiangnan Tuhua (southern Hunan), Shaozhou Tuhua (northern Guangdong), and the forms of Chinese spoken by the She people ( She Chinese ) and the Miao people . She Chinese, Xiangnan Tuhua, Shaozhou Tuhua and unclassified varieties of southwest Jiangxi appear to be related to Hakka. Most of

728-457: A combination of innovations and retention of distinctions from Middle Chinese: Chinese finals may be analysed as an optional medial glide , a main vowel and an optional coda. Conservative vowel systems, such as those of Gan dialects , have high vowels /i/ , /u/ and /y/ , which also function as medials, mid vowels /e/ and /o/ , and a low /a/ -like vowel. In other dialects, including Mandarin dialects, /o/ has merged with /a/ , leaving

832-480: A compound word or phrase. This process is so extensive in Shanghainese that the tone system is reduced to a pitch accent system much like modern Japanese . The tonal categories of modern varieties can be related by considering their derivation from the four tones of Middle Chinese , though cognate tonal categories in different dialects are often realized as quite different pitch contours. Middle Chinese had

936-563: 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

1040-548: A final and a tone . In general, southern varieties have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. Some varieties, such as Cantonese, Hokkien and Shanghainese , include syllabic nasals as independent syllables. In the 42 varieties surveyed in the Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects , the number of initials (including

1144-460: 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

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1248-416: A marker, usually the same as the attributive marker, though some varieties use a different marker. All varieties have transitive and intransitive verbs. Instead of adjectives, Chinese varieties use stative verbs , which can function as predicates but differ from intransitive verbs in being modifiable by degree adverbs. Ditransitive sentences vary, with northern varieties placing the indirect object before

1352-498: A primary division between northern groups (Mandarin and Jin) and all others, with Min as an identifiable branch. Because speakers share a standard written form , and have a common cultural heritage with long periods of political unity, the varieties are popularly perceived among native speakers as variants of a single Chinese language, and this is also the official position. Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics

1456-524: 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

1560-665: A reduced pitch range that is determined by the preceding syllable. Most morphemes in Chinese varieties are monosyllables descended from Old Chinese words, and have cognates in all varieties: Southern varieties also include distinctive substrata of vocabulary of non-Chinese origin. Some of these words may have come from Tai–Kadai and Austroasiatic languages. Chinese varieties generally lack inflectional morphology and instead express grammatical categories using analytic means such as particles and prepositions . There are major differences between northern and southern varieties, but often some northern areas share features found in

1664-485: 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. Varieties of Chinese There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming

1768-851: A single mid vowel with a wide range of allophones . Many dialects, particularly in northern and central China, have apical or retroflex vowels, which are syllabic fricatives derived from high vowels following sibilant initials. In many Wu dialects , vowels and final glides have monophthongized , producing a rich inventory of vowels in open syllables. Reduction of medials is common in Yue dialects . The Middle Chinese codas, consisting of glides /j/ and /w/ , nasals /m/ , /n/ and /ŋ/ , and stops /p/ , /t/ and /k/ , are best preserved in southern dialects, particularly Yue dialects such as Cantonese. In some Min dialects, nasals and stops following open vowels have shifted to nasalization and glottal stops respectively. In Jin, Lower Yangtze Mandarin and Wu dialects,

1872-460: A six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables. Cantonese maintains these eight tonal categories and has developed an additional distinction in checked syllables. (The latter distinction has disappeared again in many varieties.) However, most Chinese varieties have reduced the number of tonal distinctions. For example, in Mandarin, the tones resulting from

1976-575: A standard national language with pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect was adopted, but with vocabulary drawn from a range of Mandarin varieties, and grammar based on literature in the modern written vernacular. Standard Chinese is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, and is one of the official languages of Singapore. It has become a pluricentric language , with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between

2080-471: A third tone changes to a second tone when followed by another third tone. Particularly complex sandhi patterns are found in Wu dialects and coastal Min dialects. In Shanghainese, the tone of all syllables in a word is determined by the tone of the first, so that Shanghainese has word rather than syllable tone. In northern varieties, many particles or suffixes are weakly stressed or atonic syllables. These are much rarer in southern varieties. Such syllables have

2184-577: A three-way tonal contrast in syllables with vocalic or nasal endings. The traditional names of the tonal categories are 'level'/'even' ( 平 píng ), 'rising' ( 上 shǎng ) and 'departing'/'going' ( 去 qù ). Syllables ending in a stop consonant /p/ , /t/ or /k/ ( checked syllables ) had no tonal contrasts but were traditionally treated as a fourth tone category, 'entering' ( 入 rù ), corresponding to syllables ending in nasals /m/ , /n/ , or /ŋ/ . The tones of Middle Chinese, as well as similar systems in neighbouring languages, experienced

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2288-620: A velar or glottal initial: Plural personal pronouns may be marked with a suffix, noun or phrase in different varieties. The suffix men 们 / 們 is common in the north, but several different suffixes are use elsewhere. In some varieties, especially in the Wu area, different suffixes are used for first, second and third person pronouns. Case is not marked, except in varieties in the Qinghai–Gansu sprachbund . The forms of demonstratives vary greatly, with few cognates between different areas. A two-way distinction between proximal and distal

2392-810: A whole. As with the Romance languages descended from Latin , the ancestral language was spread by imperial expansion over substrate languages 2000 years ago, by the Qin and Han empires in China, and the Roman Empire in Europe. Medieval Latin remained the standard for scholarly and administrative writing in Western Europe for centuries, influencing local varieties much like Literary Chinese did in China. In both cases, local forms of speech diverged from both

2496-516: A wide area. Contrastingly, the mountains and rivers of southern China contain all six of the other major Chinese dialect groups, with each in turn featuring great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian . Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local language. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using

2600-662: A zero initial) ranges from 15 in some southern dialects to a high of 35 in Chongming dialect , spoken in Chongming Island , Shanghai . The initial system of the Fuzhou dialect of northern Fujian is a minimal example. With the exception of /ŋ/ , which is often merged with the zero initial, the initials of this dialect are present in all Chinese varieties, although several varieties do not distinguish /n/ from /l/ . However, most varieties have additional initials, due to

2704-542: Is a summary of the rules: Hokkien Hokkien ( / ˈ h ɒ k i ɛ n / HOK -ee-en , US also / ˈ h oʊ k i ɛ n / HOH -kee-en ) is a variety of the Southern Min languages, 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

2808-517: 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

2912-1069: 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,

3016-548: 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

3120-720: 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 ,

3224-587: 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

Quanzhou dialects - Misplaced Pages Continue

3328-454: Is important to its meaning. 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

3432-462: Is most common, but some varieties have a single neutral demonstrative, while others distinguish three or more on the basis of distance, visibility or other properties. An extreme example is found in a variety spoken in Yongxin County , Jiangxi, where five grades of distance are distinguished. Attributive constructions typically have the form NP/VP + ATTR + NP, where the last noun phrase

3536-470: Is similarly used as a literary form by speakers of all varieties. Dialectologist Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, although there are also some sharp boundaries. However, the rate of change in mutual intelligibility varies immensely depending on region. For example,

3640-662: 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

3744-456: Is the head and the attributive marker is usually a cognate of de 的 in the north or a classifier in the south. The latter pattern is also common in the languages of Southeast Asia. A few varieties in the Jiang–Huai, Wu, southern Min and Yue areas feature the old southern pattern of a zero attributive marker. Nominalization of verb phrases or predicates is achieved by following them with

3848-566: Is to use dialect for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status), with regional groupings like Mandarin and Wu called dialect groups . Other linguists choose to refer to the major groups as languages. However, each of these groups contains mutually unintelligible varieties. ISO 639-3 and the Ethnologue assign language codes to each of the top-level groups listed above except Min and Pinghua, whose subdivisions are assigned five and two codes respectively. Some linguists refer to

3952-459: The Amoy dialect and 79.7% with the urban Zhangzhou dialect . Before the 19th century, the dialect of Quanzhou proper was the representative dialect of Southern Min in Fujian because of Quanzhou's historical and economic prominence, but as Xiamen developed into the political, economic and cultural center of southern Fujian , the Amoy dialect gradually took the place of the Quanzhou dialect as

4056-746: 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

4160-535: 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

4264-714: 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,

Quanzhou dialects - Misplaced Pages Continue

4368-612: The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , Chinese varieties require an intervening classifier when a noun is preceded by a demonstrative or numeral. The inventory of classifiers tends to be larger in the south than in the north, where some varieties use only the general classifier cognate with ge 个 / 個 . First- and second-person pronouns are cognate across all varieties. For third-person pronouns, Jin, Mandarin, and Xiang varieties have cognate forms, but other varieties generally use forms that originally had

4472-404: 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

4576-522: 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

4680-505: 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

4784-799: 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,

4888-470: 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 ,

4992-502: 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

5096-499: 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

5200-517: 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

5304-852: The tree model to Chinese. Scholars account for the transitional nature of the central varieties in terms of wave models . Iwata argues that innovations have been transmitted from the north across the Huai River to the Lower Yangtze Mandarin area and from there southeast to the Wu area and westwards along the Yangtze River valley and thence to southwestern areas, leaving the hills of the southeast largely untouched. Some dialect boundaries , such as between Wu and Min, are particularly abrupt, while others, such as between Mandarin and Xiang or between Min and Hakka, are much less clearly defined. Several east-west isoglosses run along

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5408-556: 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

5512-593: 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

5616-552: 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:

5720-463: The Beijing dialect distinguishes mā ( 妈 / 媽 'mother'), má ( 麻 'hemp'), mǎ ( 马 / 馬 'horse) and mà ( 骂 / 罵 'to scold'). The number of tonal contrasts varies between dialects, with Northern dialects tending to have fewer distinctions than Southern ones. Many dialects have tone sandhi , in which the pitch contour of a syllable is affected by the tones of adjacent syllables in

5824-701: 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

5928-617: 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

6032-768: The Huai and Yangtze Rivers. A north-south barrier is formed by the Tianmu and Wuyi Mountains . Most assessments of mutual intelligibility of varieties of Chinese in the literature are impressionistic. Functional intelligibility testing is time-consuming in any language family, and usually not done when more than 10 varieties are to be compared. However, one 2009 study aimed to measure intelligibility between 15 Chinese provinces. In each province, 15 university students were recruited as speakers and 15 older rural inhabitants recruited as listeners. The listeners were then tested on their comprehension of isolated words and of particular words in

6136-477: The Latin alphabet supplanted Latin itself, and states eventually developed their own standard languages . In China, Literary Chinese was predominantly used in formal writing until the early 20th century. Written Chinese, read with different local pronunciations, continued to serve as a source of vocabulary for the local varieties. The new standard written vernacular Chinese , the counterpart of spoken Standard Chinese,

6240-454: 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

6344-435: The coastal area from Zhejiang to eastern Guangdong . Standard Chinese takes its phonology from the Beijing dialect, with vocabulary from the Mandarin group and grammar based on literature in the modern written vernacular . It is one of the official languages of China and one of the four official languages of Singapore . It has become a pluricentric language , with differences in pronunciation and vocabulary between

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6448-517: The context of sentences spoken by speakers from all 15 of the provinces surveyed. The results demonstrated significant levels of unintelligibility between areas, even within the Mandarin group. In a few cases, listeners understood fewer than 70% of words spoken by speakers from the same province, indicating significant differences between urban and rural varieties. As expected from the wide use of Standard Chinese , speakers from Beijing were understood more than speakers from elsewhere. The scores supported

6552-474: 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

6656-933: The dialects of the Southern zone are derived from a standard used in the Yangtze valley during the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), which he called Old Southern Chinese, while the Central zone was a transitional area of dialects that were originally of southern type, but overlain with centuries of Northern influence. Hilary Chappell proposed a refined model, dividing Norman's Northern zone into Northern and Southwestern areas, and his Southern zone into Southeastern (Min) and Far Southern (Yue and Hakka) areas, with Pinghua transitional between Southwestern and Far Southern areas. The long history of migration of peoples and interaction between speakers of different dialects makes it difficult to apply

6760-464: The direct object and southern varieties using the reverse order. All varieties have copular sentences of the form NP1 + COP + NP2, though the copula varies. Most Yue and Hakka varieties use a form cognate with xì 係 'to connect'. All other varieties use a form cognate with shì 是 , which was a demonstrative in Classical Chinese but began to be used as a copula from the Han period. All varieties form existential sentences with

6864-444: 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

6968-554: 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 , 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

7072-419: The greatest differences 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 in

7176-423: 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

7280-435: 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

7384-475: 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

7488-411: 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

7592-403: The languages previously dominant in these areas, and forms of the language spoken in different regions began to diverge. During periods of political unity there was a tendency for states to promote the use of a standard language across the territory they controlled, in order to facilitate communication between people from different regions. The first evidence of dialectal variation is found in

7696-486: 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

7800-728: 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

7904-548: The literary standard and each other, producing dialect continua with mutually unintelligible varieties separated by long distances. However, a major difference between China and Western Europe is the historical reestablishment of political unity in 6th century China by the Sui dynasty , a unity that has persisted with relatively brief interludes until the present day. Meanwhile, Europe remained politically decentralized, and developed numerous independent states. Vernacular writing using

8008-432: The local varieties as languages, numbering in the hundreds. The Chinese term fāngyán 方言 , literally 'place speech', was the title of the first work of Chinese dialectology in the Han dynasty , and has had a range of meanings in the millennia since. It is used for any regional subdivision of Chinese, from the speech of a village to major branches such as Mandarin and Wu. Linguists writing in Chinese often qualify

8112-494: The lower-pitched allophones occur with initial voiced consonants. (Traditional Chinese classification nonetheless counts these as different tones.) Most Wu dialects retain the tone categories of Middle Chinese, but in Shanghainese several of these have merged. Many Chinese varieties exhibit tone sandhi , in which the realization of a tone varies depending on the context of the syllable. For example, in Standard Chinese

8216-480: The main routes of migration and communication in southern China. The first scientific classifications, based primarily on the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials, were produced by Wang Li in 1936 and Li Fang-Kuei in 1937, with minor modifications by other linguists since. The conventionally accepted set of seven dialect groups first appeared in the second edition (1980) of Yuan Jiahua 's dialectology handbook: The Language Atlas of China (1987) follows

8320-460: The merger is a recent innovation. In Hokkien, evidently even during the early 17th century, /l/ can fluctuate freely in initial position as either a flap [ɾ] or voiced alveolar plosive stop [d] . There are 87 rimes: The actual pronunciation of the vowel /ə/ has a wider opening, approaching [ɤ] . For some speakers, especially younger ones, the vowel /ə/ is often realized as [e] , e.g. pronouncing 飞 / 飛 ( /pə/ , "to fly") as [pe] , and

8424-494: 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

8528-470: The nasal stops [ m ] , [ n ] and [ ŋ ] , respectively. The inventory of initial consonants in the Quanzhou dialect is identical to the Amoy dialect and almost identical to the Zhangzhou dialect . The Quanzhou dialect is missing the phoneme / dz / found in the Zhangzhou dialect due to a merger of / dz / into / l / . The distinction between / dz / ( 日 ) and / l / ( 柳 )

8632-488: 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

8736-411: 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

8840-514: The representative dialect. However, the Quanzhou dialect is still considered to be the standard dialect for Liyuan opera and nanyin music . This section is mostly based on the variety spoken in the urban area of Quanzhou, specifically in Licheng District . There are 14 phonemic initials, including the zero initial (not included below): When the rhyme is nasalized, the three voiced phonemes /b/ , /l/ and /ɡ/ are realized as

8944-670: 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

9048-554: 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,

9152-527: The south, and vice versa. The usual unmarked word order in Chinese varieties is subject–verb–object , with other orders used for emphasis or contrast. Modifiers usually precede the word they modify, so that adjectives precede nouns. Instances in which the modifier follows the head are mainly found in the south, and are attributed to substrate influences from languages formerly dominant in the area, especially Kra–Dai languages . Nouns in Chinese varieties are generally not marked for number. As in languages of

9256-402: 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

9360-433: The split of Middle Chinese rising and departing tones merged, leaving four tones. Furthermore, final stop consonants disappeared in most Mandarin dialects, and such syllables were distributed amongst the four remaining tones in a manner that is only partially predictable. In Wu, voiced obstruents were retained, and the tone split never became phonemic: the higher-pitched allophones occur with initial voiceless consonants, and

9464-535: The stops have merged as a final glottal stop , while in most northern varieties they have disappeared. In Mandarin dialects final /m/ has merged with /n/ , while some central dialects have a single nasal coda, in some cases realized as a nasalization of the vowel. All varieties of Chinese, like neighbouring languages in the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area , have phonemic tones . Each syllable may be pronounced with between three and seven distinct pitch contours, denoting different morphemes. For example,

9568-405: The term to distinguish different levels of classification. All these terms have customarily been translated into English as dialect , a practice that has been criticized as confusing. The neologisms regionalect and topolect have been proposed as alternative renderings of fāngyán . The usual unit of analysis is the syllable, traditionally analysed as consisting of an initial consonant ,

9672-591: The texts of the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC). Although the Zhou royal domain was no longer politically powerful, its speech still represented a model for communication across China. The Fangyan (early 1st century AD) is devoted to differences in vocabulary between regions. Commentaries from the Eastern Han (25–220 AD) provide significant evidence of local differences in pronunciation. The Qieyun ,

9776-497: The three forms. Standard Chinese is much more widely studied than any other variety of Chinese, and its use is now dominant in public life on the mainland. Outside of China and Taiwan, the only varieties of Chinese commonly taught in university courses are Standard Chinese and Cantonese . Local varieties from different areas of China are often mutually unintelligible, differing at least as much as different Romance languages and perhaps even as much as Indo-European languages as

9880-570: The three forms. It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations . At the end of the 2nd millennium BC, a form of Chinese was spoken in a compact area along the lower Wei River and middle Yellow River . Use of this language expanded eastwards across the North China Plain into Shandong , and then southwards into the Yangtze River valley and the hills of south China. Chinese eventually replaced many of

9984-403: 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

10088-481: The varieties of Mandarin spoken in all three northeastern Chinese provinces are mutually intelligible, but in the province of Fujian, where Min varieties predominate, the speech of neighbouring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible. Proportions of first-language speakers Classifications of Chinese varieties in the late 19th century and early 20th century were based on impressionistic criteria. They often followed river systems, which were historically

10192-585: The vocabulary of the Bai language of Yunnan appears to be related to Chinese words, though many are clearly loans from the last few centuries. Some scholars have suggested that it represents a very early branching from Chinese, while others argue that it is a more distantly related Sino-Tibetan language overlaid with two millennia of loans. Jerry Norman classified the traditional seven dialect groups into three zones: Northern (Mandarin), Central (Wu, Gan, and Xiang) and Southern (Hakka, Yue, and Min). He argued that

10296-416: The vowel /ɯ/ is either realized as [i] , e.g. pronouncing 猪 / 豬 ( /tɯ/ , "pig") as [ti] , or as [u] , e.g. pronouncing 女 ( /lɯ/ , "woman") as [lu] . For single syllables, there are seven tones: In addition to these tones, there is also a neutral tone. As with other dialects of Hokkien , the tone sandhi rules are applied to every syllable but the final syllable in an utterance. The following

10400-482: 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

10504-450: 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

10608-464: 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

10712-489: Was still made in the early 19th century, as seen in Huìyīn Miàowù ( 彙音妙悟 ) by Huang Qian ( 黃謙 ), but Huìyīn Miàowù already has nine characters categorized into both initials. Rev. Carstairs Douglas has already observed the merger in the late 19th century. In some areas of Yongchun , Anxi and Nan'an , there are still some people, especially those in the older generation, who distinguish / dz / from / l / , showing that

10816-507: 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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