23 Facts About Hokkien Chinese

Hokkien variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China.

The Hokkien Chinese 'dialects' are not all mutually intelligible, but they are held together by ethnolinguistic identity.

Taiwanese Hokkien Chinese is mutually intelligible with the 2 to 3 million speakers in Xiamen and Singapore.

In Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and some parts of Indochina.

In parts of Southeast Asia and in the English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails.

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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 present in Fujian such as the Fuzhou language, Pu-Xian Min, Northern Min, Gan Chinese or Hakka.

Historically, Hokkien Chinese was known as "Amoy", after the Hokkien Chinese name of Xiamen, the principal port of Southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty as one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking.

Hokkien Chinese is spoken in the southern, seaward quarter of Fujian province, southeastern Zhejiang, and eastern Namoa Island 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 Taiping to the Thai border in Malaysia, especially around Penang.

All hokkien dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien Chinese, or Holo locally, although there is a tendency to call these Taiwanese language for historical reasons.

Unlike Mandarin, Hokkien retains all the final consonants corresponding to those of Middle Chinese.

Hokkien Chinese language is spoken in a variety of accents and dialects across the Minnan region.

The Hokkien Chinese 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 is not present in most dialects of Hokkien Chinese spoken in Quanzhou, having been merged into the d or l initials.

Hokkien Chinese is an analytic language; in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning.

Hokkien Chinese dialects differ in the pronunciation of some pronouns, and differ in how to form plural pronouns.

Hokkien Chinese dialects have a variety of negation particles that are prefixed or affixed to the verbs they modify.

Similarly, depending on the region Hokkien is spoken in, loanwords from local languages, as well as other Chinese dialects, are commonly integrated into the vocabulary of Hokkien dialects.

Quite a few words from the variety of Old Chinese spoken in the state of Wu, where the ancestral language of Min and Wu dialect families originated, and later words from Middle Chinese as well, have retained the original meanings in Hokkien, while many of their counterparts in Mandarin Chinese have either fallen out of daily use, have been substituted with other words, or have developed newer meanings.

In 2001, the local Taiwanese language program was further extended to all schools in Taiwan, and Taiwanese Hokkien Chinese became one of the compulsory local Taiwanese languages to be learned in schools.

In 2007, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan completed the standardization of Chinese characters used for writing Hokkien and developed Tai-lo as the standard Hokkien pronunciation and romanization guide.

The historical changes and development in Taiwan had led Taiwanese Hokkien Chinese to become the more influential pole of the Hokkien Chinese dialect after the mid-20th century.

Hokkien Chinese is registered as "Southern Min" per RFC 3066 as zh-min-nan.

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