10 Facts About Southern Min

In common parlance and in the narrower sense, Southern Min refers to the Quanzhang or Hokkien-Taiwanese variety of Southern Min originating from Southern Fujian in Mainland China.

Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with other branches of Min Chinese nor with non-Min varieties of Chinese, such as Mandarin, and the principal varieties of Southern Min are not intelligible with each other.

Southern Min dialects are spoken in Fujian, three southeastern counties of Zhejiang, the Zhoushan archipelago off Ningbo in Zhejiang and the Chaoshan region in Guangdong.

Southern Min dialects spoken in Taiwan, collectively known as Taiwanese, is a first language for most of the Hoklo people, the main ethnicity of Taiwan.

Variants of Southern Min spoken in Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou.

Related searches

Chaoshan Southern Min is of great importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra, and West Kalimantan.

Chaoshan Southern Min is significantly different from Quanzhang in both pronunciation and vocabulary.

Southern Min has one of the most diverse phonologies of Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Mandarin or Cantonese.

In general, Southern Min dialects have five to six tones, and tone sandhi is extensive.

Linguists estimate that the oldest layers of Southern Min dialects diverged from the rest of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty.