Southern Hokkien Quanzhou–Zhangzhou
泉漳閩語 Zuán–Ziāng Bbán'ggǔ 福佬話 Hō-ló-oē/Hô-ló-uē
Spoken in	People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, United States, and other areas of Hoklo settlement
Region	Southern Fujian province, Taiwan, Southeast Asia
Ethnicity	Hoklo (Han Chinese)
Native speakers	c. 47.3 million[1]  (2009)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Min Coastal Min Min Nan Southern Hokkien Quanzhou–Zhangzhou
Official status
Official language in	None (one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the Republic of China[2])
Regulated by	None
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Linguist List	nan-hok
	nan-fuj (redundant)
	nan-fuk (redundant)
Distribution of Minnan dialects. Hokkien is dark green.
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

 Hokkien (help·info) (traditional Chinese: 福佬話; simplified Chinese: 福佬话; pinyin: Fúlǎohuà; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hō-ló-oē) or Quanzhou–Zhangzhou (BP: Zuánziū–Ziāngziū) is a group of mutually intelligible Min Nan Chinese dialects spoken by many overseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. Its originated from the same dialect in southern Fujian and is mutually intelligible with the Hokkien in Taiwan. It is closely related to Teochew, though mutual comprehension is difficult, and somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese. The Amoy and Taiwanese prestige dialect (based on Tainan variant^[3]) are considered standards.

Names[link]

The term Hokkien is itself a term not used in Chinese as it would be no different than the name of Fujian province. In Chinese linguistics, these dialects are known by their classification under the Quanzhang Division (Chinese: 泉漳片; pinyin: Quánzhāng piàn) of Min Nan, which comes from the first characters of the two main Hokkien urban centers Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The language is also known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan (traditional Chinese: 閩南語, 閩南話; simplified Chinese: 闽南语, 闽南话; pinyin: Mǐnnányǔ, Mǐnnánhuà; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm-gí,Bân-lâm-oē) or Southern Min, and Fulaohua (traditional Chinese: 福佬話; simplified Chinese: 福佬话; pinyin: Fúlǎohuà; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hō-ló-oē).

Geographic distribution[link]

Hokkien originated in the Southern region of Fujian province, an important centre for trade and migration, and has since been spread beyond China, being one of the most common Chinese languages overseas.

A form of Hokkien akin to that spoken in southern Fujian is also spoken in Taiwan, where it goes by the name Tâi-oân-oē or Hō-ló-oē. The ethnic group for which Hokkien is considered the native language is the Holo or Hoklo, the main ethnicity of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as some Hoklo people have limited proficiency in Hokkien while some non-Hoklos are fluent in the dialect.

There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States. Many ethnic Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia (the former Dutch East Indies) and present day Malaysia and Singapore (formerly Malaya and the British Straits Settlements). Many of the Hokkien dialects of this region are highly similar to Taiwanese and Amoy. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 98.5% of the Chinese Filipino in the Philippines, among which is known locally as Lan-nang or Lán-lâng-oē ("Our people’s language"). Hokkien speakers form the largest group of Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.^{[citation needed]}

Classification[link]

Southern Fujian is home to three main Hokkien dialects. They are known by the geographic locations to which they correspond (listed north to south):

• Zuánziū (Chinchew / Quanzhou) (泉州)
• Êbbńg (Amoy / Xiamen) (廈門)
• Ziāngziū (Changchew / Zhangzhou) (漳州)

Since Amoy is the principal city of southern Fujian, its dialect is considered the most important, or even prestige accent. The Amoy dialect is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. Amoy and the Amoy dialect have played an influential role in history, especially in the relations of Western nations with China, and was one of the most frequently learnt of all Chinese languages/dialects by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

The variants spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three Fujian variants, and are collectively known as Taiwanese. Taiwanese is used by a majority of the population and bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, forming the second (and perhaps today most significant) major pole of the language. The variants of Hokkien in Southeast Asia, including Singaporean Hokkien, also originate from these variants.

History[link]

Variants of Hokkien dialects can be traced to two sources of origin: Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Both Amoy and Taiwanese are based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, while the rest of the Hokkien dialects spoken in South East Asia are either derived from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, or based on a mixture of both dialects.

Quanzhou[link]

During the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China, there was constant warfare occurring in the Central Plain of China. Northerners began to enter into Fujian region, causing the region to incorporate parts of northern Chinese dialects. However, the massive migration of northern 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 northern Han Chinese to move into Fujian region. They brought the old Chinese — spoken in Central Plain of China from prehistoric era to 3rd century AD — into Fujian. This then gradually evolved into the Quanzhou dialect.

Zhangzhou[link]

In 677 (during the reign of Emperor Gaozong), Chen Zheng (陳政), together with his son Chen Yuanguang (陳元光), led a military expedition to pacify the rebellion in Fujian. They settled in Zhangzhou and brought the Middle Chinese phonology of northern China during the 7th century into Zhangzhou; In 885 AD (during the reign of Emperor Xizong of Tang), the two brothers Wang Chao (王潮) and Wang Shenzhi (王審知), led a military expedition force to pacify the Huang Chao rebellion. They brought the Middle Chinese phonology commonly spoken in Northern China into Zhangzhou. These two waves of migrations from the north generally brought the northern Middle Chinese languages into Fujian region. This then gradually evolved into the Zhangzhou dialect.

Xiamen[link]

Xiamen dialect, sometimes known as Amoy, is the main dialect spoken in the Chinese city of Xiamen and its surrounding regions of Tong'an and Xiang'an, both of which are now included in the Greater Xiamen area. This dialect developed in the late Ming dynasty when Xiamen was increasingly taking over Quanzhou's position as the main port of trade in southeastern China. Quanzhou traders began travelling southwards to Xiamen to carry on their businesses while Zhangzhou peasants began traveling northwards to Xiamen in search of job opportunities. It is at this time when a need for a common language arose. The Quanzhou and Zhangzhou varieties are similar in many ways (as can be seen from the common place of Henan Luoyang where they originated), but due to differences in accents, communication can be a problem. Quanzhou businessmen considered their speech to be the prestige accent and considered Zhangzhou's to be a village dialect. Over the centuries, dialect leveling occurred and the two speeches mixed to produce the Amoy dialect.

Hokkien linguistics classics[link]

Chinese scholars of late Ming and Qing had systematically studied the Hokkien dialects of those times and compiled a number of Chinese linguistics books about Hokkien. These include The Phonology of Quanzhou speech (彙音妙悟) by Huang Qian (黃謙), The Phonology of common Zhangzhou speech (彙集雅俗通十五音) by Xie Xiulan (謝秀嵐) etc.

Phonology[link]

Hokkien has one of the most diverse phonologies among Chinese languages, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin or Cantonese. Vowels are more or less similar to that of standard Mandarin. Hokkien dialects retain many pronunciations that are no longer found in other Chinese dialects. These include the retention of the /t/ initial, which is now /tʂ/ (Pinyin 'zh') in Mandarin (e.g. 'bamboo' 竹 is tik, but zhú in Mandarin), having disappeared before the sixth century in other Chinese dialects.^[4]

Initials[link]

Southern Min has aspirated, unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. This distinction makes Southern Min one of the harder dialects for non-native speakers to learn. For example, the words for opening and closing (khui (開) vs. kuiⁿ (關)) a door have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and nasality of the vowel. In addition, Southern Min also has labial initial consonants such as m in m̄-sī (毋是) (meaning "is not").

Another example from Taiwanese is "boy" (cha-po·-kiáⁿ, 查埔囝) vs. "girl" (cha-bó·-kiáⁿ, 查某囝), which differ in the second syllable in consonant voicing and in tone.

Finals[link]

Unlike Mandarin, Southern Min retains all the final consonants of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the n and ŋ finals, Southern Min also preserves the m, p, t and k finals and developed the ʔ (glottal stop).

Vowels[link]

	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i (y) ɨ u       e o (ɤ) ə ɛ ɔ ɐ a
Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

Tones[link]

In general, Hokkien dialects have 7 to 9 tones, and tone sandhi is extensive.^[5] 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. Both Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien typically has 7 tones; the 9th tone is used only in special or foreign loan words. Quanzhou is the only Hokkien dialect with 8 tones, of which 6th tone is present.^[6]

Comparison[link]

The Amoy dialect (Xiamen) is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. Taiwanese is also a hybrid of these two dialects. Taiwanese in northern Taiwan tends to be based on the Quanzhou variety, whereas the Taiwanese spoken in southern Taiwan tends to be based on Zhangzhou's. There are minor variations in pronunciation and vocabulary between Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. The grammar is generally the same. Additionally, Taiwanese includes several dozen loanwords from Japanese as well as Taiwanese aboriginal languages. 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 dialects such as the closely related Teochew and some Cantonese.

Mutual intelligibility[link]

The Quanzhou dialect, Xiamen dialect, Zhangzhou dialect, Taiwanese, Penang Hokkien, Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien and Singaporean Hokkien are mutually intelligible.

The Min Nan varieties of Teochew and Amoy are 84% phonetically similar^[7] and 34% lexically similar,^[8] whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar^[7] and 15% lexically similar.^[8] In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar.^[9]

Grammar[link]

Hokkien dialects are analytic; in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning.^[10] 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 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 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.^[11]

你(Lí) 去(khì) 買(bé) 有(ū) 錶仔(pió-á) 無(bo)？

You-go-buy-have watch-no (Gloss)

"Did you go to buy a watch?"

Choice of grammatical function words also varies significantly among the Hokkien dialects. For instance, 乞 khit (denoting the causative, passive or dative) is retained in Jinjiang (also unique to the Jinjiang dialect is 度 thoo) and Jieyang, but not in Longxi and Xiamen, whose dialects use 互 (hoo) instead.^[12]

Pronouns[link]

Hokkien dialects differ in their preferred choice of pronouns. For instance, while the second person pronoun lí (你) is standard in Taiwanese Hokkien, the Teochew loanword lú (汝) is more common among Hokkien-speaking communities in Southeast Asia. The plural personal pronouns tend to be nasalized forms of the singular ones. Personal pronouns found in the Hokkien dialects are listed below:

¹ Inclusive

² Exclusive

³ 儂 (-lâng) is typically suffixed in Southeast Asian Hokkien dialects

Possessive pronouns are marked by the particle ê (的), or its literary version chi (之). Plural pronouns are typically unmarked (the nasalized final serves as the possessive indicator):^[13]

阮(góan) 翁(ang) 姓(sèⁿ) 陳(Tân)。

"My husband's surname is Tan."

Reflexive pronouns are made by appending the pronouns ka-kī, ka-tī (家己) or chū-kí (自己).

Hokkien dialects use a variety of differing demonstrative pronouns, which are as follows:

• this - che (這, 即), chit-ê (這個, 即個)
• that - he (許, 彼), hit-ê (彼個)
• here - chia (者), hia/hiâ (遮, 遐), chit-tau 這兜)
• there - hia (許, 遐), hit-tau (彼兜)

The interrogative pronouns are:

• what - siáⁿ-mih (啥物), sīm-mi̍h (甚麼)
• when - tī-sî (底時), kī-sî (幾時), tang-sî (當時), sīm-mi̍h-sî-chūn (甚麼時陣)
• where - to-lo̍h (倒落), tó-uī (佗位, 叨位)
• who - siáⁿ-lâng (啥人) or siáⁿ (啥)
• why - án-chóaⁿ (按怎), khah (盍)
• how - án-chóaⁿ (按怎) lû-hô (如何) chóaⁿ-iūⁿ (怎樣)

Copula ("to be")[link]

States and qualities are generally expressed using stative verbs that do not require the verb "to be":

我(goá) 腹肚(pak-tó͘) 枵(iau)。

"I am hungry." (lit. I-stomach-hungry)

With noun complements, the verb sī (是) serves as the verb "to be".

昨昏(cha-hng) 是(sī) 八月節(peh-go̍eh-cheh)。

"Yesterday was the Mid-Autumn festival."

To indicate location, the words tī (佇) tiàm (踮), teh/leh (咧), which are collectively known as the locatives or sometimes coverbs in Chinese linguistics, are used to express "(to be) at":

我(goá) 踮(tiàm) 遮(chia) 等(tán) 你(lí)。

"I am here waiting for you."

伊(i) 這馬(chit-má) 佇(tī) 厝(chhù) 裡(lí) 咧(teh) 睏(khùn)。

"He's sleeping at home now."

Negation[link]

Hokkien dialects have a variety of negation particles that are prefixed or affixed to the verbs they modify. There are five primary negation particles in Hokkien dialects:

1. m̄ (毋, 呣, 唔)
2. bē, bōe (袂, 未)
3. mài (莫, 勿)
4. bô (無)
5. put (不) - literary

Other negative particles include:

1. biàu (嫑) - a contraction of bô iàu (無要), as in biàu-kín (嫑緊)
2. bàng (甭)
3. bián (免)
4. thài (汰)

The particles m̄ (毋, 呣, 唔) is general and can negate almost any verb:

伊(i) 毋(m̄) 捌(bat) 字(jī)。

"He cannot read." (lit. he-not-read-word)

The particle mài (莫, 勿), a concatenation of m-ài (毋愛) is used to negate imperative commands:

莫(mài) 講(kóng)!

"Don't speak!"

The particle bô (無) indicates the past tense:

伊(i) 無(bô) 食(chia̍h)。

"He did not eat."

The verb 'to have', ū (有) is replaced by bô (無) when negated (not 無有):

伊(i) 無(bô) 錢(chîⁿ)。

"He does not have any money."

The particle put (不) is used infrequently, mostly found in literary compounds and phrases:

伊(i) 真(chin) 不孝(put-hàu)。

"He is truly unfilial."

Vocabulary[link]

The majority of Hokkien vocabulary is monosyllabic.^[14] Many Hokkien words have cognates in other Chinese languages. That said, there are also many indigenous words that are unique to Hokkien and are not potentially of Sino-Tibetan origin, while others are shared by all the Min languages (e.g. 'congee' is 糜 mê, bôe, bê, not 粥 zhōu, as in other dialects).

As compared to Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Hokkien dialects prefer the usage the monosyllabic form of words, without suffixes. For instance, the Mandarin noun suffix 子 (zi) is not found in Hokkien words, while another noun suffix, 仔 (á) is used in many nouns. Examples are below:

• 'duck' - 鸭 ah or 鴨仔 ah-á (SC: 鸭子 yāzi)
• 'color' - 色 sek (SC: 顏色 yán sè)