The Teochew dialect (Chaozhou dialect: Diê⁵suan³ uê⁷; Shantou dialect: Dio⁵ziu¹ uê⁷) of Southern Min Chinese is spoken in the Chaoshan (潮汕) region of eastern Guangdong and by the Teochew diaspora in various regions around the world.

Teochew preserves many Ancient Chinese archaic pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern dialects of Chinese. As such, many linguists^[who?] consider Teochew one of the most conservative Chinese dialects.

Teochew is a member of the Southern Min or Min Nan dialect group, which in turn constitutes one of the seven major dialect groups of the Sinitic language family. As with other varieties of Chinese, linguists have not yet agreed on whether Teochew should be treated as a language or a dialect although it is mutually unintelligible with other "dialect groups" of China but mutually intelligible with some other Southern Min Languages, such as the dialects of Zhangzhou (漳州话) and Quanzhou (泉州话) probably because of their proximity. Even within the Teochew varieties, there is substantial variation in phonology between different regions of Chaoshan and between different Teochew communities overseas.