Hokkien

For the general language group of Fujian (Hokkien) province, see Min Chinese. For other uses, see Hokkien (disambiguation).

See also: Southern Min

Hokkien
Quanzhang
福建话/閩南語(泉漳片) Hō-ló-oē/Hô-ló-uē
Native to	China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Madagascar, Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, United States, and other areas of Hoklo settlement
Region	southern Fujian province and other south-eastern coastal areas of Mainland China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia
Ethnicity	Hoklo (Subgroup of Han-Chinese)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Min Southern Min Hokkien
Dialects	Quanzhou (Chinchew) Amoy Zhangzhou (Changchew) Zhenan Longyan Min Taiwan Penang Hokkien
Official status
Official language in	None (one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the Republic of China)
Regulated by	None
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	hokk1242 fuki1235
Distribution of Min Nan dialects. Hokkien is dark green.

Hokkien
Traditional Chinese	福建話
Simplified Chinese	福建话
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin IPA [fǔ.tɕi̯ɛ̂n.xu̯â] Hanyu Pinyin Fújiànhuà Wu Romanization Foh ji ghae ho Hakka Romanization Fuk5-gien4-fa4 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Fuk1-gin3-wa6 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Hok-kiàn-oē Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC Hók-gióng-uâ
Hoklo
Traditional Chinese	福佬話
Simplified Chinese	福佬话
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin IPA [fǔ.làu̯.xu̯â] Hanyu Pinyin Fúlǎohuà Wu Romanization Foh loh ghae ho Hakka Romanization Fuk5-lau3-fa4 Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Fuk1-lou2-wa6 Southern Min Hokkien POJ Hok-ló-oē Eastern Min Fuzhou BUC Hók-ló-uâ

Hokkien /hɒˈkiɛn/ (from Chinese: 福建話; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hok-kiàn-oē) is a group of mutually intelligible Min Nan Chinese dialects spoken throughout Southeastern China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and by many other overseas Chinese. Hokkien originated from a dialect in southern Fujian. It is closely related to Teochew, though mutual comprehension is difficult, and is somewhat more distantly related to Hainanese. Besides Hokkien, there are also other Min and Hakka dialects in Fujian province, most of which are not mutually intelligible with Hokkien.

Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, and remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region (including in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, peninsular Malaysia, and most of Indochina.

Names

The term Hokkien ([hɔk˥kiɛn˨˩]) is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronounciation for Fujian (福建), 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 Eastern Min or Hakka. 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 of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The variety is also known by other terms such as the more general Min Nan (Chinese: 閩南語 / 閩南話; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm-gí / Bân-lâm-oē) or "Southern Min", and Holo (福佬話; Hō-ló-oē).

Geographic distribution

Hokkien originated in the southern region of Fujian province, an important centre 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 Taiwan, where, during the 200 years of Qing dynasty rule, thousands of immigrants from Fujian arrived yearly. The Taiwanese variants mostly have origins in Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

There are many Hokkien speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States. Many ethnic Han 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.

Classification

Quanzhou

Zhangzhou

Xiamen

Locations of Hokkien varieties in Fujian

Southern Fujian is home to three principal Hokkien dialects: Chinchew, Amoy, and Chiangchew, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Zhangzhou (respectively).

As Xiamen (formerly Amoy) is the principal city of southern Fujian, Amoy is considered the most important, or even the prestige dialect, of Hokkien. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. It has played an influential role in history, especially in the relations of Western nations with China, and was one of the most frequently learned of all Chinese varieties by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

The varieties of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan are similar to the three varieties of Fujian, and are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, forming the second (and perhaps today most significant) major pole of the language due to the popularity of Taiwanese-language media.

Southeast Asia

The varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects.

The Singaporean, Southern Malaysians, and Riau and Riau Islands people in Indonesia variant is from the Quanzhou area. They speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Singaporean Hokkien.

Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with other areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia, a distinct form of Zhangzhou Hokkien has developed. In Penang, it is called Penang Hokkien while across the Malacca Strait in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as Medan Hokkien.

The Philippines variant is mostly from the Quanzhou area as most of their forefathers are from the aforementioned area.

History

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

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 — into Fujian. This then gradually evolved into the Quanzhou dialect.

Zhangzhou

In 677 (during the reign of Emperor Gaozong), Chen Zheng, together with his son Chen Yuanguang, led a military expedition to suppress 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. These two waves of migration from the north brought the language of northern Middle Chinese into the Fujian region. This then gradually evolved into the Zhangzhou dialect.

Xiamen

Amoy dialect 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.

Early sources

Several playscripts survive from the late 16th century, written in a mixture of Quanzhou and Chaozhou dialects. The most important is the Lì jìng jì (荔鏡記 "Romance of the Litchi Mirror"), with extant manuscripts dating from 1566 and 1581.

In the early 17th century, Spanish missionaries in the Philippines produced materials documenting the Hokkien varieties spoken by the Chinese trading community who had settled there in the late 16th century:

• Diccionarium Sino-Hispanicum (1604), a Spanish-Hokkien dictionary, giving equivalent words, but not definitions.
• Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china (1607), a Hokkien translation of the Doctrina Christiana.
• Bocabulario de la lengua sangleya (c. 1617), a Spanish-Hokkien dictionary, with definitions.
• Arte de la Lengua Chiõ Chiu (1620), a grammar written by a Spanish missionary in the Philippines.

These texts appear to record a Zhangzhou dialect, from the area of 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:

• Huìyīn Miàowù (彙音妙悟 "Understanding of the collected sounds") was written around 1800 by Huang Qian (黃謙), and describes the Quanzhou dialect. The oldest extant edition dates from 1831.
• Huìjí yǎsútōng shíwǔyīn (彙集雅俗通十五音 "Compilation of the fifteen elegant and vulgar sounds") by Xie Xiulan (謝秀嵐) describes the Zhangzhou dialect. The oldest extant edition dates from 1818.

Walter Henry Medhurst based his 1832 dictionary on the latter work.

Phonology

Hokkien has one of the most diverse phoneme inventories among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin or Cantonese. Vowels are more-or-less similar to that of Standard Mandarin. Hokkien varieties retain many pronunciations that are no longer found in other Chinese varieties. 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 6th century in other Chinese varieties.

Initials

Southern Min has aspirated, unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. For example, the word khui (開; "open") and kuiⁿ (關; "close") have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and nasality of the vowel. In addition, Southern Min has labial initial consonants such as m in m̄-sī (毋是; "is not").

Another example is cha-po͘-kiáⁿ (查埔囝; "boy") and cha-bó͘-kiáⁿ (查某囝; "girl"), which differ in the second syllable in consonant voicing and in tone.

Finals

Unlike Mandarin, Southern Min retains all the final consonants corresponding to those 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

	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

The following table illustrates some of the more commonly seen vowel shifts. Characters with the same vowel are shown in parentheses.

English	Chinese character	Accent	Pe̍h-ōe-jī	IPA	Teochew Peng'Im
two	二	Quanzhou, Taipei	lī	li˧	jĭ (zi˧˥)
		Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Tainan	jī	dzi˧
sick	病 (生)	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	pīⁿ	pĩ˧	pēⁿ (pẽ˩)
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	pēⁿ	pẽ˧
egg	卵 (遠)	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan	nn̄g	nŋ˧	nn̆g (nŋ˧˥)
		Zhangzhou	nūi	nui˧
chopsticks	箸 (豬)	Quanzhou	tīr	tɯ˧	tēu (tɤ˩)
		Xiamen	tū	tu˧
		Zhangzhou, Taiwan	tī	ti˧
shoes	鞋 (街)
		Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	oê	ue˧˥	ôi (tɤ˩)
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	ê	e˧˥
leather	皮 (未)	Quanzhou	phêr	pʰə˨˩	phuê (pʰue˩)
		Xiamen, Taipei	phê	pʰe˨˩
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	phôe	pʰue˧
chicken	雞 (細)	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	koe	kue˥˥	koi
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	ke	ke˥˥
hair	毛 (兩)	Quanzhou, Taiwan, Xiamen	mng	mŋ	mo
		Zhangzhou	mo	mõ
return	還	Quanzhou	hoan	huaⁿ	huêng
		Xiamen	hai	hâiⁿ
		Zhangzhou, Taiwan	hing	hîŋ
Speech	話 (花)	Quanzhou, Taiwan	oe	ue
		Zhangzhou	oa	ua

Tones

In general, Hokkien dialects have 5 to 7 phonemic tones. According to the traditional Chinese system, however, there are 7 to 9 "tones", more correctly termed tone classes since two of them are non-phonemic "entering tones" (see the discussion on Chinese tone). 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. Many dialects have an additional phonemic tone ("tone 9" according to the traditional reckoning), used only in special or foreign loan words.

Tones		平		上		去		入
		陰平	陽平	陰上	陽上	陰去	陽去	陰入	陽入
Tone Number		1	5	2	6	3	7	4	8
調值	Xiamen, Fujian	44	24	53	-	21	22	32	4
		東 taŋ1	銅 taŋ5	董 taŋ2	-	凍 taŋ3	動 taŋ7	觸 tak4	逐 tak8
	Taipei, Taiwan	44	24	53	-	11	33	32	4
					-
	Tainan, Taiwan	44	23	41	-	21	33	32	44
					-
	Zhangzhou, Fujian	34	13	53	-	21	22	32	121
					-
	Quanzhou, Fujian	33	24	55	22	41		5	24
					-
	Penang, Malaysia	33	23	445	-	21		3	4
					-

Comparison

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 speech. There are minor variations in pronunciation and vocabulary between Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. The grammar 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.

Mutual intelligibility

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

The Min Nan varieties of Teochew and Amoy are 84% phonetically similar, and 34% lexically similar, 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.

Grammar

Hokkien dialects are analytic; in a sentence, the arrangement of words 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 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.

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.

Pronouns

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:

Person	Singular	Plural
First person	我 góa	阮1, 3gún, góan 咱2, 3 or 俺 lán or án 我儂 góa-lâng
Second person	你 lí 汝 lú	恁 lín 恁儂 lín lâng
Third person	伊 i	𪜶 in 伊儂 i lâng

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):

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")

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

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-know-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

The majority of Hokkien vocabulary is monosyllabic. Many Hokkien words have cognates in other Chinese varieties. That said, there are also many indigenous words that are unique to Hokkien and are potentially not of Sino-Tibetan origin, while others are shared by all the Min dialects (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)

In other bisyllabic morphemes, the syllables are inverted, as compared to Standard Chinese. Examples include the following:

• 'guest' - 人客 lâng-kheh (SC: 客人 kèrén)

In other cases, the same word can have different meanings in Hokkien and standard written Chinese. Similarly, depending on the region Hokkien is spoken in, loanwords from local languages (Malay, Tagalog, Burmese, among others), as well as other Chinese dialects (such as Southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese and Teochew), are commonly integrated into the vocabulary of Hokkien dialects.

Literary and colloquial readings

The existence of literary and colloquial readings (文白異讀), called tha̍k-im (讀音), is a prominent feature of some Hokkien dialects and indeed in many Sinitic varieties in the south. The bulk of literary readings (文讀, bûn-tha̍k), based on pronunciations of the vernacular during the Tang Dynasty, are mainly used in formal phrases and written language (e.g. philosophical concepts, surnames, and some place names), while the colloquial (or vernacular) ones (白讀, pe̍h-tha̍k) are basically used in spoken language and vulgar phrases. Literary readings are more similar to the pronunciations of the Tang standard of Middle Chinese than their colloquial equivalents.

However, some dialects of Hokkien, such as Penang Hokkien as well as Philippine Hokkien overwhelmingly favor colloquial readings. For example, in both Penang Hokkien and Philippine Hokkien, the characters for 'university,' 大學, are pronounced tōa-o̍h (colloquial readings for both characters), instead of the literary reading tāi-ha̍k, which is common in Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese dialects.

The pronounced divergence between literary and colloquial pronunciations found in Hokkien dialects is attributed to the presence of several strata in the Min lexicon. The earliest, colloquial stratum is traced to the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE); the second colloquial one comes from the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 - 589 CE); the third stratum of pronunciations (typically literary ones) comes from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and is based on the prestige dialect of Chang'an (modern day Xi'an), its capital.

Some commonly seen sound correspondences (colloquial → literary) are as follows:

• p- ([p-], [pʰ-]) → h ([h-])
• ch-, chh- ([ts-], [tsʰ-], [tɕ-], [tɕʰ-]) → s ([s-], [ɕ-])
• k-, kh- ([k-], [kʰ-]) → ch ([tɕ-], [tɕʰ-])
• -ⁿ ([-ã], [-uã]) → n ([-an])
• -h ([-ʔ]) → t ([-t])
• i ([-i]) → e ([-e])
• e ([-e]) → a ([-a])
• ia ([-ia]) → i ([-i])

This table displays some widely used characters in Hokkien that have both literary and colloquial readings:

Chinese character	Reading pronunciations	Spoken pronunciations / †explications	English
白	pe̍k	pe̍h	white
面	biān	bīn	face
書	su	chu	book
生	seng	seⁿ / siⁿ	student
不	put	m̄†	not
返	hóan	tńg†	return
學	ha̍k	o̍h	to study
人	jîn / lîn	lâng	person
少	siàu	chió	few
轉	chóan	tńg	to turn

This feature extends to Chinese numerals, which have both literary and colloquial readings. Literary readings are typically used when the numerals are read out loud (e.g. phone numbers), while colloquial readings are used for counting items.

Numeral	Reading		Numeral	Reading
	Literary	Colloquial		Literary	Colloquial
一	it	chi̍t	六	lio̍k	la̍k
二	jī, lī		七	chhit
三	sam	saⁿ	八	pat	peh, poeh
四	sù, sìr	sì	九	kiú	káu
五	ngó	gō	十	si̍p	cha̍p

Semantic differences between Hokkien and Mandarin

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 which was likely influenced by the Chinese spoken in the state of Chu which itself was not founded by Chinese speakers), 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 (some of which are borrowed from other languages while others are new developments), or have developed newer meanings. The same may be said of Hokkien as well, since some lexical meaning evolved in step with Mandarin while others are wholly innovative developments.

This table shows some Hokkien dialect words from Classical Chinese, as contrasted to the written Chinese standard, Mandarin:

Meaning	Hokkien		Mandarin
	Hanji	POJ	Hanzi	Pinyin
eye	目睭/目珠	ba̍k-chiu	眼睛	yǎnjīng
chopstick	箸	tī, tū	筷子	kuàizi
to chase	逐	jiok, lip	追	zhuī
wet	潤	jūn, lūn	濕	shī
black	烏	o͘	黑	hēi
book	冊	chheh	書	shū

For other words, the classical Chinese meanings of certain words, which are retained in Hokkien dialects, have evolved or deviated significantly in other Chinese dialects. The following table shows some words that are both used in both Hokkien dialects and Mandarin Chinese, while the meanings in Mandarin Chinese have been modified:

Word	Hokkien		Mandarin
	POJ	Meaning (and Classical Chinese)	Pinyin	Meaning
走	cháu	to flee	zǒu	to walk
細	sè, sòe	tiny, small, young	xì	thin, slender
鼎	tiáⁿ	pot	dǐng	tripod
食	chia̍h	to eat	shí	food
懸	kôan	tall, high	xuán	to hang, to suspend
喙	chhuì	mouth	huì	beak

Words from Minyue

Some commonly used words, shared by all Min Chinese dialects, came from the ancient Minyue languages. They include the following examples, compared to the Fuzhou dialect, a Min Dong language:

Word	Hokkien POJ	Foochow Romanized	Meaning
骹	kha [kʰa˥]	kă [kʰa˥]	foot and leg
囝	kiáⁿ [kiã˥˩]	giāng [kiaŋ˧]	son, child, whelp, a small amount
睏	khùn [kʰun˨˩]	káung [kʰɑuŋ˧]	to sleep
骿	phiaⁿ [pʰiã˥]	piăng [pʰiaŋ˥]	back, dorsum
厝	chhù [tsʰu˨˩]	chuó, chió [tsʰuɔ˥˧]	home, house
刣	thâi [tʰai˨˦]	tài [tʰai˥˧]	to kill, to slaughter

Loanwords

Loanwords are not unusual among Hokkien dialects, as speakers readily adopted indigenous terms of the languages they came in contact with. As a result, there is a plethora of loanwords that are not mutually comprehensible among Hokkien dialects.

Taiwanese Hokkien, as a result of linguistic contact with Japanese and Formosan languages, contains many loanwords from these languages. Among these include the following examples:

• 'toilet' - piān-só͘ (便所) from Japanese benjo (便所)

  Other Hokkien variants: 屎礐 (sái-ha̍k), 廁所 (chhek-só͘)

• 'car' - chū-tōng-chhia (自動車) from Japanese jidōsha (自動車)

  Other Hokkien variants: 風車 (hong-chhia), 汽車 (khì-chhia)

• 'to admire' - kám-sim (感心) from Japanese kanshin (感心)

  Other Hokkien variants: 感動 (kám-tōng)

Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien and other Malaysian Hokkien dialects tend to draw loanwords from Malay, English as well as other Chinese dialects, primarily Teochew. Examples include:

• 'but' - tapi, from Malay

  Other Hokkien variants: 但是 （tān-sī）

• 'doctor' - 老君 lu-gun, from Malay dukun

  Other Hokkien variants: 醫生(i-sing)

• 'stone/rock' - batu, from Malay batu

  Other Hokkien variants: 石头(tsio-tau)

• 'market' - 巴剎 pa-sat, from Malay pasar from Persian bazaar (بازار)

  Other Hokkien variants: 市場 (chhī-tiûⁿ)

• 'they' - 伊儂 i lâng from Teochew (i1 nang5)

  Other Hokkien variants: 𪜶 (in)

• 'together' - 做瓠 chò-bú from Teochew 做瓠 (jo3 bu5)

  Other Hokkien variants: 做夥 (chò-hóe), 同齊 (tâng-chê) or 鬥陣 (tàu-tīn)

• 茶箍 (Sap-bûn) from Malay sabun from Arabic ṣābūn (صابون).

Philippine Hokkien dialects, as a result of centuries-old contact with both Philippine language and Spanish also incorporate words from these languages. Examples include:

• 'cup' - ba-su, from Spanish vaso and Tagalog baso

  Other Hokkien variants: 杯子 (poe-á)

• 'office' - o-pi-sin, from Spanish oficina and Tagalog opisina

  Other Hokkien variants: 辦公室 (pān-kong-sek)

• 'soap' - sa-bun, from Spanish jabon and Tagalog sabon

  Other Hokkien variants:

• 'but' - ka-so, from Tagalog kaso

  Other Hokkien variants: 但是 (tan-si)

  (em-ko)

Standard Hokkien

Hokkien originated from Quanzhou. After the Opium War in 1842, Xiamen (Amoy) became one of the major treaty ports to be opened for trade with the outside world. From mid-19th century onwards, Xiamen slowly developed to become the political and economical center of the Hokkien-speaking region in China. This caused Amoy dialect to gradually replace the position of dialect variants from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. From mid-19th century until the end of World War II, western diplomats usually learned Amoy Hokkien as the preferred dialect if they were to communicate with the Hokkien-speaking populace in China or South-East Asia. In the 1940s and 1950s, Taiwan also held Amoy Hokkien as its standard and tended to incline itself towards Amoy dialect.

However, from the 1980s onwards, the development of Hokkien pop and media industry in Taiwan caused the Hokkien cultural hub to shift from Xiamen to Taiwan. The flourishing Hokkien entertainment and media industry from Taiwan in the 1990s and early 21st century led Taiwan to emerge as the new significant cultural hub for Hokkien.

In the 1990s, marked by the liberalization of language development and mother tongue movement in Taiwan, Taiwanese Hokkien had undergone a fast pace in its development. In 1993, Taiwan became the first region in the world to implement the teaching of Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwanese schools. In 2001, the local Taiwanese language program was further extended to all schools in Taiwan, and Taiwanese Hokkien became one of the compulsory local Taiwanese languages to be learned in schools. The mother tongue movement in Taiwan even influenced Xiamen (Amoy) to the point that in 2010, Xiamen also began to implement the teaching of Hokkien dialect in its schools. In 2007, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan also completed the standardization of Chinese characters used for writing Hokkien and developed Tai-lo as the standard Hokkien pronunciation and romanization guide. A number of universities in Taiwan also offer Hokkien degree courses for training Hokkien-fluent talents to work for the Hokkien media industry and education. Taiwan also has its own Hokkien literary and cultural circles whereby Hokkien poets and writers compose poetry or literature in Hokkien on a regular basis.

Thus by the 21st century, Taiwan has truly emerged as one of the most significant Hokkien cultural hub of the world. The historical changes and development in Taiwan had led Taiwanese Hokkien to become the more influential pole of the Hokkien dialect after mid-20th century. Today, Taiwanese prestige dialect (Taiyu Youshiqiang/Tongxinqiang 台語優勢腔/通行腔), which is based on Tainan variant and heard on Taiwanese Hokkien media.

Writing systems

Main article: Written Hokkien

Further information: Comparison of Hokkien writing systems

Chinese script

Hokkien dialects are typically written using Chinese characters (漢字, Hàn-jī). However, the written script was and remains adapted to the literary form, which is based on classical Chinese, not the vernacular and spoken form. Furthermore, the character inventory used for Mandarin (standard written Chinese) does not correspond to Hokkien words, and there are a large number of informal characters (替字, thè-jī or thòe-jī; 'substitute characters') which are unique to Hokkien (as is the case with Cantonese). For instance, about 20 to 25% of Taiwanese morphemes lack an appropriate or standard Chinese character.

While most Hokkien morphemes have standard designated characters, they are not always etymological or phono-semantic. Similar-sounding, similar-meaning or rare characters are commonly borrowed or substituted to represent a particular morpheme. Examples include "beautiful" (美 bí is the literary form), whose vernacular morpheme suí is represented by characters like 媠 (an obsolete character), 婎 (a vernacular reading of this character) and even 水 (transliteration of the sound suí), or "tall" (高 ko is the literary form), whose morpheme kôan is 懸. Common grammatical particles are not exempt; the negation particle m̄ (not) is variously represented by 毋, 呣 or 唔, among others. In other cases, characters are invented to represent a particular morpheme (a common example is the character 𪜶 in, which represents the personal pronoun "they"). In addition, some characters have multiple and unrelated pronunciations, adapted to represent Hokkien words. For example, the Hokkien word bah ("meat") has been reduced to the character 肉, which has etymologically unrelated colloquial and literary readings (he̍k and jio̍k, respectively). Another case is the word 'to eat,' chia̍h, which is often transcribed in Taiwanese newspapers and media as 呷 (a Mandarin transliteration, xiā, to approximate the Hokkien term), even though its recommended character in dictionaries is 食.

Moreover, unlike Cantonese, Hokkien does not have a universally accepted standardized character set. Thus, there is some variation in the characters used to express certain words and characters can be ambiguous in meaning. In 2007, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China formulated and released a standard character set to overcome these difficulties. These standard Chinese characters for writing Taiwanese Hokkien are now taught in schools in Taiwan.

Latin script

Hokkien, especially Taiwanese Hokkien, is sometimes written in the Latin script using one of several alphabets. Of these the most popular is POJ, developed first by Presbyterian missionaries in China and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Use of this script and orthography has been actively promoted since the late 19th century. The use of a mixed script of Han characters and Latin letters is also seen, though remains uncommon. Other Latin-based alphabets also exist.

Min Nan texts, all Hokkien, can be dated back to the 16th century. One example is the Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china, presumably written after 1587 by the Spanish Dominicans in the Philippines. Another is a Ming Dynasty script of a play called Tale of the Lychee Mirror (1566), supposedly the earliest Southern Min colloquial text.

Taiwan has developed a Latin alphabet for Taiwanese Hokkien, derived from POJ, known as Tai-lo. Since 2006, it has been officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and taught in Taiwanese schools. Xiamen University has also developed an alphabet based on Pinyin called Bbánlám pìngyīm.

Computing

The character for the third person pronoun (they) in some Hokkien dialects, 𪜶 (in), is now supported by the Unicode Standard at U+2A736.

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

When writing Hokkien in Chinese characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it impossible to use directly or borrow existing ones; this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in Cantonese, Vietnamese chữ nôm, Korean hanja and Japanese kanji. Some of these are not encoded in Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), thus creating problems in computer processing.

All Latin characters required by Pe̍h-ōe-jī can be represented using Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), using precomposed or combining (diacritics) characters. Prior to June 2004, the vowel akin to but more open than o, written with a dot above right, was not encoded. The usual workaround was to use the (stand-alone; spacing) character Interpunct (U+00B7, ·) or less commonly the combining character dot above (U+0307). As these are far from ideal, since 1997 proposals have been submitted to the ISO/IEC working group in charge of ISO/IEC 10646—namely, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2—to encode a new combining character dot above right. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see documents N1593, N2507, N2628, N2699, and N2713). Font support is expected to follow.

Cultural and political role

Hokkien (or Min Nan) can trace its roots through the Tang Dynasty and also even further to the people of the Baiyue, the indigenous non-Han people of modern day southern China. Min Nan (Hokkien) people call themselves "Tang people," (唐人; Tn̂g-lâng) which is synonymous to "Chinese people". Because of the widespread influence of the Tang culture during the great Tang dynasty, there are today still many Min Nan pronunciations of words shared by the Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In 2002, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party with about 10% of the Legislative Yuan seats at the time, suggested making Taiwanese a second official language. This proposal encountered strong opposition not only from Mainlander groups but also from Hakka and Taiwanese aboriginal groups who felt that it would slight their home languages, as well as others including Hoklo who objected to the proposal on logistical grounds and on the grounds that it would increase ethnic tensions. Because of these objections, support for this measure was lukewarm among moderate Taiwan independence supporters, and the proposal did not pass.

English	Chinese characters	Mandarin Chinese	Taiwanese Hokkien	Korean	Vietnamese	Japanese
Book	冊	Cè	Chheh	Chaek	Tập/Sách	Saku/Satsu/Shaku
Bridge	橋	Qiáo	Kiô	Kyo	Cầu/Kiều	Kyō
Dangerous	危險	Wēixiǎn	Guî-hiám	Wiheom	Nguy hiểm	Kiken
Flag	旗	Qí	Kî	Ki	Cờ/Kỳ	Ki
Insurance	保險	Bǎoxiǎn	Pó-hiám	Boheom	Bảo hiểm	Hoken
News	新聞	Xīnwén	Sin-bûn	Shinmun	Tân Văn	Shinbun
Student	學生	Xuéshēng	Ha̍k-seng	Haksaeng	Học sinh	Gakusei
University	大學	Dàxué	Tāi-ha̍k (Tōa-o̍h)	Daehak	Đại học	Daigaku

See also

• Penang Hokkien
• Taiwanese Hokkien
• Medan Hokkien
• Singaporean Hokkien
• Amoy dialect
• Lan-nang (Philippine dialect of Hokkien)
• Teochew dialect
• Languages of China
• Languages of Taiwan
• Amoy Min Nan Swadesh list

Further reading

• Branner, David Prager (2000). Problems in Comparative Chinese Dialectology — the Classification of Miin and Hakka. Trends in Linguistics series, no. 123. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-015831-0. 
• Chung, R.-f (196). The segmental phonology of Southern Min in Taiwan. Taipei: Crane Pub. Co. ISBN 957-9463-46-8. 
• DeBernardi, Jean (1991). "Linguistic nationalism: the case of Southern Min". Sino-Platonic Papers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 25. OCLC 24810816. 
• Klöter, Henning (2011). The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-18493-0.  An analysis and facsimile of the Arte de la Lengua Chio-chiu (1620), the oldest extant grammar of Hokkien.

External links

• Lìzhī jì 荔枝記 [Litchi Mirror Tale].  A playscript from the late 16th century.
• Doctrina Christiana. Manila. 1607.  Hokkien translation of the Doctrina Christiana.
• Arte de la Lengua Chio-chiu. Manila. 1620.  A manual for learning Hokkien written by a Spanish missionary in the Philippines.
• Huìjí yǎ sú tōng shíwǔ yīn 彙集雅俗通十五音 [Compilation of the fifteen elegant and vulgar sounds]. 1818.  The oldest known rhyme dictionary of a Zhangzhou dialect.
• Medhurst, Walter Henry (1832). A dictionary of the Hok-këèn dialect of the Chinese language, according to the reading and colloquial idioms. Macao: C.J. Steyn. 
• Douglas, Carstairs (1899). Chinese-English dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy. London: Presbyterian Church of England. 
• 當代泉州音字彙, a dictionary of Quanzhou speech
• Voyager - Spacecraft - Golden Record - Greetings From Earth - Amoy, includes translation and sound clip

  (The voyager clip says: Thài-khong pêng-iú, lín-hó. Lín chia̍h-pá--bē? Ū-êng, to̍h lâi gún chia chē--ô͘! 太空朋友，恁好。恁食飽未？有閒著來阮遮坐哦!)