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Transcriptions
Fúlǎohuà
Romanization
Foh loh ghae ho
Fuk5-lau3-fa4
Fuk1-lou2-wa6
Hok-ló-oē
Hók-ló-u?
Hokkien (; from : ; : Fújiànhuà; : Hok-kiàn-oē) or Minnan Proper[] (閩南語/閩南話), is a
dialect group spoken in the
in , , , , , the
and other parts of , and by other . Hokkien originated in southern , the Min-speaking province. It is the mainstream form of Southern Min.
It is closely related to , though it has limited
with it, whereas it is more distantly related to other variants such as
and . 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
amongst overseas Chinese communities
in Southeast Asia, and remains today as the most spoken
in the region, including in , , ,
and some parts of
(particularly Thailand, Laos and Cambodia).
language, spoken by some five million people in and around the Indonesian capital , includes numerous Hokkien loanwords.
Chinese speakers of the Quanzhang variety of Southern Min refer to the mainstream Southern Min language as
B?n-l?m-gú / B?n-l?m-ōe (闽南语/闽南话; 閩南語/閩南話, literally 'language or speech of Southern Min') in Mainland China and Taiwan.
T?i-gí (臺語, literally 'Taiwanese language') in Taiwan.
Hok-kiàn-ōe (福建话; 福建話, literally 'Fujian speech') in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Lán-l?ng-ōe (咱儂話, literally 'our people's language') in the Philippines.
In parts of Southeast Asia and in the English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien ([h?k?ki?n??]) is etymologically derived from the
pronunciation 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
or . In , these dialects are known by their classification under the Quanzhang division (Chinese: 泉漳片; pinyin: Quánzhāng piàn) of , which comes from the first characters of the two main Hokkien urban centers of
Hokkien originated in the southern area of
province, an important center 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 , thousands of immigrants from Fujian arrived yearly. The
mostly have origins with the
variants, but since then, the
is becoming the modern
for the language.
There are many Minnan(Hokkien) speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the
(). Many ethnic
emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now
(Myanmar),
(the former ) and present day
and the ). Many of the Minnan dialects of this region are highly similar to Xiamen dialect(Amoy) and Taiwanese Hokkien with the exception of foreign loanwords. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the
in the , among which is known locally as
or Lán-l?ng-oē ("Our people’s language"). Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines.[]
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Locations of Hokkien (Quanzhang) varieties in Fujian
is home to three principal Minnan Proper (Hokkien) dialects: , , , originating from the cities of ,
and (respectively).
Traditionally speaking, Quanzhou dialect spoken in Quanzhou is the Traditional Standard Minnan, it is the dialect that is used in Liyuan Opera (梨园戏) and Nanying music (南音). Being the Traditional Standard Minnan, Quanzhou dialect is considered to have the purest accent and the most conservative Minnan dialect.
In the late 18th to the early 19th century, Xiamen (Amoy) became the principal[] city of southern Fujian. Xiamen (Amoy) dialect is adopted as the Modern Standard Minnan. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. It has played an influential role in history, especially in the relations of
nations with China, and was one of the most frequently learnt dialect of Quanzhang variety by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
Same as Amoy dialect, the Modern Standard form of Quanzhang accent spoken around the city of Tainan in Taiwan is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. All Quanzhang dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as
or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a
perspective, forming the second (and perhaps today most significant) major pole of the language due to the popularity of Taiwanese-language media.
The varieties of Hokkien in
originate from these dialects.
The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesia's
and surrounding
variant is from the Quanzhou area. They speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called
Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of , and other states in Northern Malaysia and , with other areas in , , a distinct form of Zhangzhou Hokkien has developed. In Penang, it is called
while across the
in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as .
The Philippines variant is mostly from Quanzhou or Amoy (Xiamen), as most of their ancestors are from the aforementioned area.
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Variants of Hokkien dialects can be traced to two sources of origin:
and . Both
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.
During the
period of ancient China, there was constant warfare occurring in the
of China. Northerners began to enter into
region, causing the region to incorporate parts of northern . However, the massive migration of northern
into Fujian region mainly occurred after the . The
court fled from the north to the south, causing large numbers of northern
to move into Fujian region. They brought the
spoken in the
of China from the prehistoric era to the 3rd century into . This then gradually evolved into the Quanzhou dialect.
In 677 (during the reign of ), , together with his son , led a military expedition to suppress a rebellion of the . In 885, (during the reign of ), the two brothers
and , led a military expedition force to suppress the . These two waves of migration from the north brought the language of northern
region. This then gradually evolved into the Zhangzhou dialect.
is the main dialect spoken in the Chinese city of
and its surrounding regions of
and , both of which are now included in the greater Xiamen area. This dialect developed in the late
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. 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,
occurred and the two speeches mixed to produce the Amoy dialect.
Several playscripts survive from the late 16th century, written in a mixture of Quanzhou and Chaozhou dialects. The most important is the , 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 .
Bocabulario de la lengua sangleya (c. 1617), a Spanish-Hokkien dictionary, with definitions.
Arte de la Lengua Chi? 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 ).
Chinese scholars produced
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.
based his 1832 dictionary on the latter work.
Hokkien has one of the most diverse
inventories among Chinese varieties, with more
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 /t?/ (Pinyin 'zh') in Mandarin (e.g. 'bamboo' 竹 is tik, but zhú in Mandarin), having disappeared before the 6th century in other Chinese varieties.
Southern Min has , unaspirated as well as
initials. For example, the word khui (開; "open") and kui? (關; "close") have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and
of the vowel. In addition, Southern Min has
such as m in m?-sī (; "is not").
Another example is cha-po?-kiá? (; "boy") and cha-bó?-kiá? (; "girl"), which differ in the second syllable in consonant voicing and in .
Unlike Mandarin, Hokkien retains all the final consonants corresponding to those of . While Mandarin only preserves the n and ? finals, Southern Min also preserves the m, p, t and k finals and developed the ? ().
  
  
The following table illustrates some of the more commonly seen vowel shifts. Characters with the same vowel are shown in parentheses.
pē? (p??)
nn?g (n???)
chopsticks
tēu (t??)
phuê (p?ue?)
In general, Hokkien dialects have 5 to 7
. According to the traditional Chinese system, however, there are 7 to 9 tones if the two additional
(see the discussion on ).
is extensive. There are minor variations between the
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.
Tone Number
, Malaysia
(Xiamen) is a hybrid of the
is also a hybrid of these two dialects. Taiwanese in northern and coastal
tends to be based on the Quanzhou variety, whereas the Taiwanese spoken in central, south and inland 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
has left a legacy of Japanese loanwords in Taiwanese Hokkien. On the other hand, the variants spoken in
have a substantial number of loanwords from
and to a lesser extent, from
and other Chinese varieties, such as the closely related
and some .
are based on Zhangzhou dialect, whereas
is based on Quanzhou dialect.
The Quanzhou dialect, Xiamen dialect, Zhangzhou dialect, Taiwanese are mutually intelligible. The overseas variants such as
are slightly less
to mainland Min Nan dialects and Taiwanese dialects due to the existence of foreign loanwords.
The Min Nan varieties of
and Amoy are 84% phonetically similar,[] and 34% ,[] whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar[] and 15% lexically similar.[] In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar.
, which is sometimes considered Southern Min, has almost no mutual intelligibility with any form of Hokkien.[]
H in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning. A basic sentence follows the
pattern (i.e. a
is followed by a
then by an ), though this order is often violated because Hokkien dialects are . Unlike , seldom do words indicate ,
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
to further specify its status or .
A verb itself indicates no . 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
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 . This includes the
(direct linkage of verbs and ) and the infrequency of , 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
(also unique to the Jinjiang dialect is 度 thoo) and in , but not in
and , whose dialects use 互 (hoo) instead.
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
forms of the singular ones. Personal pronouns found in the Hokkien dialects are listed below:
First person
阮1, 3gún, góan
咱2, 3 or 俺
lán or án
Second person
Third person
1 Inclusive
2 Exclusive
3 儂 (-l?ng) is typically suffixed in Southeast Asian Hokkien dialects
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(sè?) 陳(T?n)。
"My husband's surname is Tan."
are made by appending the pronouns ka-kī, ka-tī (家己) or chū-kí (自己).
Hokkien dialects use a variety of differing , 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/hi? (遮, 遐), chit-tau 這兜)
there - hia (許, 遐), hit-tau (彼兜)
The interrogative pronouns are:
what - siá?-mih (啥物), sīm-mi?h (甚麼)
when - tī-s? (底時), kī-s? (幾時), tang-s? (當時), sīm-mi?h-s?-chūn (甚麼時陣)
where - to-lo?h (倒落), tó-uī (佗位, 叨位)
who - siá?-l?ng (啥人) or siá? (啥)
why - án-chóa? (按怎), khah (盍)
how - án-chóa? (按怎) l?-h? (如何) chóa?-iū? (怎樣)
States and qualities are generally expressed using
that do not require the verb "to be":
我(goá) 腹肚(pak-tó?) 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-go?eh-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."
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:
m? (毋, 呣, 唔)
bē, bōe (袂, 未)
mài (莫, 勿)
put (不) - literary
Other negative particles include:
biàu (嫑) - a contraction of b? iàu (無要), as in biàu-kín (嫑緊)[]
bàng (甭)
bián (免)
thài (汰)
The particles m? (毋, 呣, 唔) is general and can negate almost any verb:
伊(i) 毋(m?) 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 b? (無) indicates the past tense:
伊(i) 無(b?) 食(chia?h)。
"He did not eat."
The verb 'to have', ū (有) is replaced by b? (無) when negated (not 無有):
伊(i) 無(b?) 錢(ch??)。
"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."
The majority of Hokkien vocabulary is .[] Many Hokkien
in other Chinese varieties. That said, there are also many indigenous words that are unique to Hokkien and are potentially not of
origin, while others are shared by all the
dialects (e.g. 'congee' is 糜 mê, b?e, bê, not 粥 zhōu, as in other dialects).
As compared to
(Mandarin), Hokkien dialects prefer to use 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 l?ng-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, , Burmese, among others), as well as other Chinese dialects (such as Southern Chinese dialects like
and ), are commonly integrated into the vocabulary of Hokkien dialects.
The existence of
is a prominent feature of some Hokkien dialects and indeed in many Sinitic varieties in the south. The bulk of literary readings (文讀, b?n-tha?k), based on pronunciations of the vernacular during the , 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, pe?h-tha?k) 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
as well as
overwhelmingly favor colloquial readings. For example, in both Penang Hokkien and Philippine Hokkien, the characters for 'university,' 大學, are pronounced tōa-o?h (colloquial readings for both characters), instead of the literary reading tāi-ha?k, 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
(206 BCE - 220 CE); the second colloquial one comes from the period of the
(420 - 589 CE); the third stratum of pronunciations (typically literary ones) comes from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and is based on the
(modern day ), its capital.
Some commonly seen sound correspondences (colloquial → literary) are as follows:
p- ([p-], [p?-]) → h ([h-])
ch-, chh- ([ts-], [ts?-], [t?-], [t??-]) → s ([s-], [?-])
k-, kh- ([k-], [k?-]) → ch ([t?-], [t??-])
-? ([-?], [-u?]) → n ([-an])
-h ([-?]) → 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
This feature extends to , 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.
Colloquial
Colloquial
Quite a few words from the variety of
spoken in the state of , where the ancestral language of Min and Wu dialect families originated, and later words from
as well, have retained the original meanings in Hokkien, while many of their counterparts in
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:
jūn, lūn
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:
(and Classical Chinese)
tiny, small, young
thin, slender
tall, high
to hang, to suspend
Some commonly used words, shared by all[][ – ]
dialects, came from the ancient .
suggested that these languages were . Some terms are thought be cognates with words in
languages. They include the following examples, compared to the , a :
Hokkien POJ
Foochow Romanized
kha [k?a?]
foot and leg
kiá? [ki???]
giāng [kia??]
son, child, whelp, a small amount
khùn [k?un??]
káung [k?ɑu??]
phia? [p?i??]
pi?ng [p?ia??]
back, dorsum
chhù [ts?u??]
chuó, chió [ts?u???]
home, house
th?i [t?ai??]
tài [t?ai??]
to kill, to slaughter
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.
, as a result of linguistic contact with
and , contains many loanwords from these languages. Many words have also been formed as
from Mandarin, and speakers will often directly use Mandarin vocabulary through codeswitching. Among these include the following examples:
'toilet' - piān-só? () from Japanese benjo (便所)
Other Hokkien variants: 屎礐 (sái-ha?k), 廁所 (chhek-só?)
'car' - chū-tōng-chhia () from Japanese jidōsha (自動車)
Other Hokkien variants: 風車 (hong-chhia), 汽車 (khì-chhia)
'to admire' - kám-sim () from Japanese kanshin (感心)
Other Hokkien variants: 感動 (kám-tōng)
'fruit' - chúi-ké / chúi-kóe / chúi-kér (水果) from Mandarin (: 水果; : shuǐguǒ)
Other Hokkien variants: 果子 (ké-chí / kóe-chí / kér-chí)
and other Malaysian Hokkien dialects tend to draw loanwords from ,
as well as other Chinese dialects, primarily . 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
Other Hokkien variants: 市場 (chhī-ti??)
'they' - 伊儂 i l?ng from Teochew (i1 nang5)
Other Hokkien variants: ? (in)
'together' - 做瓠 chò-bú from Teochew 做瓠 (jo3 bu5)
Other Hokkien variants: 做夥 (chò-hóe), 同齊 (t?ng-chê) or 鬥陣 (tàu-tīn)
茶箍 (Sap-b?n) from Malay sabun from Arabic ?ābūn (?????).
dialects, as a result of centuries-old contact with both Philippine language and
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)
Hokkien-Taiwanese originated from .[] After the
(Amoy) became one of the major
to be opened for trade with the outside world. From the mid-19th century onwards,
slowly developed to become the political and economical center of the Hokkien-Taiwanese speaking region in China. This caused
to gradually replace the position of dialect variants from
and . From the mid-19th century until the end of ,[] western diplomats usually learned Amoy 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, [] also held
as its standard and tended to incline towards Amoy dialect.
However, from the 1980s onwards, the development of
pop music and media industry in
caused the Hokkien cultural hub to shift from
to .[] The flourishing
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
movement in Taiwan,
had undergone a fast pace in its development. In 1993,
became the first region in the world to implement the teaching of
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
movement in Taiwan even influenced
(Amoy) to the point that in 2010,
also began to implement the teaching of Hokkien dialect in its schools. In 2007, the
also completed the standardization of Chinese characters used for writing Hokkien and developed
as the standard Hokkien pronunciation and romanization guide. A number of universities in Taiwan also offer Taiwanese 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.
Thus by the 21st century, Taiwan has truly emerged as one of the most significant Hokkien cultural hubs of the world. The historical changes and development in Taiwan had led
to become the more influential pole of the Hokkien dialect after the mid-20th century. Today,
(Taiyu Youshiqiang/Tongxinqiang 台語優勢腔/通行腔), which is based on
variant and heard on Taiwanese Hokkien media.
Hokkien dialects are typically written using
(漢字, Hàn-jī). However, the written script was and remains adapted to the literary form, which is based on , 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 ). 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 k?an is 懸. Common grammatical part the negation particle m? (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
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 (he?k and jio?k, respectively). Another case is the word 'to eat,' chia?h, 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
formulated and released a standard character set to overcome these difficulties. These standard Chinese characters for writing
are now taught in schools in Taiwan.
Hokkien, especially , is sometimes written in the
using one of several alphabets. Of these the most popular is , developed first by
in China and later by the indigenous . 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 , presumably written after 1587 by the Spanish
in the . Another is a
script of a play called
(1566), supposedly the earliest Southern Min colloquial text, although it is written in .
Taiwan has developed a Latin alphabet for , derived from POJ, known as . Since 2006, it has been officially promoted by Taiwan's
and taught in Taiwanese schools.
has also developed an alphabet based on Pinyin called .
The character for the third person pronoun (they) in some Hokkien dialects, ? (in), is now supported by the Unicode Standard at U+2A736.
Hokkien is registered as "Southern Min" per
When writing Hokkien in , some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it impossible to use directly or
this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in , ,
and . Some of these are not encoded in
(or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: ), thus creating problems in computer processing.
characters required by
can be represented using
(or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: ), 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- spacing) character
(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
in charge of ISO/IEC 10646—namely, —to encode a new combining character dot above right. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see documents , , , , and ). Font support is expected to follow.
Hokkien (or Min Nan) can trace its roots through the
and also even further to the people of the , the indigenous non-Han people of modern-day southern China. Min Nan (Hokkien) people call themselves " people," (唐人; Tn?g-l?ng) 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 ,
languages.
In 2002, the , a party with about 10% of the
seats at the time, suggested making Taiwanese a second official language. This proposal encountered strong opposition not only from
groups but also from
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
supporters, and the proposal did not pass.
Chinese characters
Mandarin Chinese
Taiwanese Hokkien
Vietnamese
Saku/Satsu/Shaku
Xuéshēng
University
Tāi-ha?k (Tōa-o?h)
(Philippine dialect of Hokkien)
They are the most common pronunciations while there is another one cited from , , which is almost never used actually.
also Quanzhang (- / Chinchew–C : Zuánziū–Ziāngziū)
(in Chinese). Zh.wikisource.org.
Hammarstr?m, H Forkel, R Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). . . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Hammarstr?m, H Forkel, R Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). . . Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
Yan, Margaret Mian (2006). Introduction to Chinese Dialectology. LINCOM Europa. p. 120.  .
Chappell, H Peyraube, Alain (2006). . In Ho, D.-a.; Cheung, S.; Pan, W.; Wu, F. Linguistic Studies in Chinese and Neighboring Languages. Taipei: Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica. pp. 973–1011.
Lien, Chinfa (2015). "Min languages". In Wang, William S.-Y.; Sun, Chaofen. The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford University Press. pp. 160–172.  .
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(PDF). Asia Major New Series. 12 (1): 1–43.
Van der Loon, Piet (1967).
(PDF). Asia Major New Series. 13 (1): 95–186.
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Kane, Daniel (2006). The Chinese language: its history and current usage. Tuttle Publishing. pp. 100–102.  .
for Teochew Peng'Im on the word 'two', ri6 can
be written as dzi6.
(in Chinese). Ntcu.edu.tw. August 1, .
周長楫 (2006). 闽南方言大词典 (in Chinese). 福建人民出版社. pp. 17, 28.  .
. Ethnologue 2010.
Ratte, Alexander T. (May 2009).
(PDF). Williamstown, Massachusetts: Williams College: 4.
Li, Y.C. (1986). "Historical significance of certain distinct grammatical features in Taiwanese". In John McCoy, Timothy Light. Contributions to Sino-Tibetan studies. Brill Archive.  .
Lien, Chinfa (2002).
(PDF). Papers from the Third International Conference on Sinology. National Tsing Hua University: 179–216.
Kl?ter, Henning (2005). Written Taiwanese. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.  .
Lim, Beng Soon.
(PDF). Singapore: Regional Language Centre (RELC): 165.
Chappell, H Alain Peyraube.
(PDF). Linguistic studies in Chinese and neighboring languages. Paris, France: Centre de Recherches Linguistiques sur l’Asie Orientale: 1–34.
(2010). . University of Pennsylvania 2011.
[Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan]. Ministry of Education, R.O.C. 2011.
[Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan] (in Chinese). Taiwan: Ministry of Education, R.O.C. .
似懂非懂 (8 December 2006). . Hyweb Technology Co. Ltd. pp. 1873–. GGKEY:TPZ824QU3UG.
Thomas Watters (1889). . Presbyterian Mission Press. pp. 346–.
. Nhu.edu.tw 2010.
I??, ?n-gi?n.
[Taiwanese Hokkien Online Character Dictionary] (in Taiwanese and Chinese).
[Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan] (in Chinese). Ministry of Education, R.O.C. 2013. #2607.
Hsieh, Shelley Ching-yu (October 2005).
(PDF). Taiwan Papers. Southern Taiwan University of Technology. 5 2011.
(PDF). National Languages Committee (in Chinese). ROC Ministry of Education 2011.
. Evertype.com 2010.
; Mei, Tsu-lin (1976),
(PDF), Monumenta Serica, 32: 274–301,  .
Lin Mei-chun (10 Mar 2002). . Taipei Times. p. 1.
I??, ?n-gi?n.
[Taiwanese/Chinese Online Dictionary] 2014.
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.  .
Chung, R.-f (196). The segmental phonology of Southern Min in Taiwan. Taipei: Crane Pub. Co.  .
DeBernardi, Jean (1991). . . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. 25.  .
Ding, Picus Sizhi (2016). Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language. Springer.  .
Francis, Norbert (2014). . China Review International. 21 (2): 128–133. :.
Kl?ter, Henning (2011). The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century. BRILL.  . An analysis and facsimile of the Arte de la Lengua Chio-chiu (1620), the oldest extant grammar of Hokkien.
[Litchi Mirror Tale]. A playscript from the late 16th century.
. Manila. 1607. Hokkien translation of the .
. Manila. 1620. A manual for learning Hokkien written by a Spanish missionary in the Philippines.
[Compilation of the fifteen elegant and vulgar sounds]. 1818. The oldest known rhyme dictionary of a .
(1899). . London: Presbyterian Church of England.
(1832). . Macao: C.J. Steyn.
, a dictionary of Quanzhou speech
, includes translation and sound clip
(The voyager clip says: Thài-khong pêng-iú, lín-hó. Lín chia?h-pá--bē? ?-êng, to?h l?i gún chia chē--??! 太空朋友，恁好。恁食飽未？有閒著來阮遮坐哦!)
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