Everything about Min Nan totally explained
/
Bân-lâm-gú
|familycolor=Sino-Tibetan
|states=
People's Republic of China,
Taiwan,
Malaysia,
Indonesia,
Singapore,
Thailand,
Philippines,
Vietnam, and other areas of Min Nan and
Hoklo settlement
|region=Southern
Fujian province; the
Chaozhou-
Shantou (
Chaoshan) area and
Leizhou Peninsula in
Guangdong province; extreme south of
Zhejiang province; most of
Taiwan; much of
Hainan (if Hainanese or Qiong Wen is included)
|speakers=49 million
|rank=21
(if Qiong Wen is included)
|fam2=
Chinese
|fam3=
Min
|nation=None (
Legislative bills have been proposed for
Taiwanese (
Amoy Min Nan) to be one of the 'national languages' in the
Republic of China); one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the ROC
(External Link
)
|agency=None (
Republic of China Ministry of Education and some
NGOs are influential in
Taiwan)
|iso1=zh|iso2b=chi|iso2t=zho|iso3=nan}}
Min Nan,
Minnan, or
Min-nan (;
POJ: Bân-lâm-gú; "Southern Min" or "Southern Fujian" language) refers to a family of
Chinese languages/
dialects which are spoken in southern
Fujian and neighboring areas, and by descendants of
emigrants from these areas in
diaspora. In common parlance, Min Nan usually refers to
Xiamen speech (better known as the
Amoy language/dialect), which is usually called
Taiwanese by residents of
Taiwan, and
Hokkien by residents of
Southeast Asia.
Amoy is a combination of
Quanzhou and
Zhangzhou speech. The Min Nan family also includes
Teochew and
Hainanese.
Teochew has limited
mutual intelligibilty with
Amoy. However,
Hainanese is generally not considered to be mutually intelligible with any other Min Nan dialect.
Min Nan (Southern Min) forms part of the
Min language group, alongside several other divisions. The Min languages/dialects are part of the
Chinese language group, itself a member of the
Sino-Tibetan language family. Min Nan isn't
mutually intelligible with
Eastern Min,
Cantonese, or
Mandarin. As with other varieties of
Chinese, there's a political dispute as to whether Min Nan should be called a
language or a
dialect. (
See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for greater detail.)
Geographic distribution
Min Nan is spoken in the southern part of
Fujian province, three southeastern counties of
Zhejiang province, the
Zhoushan archipelago off
Ningbo in Zhejiang, and the eastern part of
Guangdong province (
Chaoshan region). The
Qiong Wen variant spoken in the
Leizhou peninsula of
Guangdong province, as well as
Hainan province, is classified in some schemes as part of Min Nan and in other schemes as separate.
A form of Min Nan akin to that spoken in
southern Fujian is also spoken in Taiwan, where it has the native name of
Tâi-oân-oē or
Hō-ló-oē. The (sub)ethnic group for which Min Nan is considered a
native language is known as the
Holo (Hō-ló) or
Hoklo, the main ethnicity of
Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is generally true though not absolute, as some Hoklo have very limited proficiency in Min Nan while some non-
Hoklos speak Min Nan fluently.
There are many Min Nan speakers also among
overseas Chinese in
Southeast Asia. Many ethnic
Chinese emigrants to the region were
Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now
Indonesia (the former
Dutch East Indies) and present day
Malaysia and
Singapore (formerly
Malaya and the
British Straits Settlements). In general, Min Nan from southern Fujian is known as
Hokkien,
Hokkienese,
Fukien or
Fookien in Southeast Asia, and is extremely similar to Taiwanese. Many
Southeast Asian ethnic Chinese also originated in
Chaoshan region of
Guangdong province and speak
Teochew, the variant of Min Nan from that region. Min Nan is reportedly the native language of up to 98.5% of the
community of ethnic Chinese in the
Philippines, among whom it's also known as
Lan-nang or
Lán-lâng-oē ("Our people’s language"). Min Nan speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore with the largest being
Hoklos and the second largest being the
Teochews.
Classification
Southern
Fujian is home to three main
Amoy accents. They are known by the geographic locations to which they correspond:
As Xiamen is the principal city of southern Fujian, the Xiamen accent is considered the most important, or even
prestige accent. The Xiamen accent is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou accents. Xiamen 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 learned of all Chinese languages/dialects by
Westerners during the second half of the
19th century and the early
20th century.
The variants of Min Nan spoken in
Zhejiang province are most akin to that spoken in Quanzhou. 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. Those Min Nan variants that are collectively known as "Hokkien" in
Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Min Nan in the
Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are collectively known as
Teochew or
Chaozhou.
Teochew is of great importance in the
Southeast Asian
Chinese diaspora, particularly in
Malaysia (where Teochew people form a substantial part of the ethnic
Chinese population),
Cambodia,
Vietnam,
Thailand and other locations. The Min Nan variant spoken around
Shanwei and
Haifeng differs markedly from
Teochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou. Linguistically, it lies between
Teochew and
Amoy. In southwestern
Fujian, the local variants in
Longyan and
Zhangping form a separate division of Min Nan on their own. Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of
Penang,
Malaysia and
Medan,
Indonesia, a distinct form of
Zhangzhou (
Changchew) Hokkien has developed. In
Penang, it's called
Penang Hokkien while across the
Malacca Strait in
Medan, an almost identical variant is known as
Medan Hokkien (in
Indonesian).
Tones
In general, Min Nan variants have seven to eight
tones, and
tone sandhi is extensive. There are minor variations between the
Quanzhou and
Zhangzhou tone systems. The Teochew tone system differs significantly from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech. Taiwanese tones follow the schemes of Amoy and Zhangzhou, depending on the area of Taiwan] See also
Amoy and
Teochew for more examples.
»
Comparison
Xiamen speech is a hybrid of
Quanzhou and
Zhangzhou speech.
Taiwanese is also a hybrid of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech. Taiwanese in northern
Taiwan tends to be based on Quanzhou speech, 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 speech. The grammar is basically the same. Additionally, Taiwanese includes several dozen loanwords from
Japanese. In contrast,
Teochew speech is significantly different from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech in both pronunciation and vocabulary.
Mutual intelligibility
Spoken: Quanzhou speech, Xiamen (Amoy) speech, Zhangzhou speech and Taiwanese are mutually intelligible. According to www.glossika.com, Chaozhou (Teochew) speech and Amoy speech are 84.3% phonetically similar(External Link) and 33.8% lexically similar(External Link), whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar(External Link) and 15.1% lexically similar(External Link). In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar(External Link) In other words, Chao-Shan, including Swatow (both of which are variants of Teochew), has very low intelligibility with Amoy(External Link), and Amoy and Teochew are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin. However, many Amoy and Teochew speakers speak Mandarin as a second or third language.
Written: Min Nan dialects lack a standardized written language. Min Nan speakers are taught how to read Standard Mandarin in school. As a result, there hasn't been an urgent need to develop a writing system. In recent years, an increasing number of Min Nan speakers have become interested in developing a standard writing system (either by using Chinese Characters, or using Romanized script). For a phonological and lexical comparison of major Sino-tibetan languages (including prominent varieties of Min Nan), see .
Scripts and orthographies
Like most ethnic Chinese, whether from mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, or other parts of Southeast Asia, when writing Chinese, Min Nan speakers use Chinese characters as in Standard Mandarin, although there are a number of special characters which are unique to Min Nan and sometimes used in informal writing (as is the case with Cantonese). Where standard Chinese characters are used, they're not always etymological or genetic; the borrowing of similar-sounding or similar-meaning characters is a common practice.
Romanization
Min Nan, especially Taiwanese, can be written with the Latin alphabet using a Romanized orthography called Pe̍h-ōe-jī, or POJ . POJ was developed first by Presbyterian missionaries in China and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan; use of the orthography has been actively promoted since the late 19th century. The use of a mixed orthography of Han characters and romanization is also seen, though remains uncommon. Other Latin-based orthographies also exist. Earlier scripts in Min Nan 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 Romance of the Lychee Mirror (1566 AD), supposedly the earliest Southern Min colloquial text.
Computing
The language Min Nan is registered per RFC 3066 as zh-min-nan (External Link).
When writing Min Nan 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. These are usually 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-oē-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, wasn't 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.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Min Nan'.
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