Min Nan
Min Nan,
Minnan, or
Min-nan (;
POJ: Bân-lâm-gú; "Southern
Min" or "Southern
Fujian" language) is the
Chinese dialect/
language spoken in southern
Fujian province,
China and neighboring areas, and by descendants of
emigrants from these areas in
diaspora.
Hokkien,
Taiwanese, and
Teochew are all common names for several prominent variants of Min Nan.
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 is mutually intelligible with neither
Eastern Min,
Cantonese, nor
Mandarin, the
official Chinese language, spoken (at least as a
second language) by the majority of those in
mainland China and
Taiwan, as well as large numbers of
overseas Chinese.
Min Nan is spoken in the southern part of
Fujian province, two southern 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-o" or
Hō-ló-o". The (sub)ethnic group for which Min Nan is considered a
native language is known as the
Holo (Hō-ló) or
Hoklo, one of the main ethnicities of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, however, 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 (the former
British Straits Settlements and
Malaya). In general, Min Nan from southern Fujian is known as
Hokkien,
Hokkienese, or
Fukien 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 is also known as
Lan-nang or
Lán-lâng-o" ("Our people's language").
As with other varieties of
Chinese, there is significant dispute as to whether Min Nan is a
language or a
dialect. (
See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for greater detail.)
Southern
Fujian is home to three main dialect systems of Min Nan. They are known by the geographic locations to which they correspond:
*
Amoy (
Xiamen)
*
Changchew (
Zhangzhou)
*
Chinchew (
Quanzhou)
As
Xiamen (Amoy) is the principal city of southern Fujian, the Amoy dialect is considered the most important, or even
prestige variant. 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 actively used by a large 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),
Vietnam,
Thailand and other locations.
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 is called
Penang Hokkien while across the
Malacca Strait in
Medan, an almost identical variant is known as
Medan Hokkien (in Indonesian).
In general, Min Nan variants have seven to eight
tones, and
tone sandhi is extensive.
See
Taiwanese and
Teochew dialect for examples of Min Nan tone systems.
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 are not always etymological or genetic; the borrowing of similar-sounding or similar-meaning characters is a common practice.
Romanization
Min Nan, in particular, Taiwanese, can be written with the
Latin alphabet using an
Romanized orthography called
Pe̍h-o"-jī (POJ; meaning "vernacular writing"). POJ was developed first by
Presbyterian missionaries 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 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 [
1]. Taiwanese can be represented as
zh-min-nan-TW.
When writing Min Nan in Chinese characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it is 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-o"-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.
*
台語-華語線頂辭典, Taiwanese-Mandarin on-line dictionary
*
臺灣本土語言'譯及語音合成系統, Taiwanese-Hakka-Mandarin on-line conversion
*
Fuzhou dialect*
Hakka language*
Languages of China*
Languages of Taiwan*
Chinese in Singaporezh-yue:閩南語
