Min Nan

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Southern Min Language 閩南語 / 闽南语 Bân-lâm-gú
Spoken in:	People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, and other areas of Southern Min 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)
Total speakers:	49 million
Ranking:	21 (if Qiong Wen is included)
Language family:	Sino-Tibetan  Chinese   Min    Southern Min Language
Official status
Official language in:	None (Legislative bills have been proposed for Taiwanese (Amoy Southern Min) to be one of the 'national languages' in the Republic of China); one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the ROC [1]
Regulated by:	None (Republic of China Ministry of Education and some NGOs are influential in Taiwan)
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	zh
ISO 639-2:	chi (B)	zho (T)
ISO 639-3:	nan
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Southern Min Language (Chinese: Min Nan, Minnan, or Min-nan (simplified Chinese: 闽南语; traditional Chinese: 閩南語; pinyin: Mǐnnányǔ; POJ: Bân-lâm-gú; 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, Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min dialect.

The Southern Min Language 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. The Southern Min Language is not mutually intelligible with the Eastern Min Language, Cantonese, or Mandarin. As with other varieties of Chinese, there is a political dispute as to whether the Southern Min language should be called a language or a dialect. (See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for greater detail.)

Geographic distribution

The Southern Min Language 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, which is not mutually intelligible with standard Minnan or Teochew, is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min Language and in other schemes as separate.

A form of Southern Min Language 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 the Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min while some non-Hoklos speak the Southern Min Language fluently.

There are many Southern Min Language 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, Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min Language from that region. Southern Min Language 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-oē ("Our people’s language"). Southern Min Language 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:

• Quanzhou (Chinchew) (泉州)
• Xiamen (Amoy) (廈門)
• Zhangzhou (Changchew) (漳州)

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 Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min Language variants that are collectively known as "Hokkien" in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min Language 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 is called Penang Hokkien while across the Malacca Strait in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as Medan Hokkien (in Indonesian).

Phonology

The Southern Min Language has one of the most diverse phonology of Chinese variants, with more consonants than standard Mandarin or Cantonese. Vowels, on the other hand, are more or less similar to that of Standard Mandarin.

Initials

The Southern Min Language has aspirated, unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. This distinction makes the Southern Min Language one of the harder dialects for native English speakers to learn. For example, the words for opening and closing(kwee) a door only differ from each other very slightly from the point of view of an English speaker, with the word for opening having an aspirated initial k and the word for closing having an unaspirated inital k. In addition, the Southern Min Language also has labial initial consonants such as m.

Finals

Unlike Mandarin, the Southern Min Language retains all the final consonants of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the n and ŋ finals, the Southern Min Language also preserves the m, p, t and k finals.

Vowels

Tones

In general, the Southern Min Language 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.

Minnan tones^[1]

Tone	Amoy (Xiamen)	Quanzhou	Zhangzhou
1	˥ (55)	˧ (33)	˥ (55)
2	˥˧ (53)	˥ (55)	˥˧ (53)
3	˨˩ (21)	˧˩ (31)	˨˩ (21)
4	˩ʔ (1)	˥ʔ (5)	˩ʔ (1)
5	˧˥ (35)	˧˥ (35)	˩˧ (13)
6	(= #2)	˨ (22)	(= #2)
7	˩ (11)	˧˩ (31)	˩ (11)
8	˥ (5ʔ)	˨˧ʔ (23)	˩˨ʔ (12)

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. Chaozhou (Teochew) speech and Amoy speech are 84.3% phonetically similar^[2] and 33.8% lexically similar^[3], whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar^[4] and 15.1% lexically similar^[5]. In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar^[6] In other words, Chao-Shan, including Swatow (both of which are variants of Teochew), has very low intelligibility with Amoy^[7], 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: The Southern Min Language dialects lack a standardized written language. The Southern Min Language speakers are taught how to read Standard Mandarin in school. As a result, there has not been an urgent need to develop a writing system. In recent years, an increasing number of Southern Min Language 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 Southern Min Language), see Sino-Tibetan Swadesh lists.

Scripts and orthographies

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Like most ethnic Chinese, whether from mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, or other parts of Southeast Asia, when writing Chinese, Southern Min Language speakers use Chinese characters as in Standard Mandarin, although there are a number of special characters which are unique to Southern Min Language 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

The Southern Min Language, especially Taiwanese, can be written with the Latin alphabet using a Romanized orthography called Pe̍h-ōe-jī, or POJ (traditional Chinese: 白話字; simplified Chinese: 白话字; pinyin: báihuà zì; literally "vernacular writing"). 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 Southern Min Language 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.

• Note: The bopomofo extended characters in the zhuyin row require a UTF-8 font capable of displaying Unicode values 31A0–31B7 (ex. Code2000 true type font).

Computing

The Southern Min Language is registered per RFC 3066 as zh-min-nan [2].

When writing the Southern Min Language 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, 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.

See also

• Penang Hokkien
• Taiwanese (linguistics)
• Fuzhou dialect
• Hakka language
• Languages of China
• Languages of Taiwan
• Malaysian Chinese
• Chinese in Singapore
• Amoy Min Nan Swadesh list

References

1. ^ 閩南語辭典 (Min Nan Dictionary), page 21 (in Mandarin, Southern Min Language). ISBN 9578447523. 
2. ^ glossika Southern Min Language phonetics
3. ^ glossika Southern Min Language
4. ^ glossika Southern Min Language phonetics
5. ^ glossika Southern Min Language
6. ^ ethnologue
7. ^ ethnologue

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 31-101-5831-0. 
• Chung, R.-f (196). The segmental phonology of Southern Min in Taiwan. Taipei: Crane Pub. Co. ISBN 95-794-6346-8. 
• DeBernardi, J. E. "Linguistic nationalism--the case of Southern Min ", Dept. of Oriental Studies, University of Pennsylvania.. 

External links

Southern Min Language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Min Nan

• 當代泉州音字彙, a dictionary of Quanzhou speech
• 台語-華語線頂辭典, Taiwanese-Mandarin on-line dictionary
• 臺灣本土語言互譯及語音合成系統, Taiwanese-Hakka-Mandarin on-line conversion
• 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--ô·! 太空朋友，恁好。恁食飽未？有閒著來阮遮坐哦!)

• 台語詞典 Taiwanese-English-Mandarin Dictionary