Hokkien ( , ) is a variety of Chinese from the Southern Min branch of the Sinitic languages, native to the Minnan region in the southern part of Fujian province in southeastern China, as well as the island of Taiwan. It is also referred to as Quanzhang, named after the prefecture-level cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.
Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages of Taiwan, and is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, and elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity.
In maritime Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialectal subgroups due to the prominence of Hokkien sailors in the Nanyang maritime trade networks since the Ming dynasty, and it still remains as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region today, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Brunei. This applied to a lesser extent to mainland Southeast Asia. As a result of the significant influence and historical presence of its sizable overseas diaspora, certain considerable to ample amounts of Hokkien loanwords are also historically present in the languages it has had historical contact with in its sprachraum, such as nearby varieties of English, Tai languages, and other varieties of Chinese. Kelantan Peranakan Hokkien, in northern Malaya of Malaysia, and Hokaglish, spoken sporadically across the Philippines (especially Metro Manila), are also mixed languages, with Hokkien as the base lexifier.
Names Hokkien speakers in different regions refer to the language as: ( 'Southern Min language') in China, Taiwan, and Malaysia ( 'Southern Min speech') in China, Taiwan, Philippines, and Malaysia ( 'Taiwanese speech') or ( 'Hoklo speech') in Taiwan ( 'our people's speech') in the Philippines / ( 'Hokkien language') in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, and the Philippines
In parts of Southeast Asia and in the English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien () is etymologically derived from the Hokkien pronunciation of Fujian (), 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 the Fuzhou language (Eastern Min), Pu-Xian Min, Northern Min, Gan Chinese or Hakka.
The term Hokkien was first used by Walter Henry Medhurst in his 1832 Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language, According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms, considered to be the earliest English-based Hokkien dictionary and the first major reference work in POJ, though its romanization system differs significantly from modern POJ. In this dictionary, the word was used. In 1869, POJ was further revised by John Macgowan in his published book A Manual Of The Amoy Colloquial. In this book, was changed to as ; from then on, "Hokkien" is used more often.
Historically, Hokkien was also known as "Amoy", after the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation of Xiamen (Ēe-mûi), the principal port in southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty, as one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking. In 1873, Carstairs Douglas published the Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, With the Principal Variations of the Chang-chew and Chin-chew Dialects, where the language was referred to as the "Language of Amoy" or as the "Amoy Vernacular" and by 1883, John Macgowan would publish another dictionary, the English and Chinese Dictionary of the Amoy Dialect. Due to possible conflation between the language as a whole with its Xiamen dialect, many proscribe referring to the former as "Amoy", a usage that is more commonly found in older media and some conservative institutions.
In the classification used by the Language Atlas of China, the Quanzhang branch of Southern Min consists of the Min varieties originating from Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Xiamen and the eastern counties of Longyan (Xinluo and Zhangping).
Geographic distribution
Hokkien is spoken in the southern seaward quarter of Fujian, southeastern Zhejiang, east-central Guangdong, as well as the eastern part of Namoa in China; Taiwan; Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao and other cities in the Philippines; Singapore; Brunei; South of Thailand; Medan, Riau and other cities in Indonesia; and from Perlis, Kedah, Penang, Klang, Melaka, Johor and Kuching Sarawak in Malaysia.
Hokkien originated in the southern area of Fujian 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 nearby Taiwan, where immigrants from Fujian arrived as workers during the 40 years of Dutch rule, fleeing the Qing dynasty during the 20 years of Ming loyalist rule, as immigrants during the 200 years of rule by the Qing dynasty, especially in the last 120 years after immigration restrictions were relaxed, and even as immigrants during the period of Japanese rule. The Taiwanese dialect mostly has origins with the Tung'an, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect, also known as the Xiamen dialect, has become the modern prestige representative for the language in China. Both Amoy and Xiamen come from the Chinese name of the city; the former is from Zhangzhou Hokkien (), whereas the latter comes from Mandarin ().
There are many Southern Min speakers among overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, as well as in the United States (Hoklo Americans). Many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia (the former Dutch East Indies) and present day Malaysia and Singapore (formerly Malaya and the British Straits Settlements). Most of the Min Nan dialects of this region have incorporated some foreign loanwords. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the ethnic Chinese people in the Philippines, among which is known locally as Lán-nâng-uē ("Our people's speech"). Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Classification
Southern Fujian is home to four principal Hokkien dialects: Chiangchew, Chinchew, Tung'an, and Amoy, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, historical Tung'an County (, now Xiamen and Kinmen) and the Port of Amoy, respectively.
In the late 1800s, the Amoy dialect attracted special attention, because Amoy was one of the five ports opened to foreign trade by the Treaty of Nanking, but before that it had not attracted attention. The Amoy dialect is adopted as the 'Modern Representative Min Nan'. The Amoy dialect cannot simply be interpreted as a mixture of the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou dialects, but rather it is formed on the foundation of the Tung'an dialect with further inputs from other sub-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 dialects of Hokkien by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The Modern Representative form of Hokkien spoken around the Taiwanese city of Tainan heavily resembles the Tung'an dialect. All Hokkien dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien, or Holo locally, although there is a tendency to call these Taiwanese language for historical reasons. It is spoken by more Taiwanese than any Sinitic language except Mandarin, and it is known by a majority of the population; thus, from a socio-political perspective, it forms a significant pole of language usage due to the popularity of Holo-language media. Douglas (1873/1899) also noted that Formosa (Taiwan) has been settled mainly by emigrants from Amoy (Xiamen), Chang-chew (Zhangzhou), and Chin-chew (Quanzhou). Several parts of the island are usually found to be specially inhabited by descendants of such emigrants, but in Taiwan, the various forms of the dialects mentioned prior are a good deal mixed up.
Southeast Asia The varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. Douglas (1873) notes that
In modern times though, a mixed dialect descended from the Quanzhou, Amoy, and Zhangzhou dialects, leaning a little closer to the Quanzhou dialect, possibly due to being from the Tung'an dialect, is spoken by Chinese Singaporeans, Southern Malaysian Chinese, and Chinese Indonesians in Riau province and the Riau Islands. Variants include Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien and Singaporean Hokkien in Singapore.
Among Malaysian Chinese of Penang, and other states in northern mainland Malaysia and ethnic Chinese Indonesians in Medan, with other areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia, a distinct descendant dialect form of Zhangzhou Hokkien has developed. In Penang, Kedah and Perlis, it is called Penang Hokkien while across the Strait of Malacca in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as Medan Hokkien.
Many Chinese Filipinos profess ancestry from Hokkien-speaking areas; Philippine Hokkien is also largely derived from the Quanzhou dialect, particularly Jinjiang and Nan'an dialects with some influence from the Amoy dialect.
There are also Hokkien speakers scattered throughout other parts of Indonesia—including Jakarta and the island of Java—Thailand, Myanmar, East Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, and Southern Vietnam, though there is notably more Teochew and Swatow background among descendants of Chinese migrants in Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Southern Vietnam.
History
Variants of Hokkien dialects can be traced to 2-4 main principal dialects of origin: the original two being, the Quanzhou () and Zhangzhou () dialects, and in later centuries Xiamen/Amoy () and Tong'an () as well. The Amoy and Tong'an dialects are historically mixtures of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, since they are the geographic and linguistic midpoint between the two, while the rest of the Hokkien dialects spoken in Taiwan and Southeast Asia are respectively derived from varying proportions of the above principal dialects in southern Fujian.
Southern Fujian During the Three Kingdoms period of ancient China, there was constant warfare occurring in the Central Plains of China. Ethnic Han Chinese gradually migrated from Henan to the mouth of the Yangtze to the coasts of Zhejiang and later began to enter into the Fujian region, which in ancient times was originally Minyue country, populated with non-Chinese Baiyue, causing the region for the first time in ancient times to incorporate Old Chinese dialects of which would later become Min Chinese. The massive migration of 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 Han Chinese to move into Fujian region. They brought the Old Chinese spoken in the Central Plain of China from the prehistoric era to the 3rd century into Fujian that later became Min, which later split off into its respective branches, of which Hokkien descends from the Southern Min branch of it.