The most widely spoken Southern Min language isHokkien, which includesTaiwanese.Other varieties of Southern Min have significant differences from Hokkien, some having limitedmutual intelligibility with it, others almost none.Teochew,Longyan, andZhenan are said to have general mutual intelligibility with Hokkien, sharing similar phonology and vocabulary to a large extent.[7] On the other hand, variants such asDatian,Zhongshan, andQiong-Lei have historical linguistic roots with Hokkien, but are significantly divergent from it in terms of phonology and vocabulary, and thus have almost no mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Linguists tend to classify them as separate languages.
The variant spoken inLeizhou, Guangdong as well as that inHainan is classified asHainanese and is not mutually intelligible with mainstream Southern Min or Teochew.[9] Hainanese is classified in some schemes as part of Southern Min and in other schemes as separate;[9] among the latter, Hou combined Hainanese with Leizhou Min in a Qiong–Lei subgroup within Min, distinct from Southern Min.[10] Some have even considered this distinction to be at the same level as theCoastal Min –Inland Min distinction.[9]
Puxian Min was originally based on theQuanzhou dialect, but over time became heavily influenced byEastern Min, eventually losing intelligibility with Southern Min. It is thus categorised into its own branch alongside Southern Min and Eastern Min.[11]
The Southern Min dialects spoken in Taiwan, collectively known asTaiwanese, is afirst language for most of theHoklo people, the main ethnic group of Taiwan. The correspondence between language and ethnicity is not absolute, as someHoklo Taiwanese people have very limited proficiency in Taiwanese while some non-HokloTaiwanese people (includingHakkas andIndigenous) speak Taiwanese Southern Min fluently.[12]
Southern Min speakers form the majority of Chinese in Singapore, with Hokkien being the largest group and the second largest beingTeochew. Despite the similarities, the two groups are rarely viewed together as "Southern Min".
Leizhou andHainanese dialects under the Qiong-Lei division (瓊雷片).
More recently, Kwok (2018: 157)[13] has proposed an alternative classification, with a divergent Northern branch that includesQuanzhou dialect but notZhangzhou dialect, as shown below:
Teochew is a closely related to Hokkien, with several variants spoken across theChaoshan region. Some also considerHaklau Min to be part of Teochew. Despite the close relationship, Teochew and Hokkien are different enough in both pronunciation and vocabulary that mutual intelligibility is difficult.[14]
Zhenan Min, a dialect island inZhejiang province, is closely related to Quanzhou Hokkien.
Haklau Min, spoken aroundShanwei andHaifeng, differs markedly from neighbouringTeochew and may represent a later migration from Zhangzhou. Linguistically, it lies between Teochew and Amoy.
Southern Min has one of the most diverse phonologies of Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Mandarin or Cantonese. Vowels, on the other hand, are more-or-less similar to those of Mandarin. In general, Southern Min dialects have five to sixtones, andtone sandhi is extensive. There are minor variations within Hokkien, and the Teochew system differs somewhat more.
Southern Min can trace its origins through theTang dynasty, and it also has roots from earlier periods.Hokkien people call themselves "Tang people", (Tn̂g-lâng唐人/唐儂) which is synonymous to "Chinese people". Because of the widespread influence of the Tang culture during theGreat Tang dynasty, there are today still many Southern Min pronunciations of words shared by theSino-xenic pronunciations ofVietnamese,Korean andJapanese languages.
Both Hokkien and Teochew have romanized writing systems and also respectiveChinese characters. Inmainland China, it is known asBân-lâm-bûn (閩南文), while inTaiwan, written Hokkien is known asTâi-bûn (台文). Chinese characters are known in China and Taiwan asHàn-jī (漢字). In Malaysia and Singapore, they are known asTn̂g-lâng-jī (唐儂字 / 唐人字). In the Philippines, they are known asLán-nâng-lī (咱儂字 / 咱人字) orHàn-bûn-lī (漢文字).
The use of Chinese characters to write Hokkien remained largely unsystematic in the Ming and Qing dynasties, when characters were used to transcribe colloquial Southern Min speech in opera scripts, folk stories, and regional texts. Among the earliest extant vernacular Southern Min texts using Chinese characters is theTale of the Lychee Mirror (traditional Chinese:荔鏡記;simplified Chinese:荔镜记;pinyin:Lì Jìng Jì;Pe̍h-ōe-jī:Nāi-kèng-kì / Lē-kèng-kì), written in a mix of Hokkien and Teochew. Its earliest extant manuscript dates from 1566.[16][17]
Concurrently, Hokkien interaction with Dominican missionaries based in thePhilippines led to the translation of Spanish doctrinal literature into Hokkien in Roman script.[18] Early 19th century Protestant missionaries, mostly from Britain and originally based inMalacca, developed a different set of romanization schemes independently. This started with the works ofWalter Henry Medhurst, later refined bySamuel Wells Williams andElihu Doty, and culminated with the scriptPe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) as promulgated byJohn Van Nest Talmage, traditionally regarded as the founder of POJ.[18] After theTreaty of Nanking was signed in 1842, the center of the writing and publishing of church literature in Southern Min shifted toAmoy, cementing its status as thede facto standard for Southern Min.[18][19] WhenThomas Barclay produced the first printed newspaper in Taiwan, theTaiwan Prefectural City Church News, it showed the establishment of a strong tradition of literacy in Hokkien POJ.[19] The success of POJ resulted in its adaptation intoPe̍h-ūe-jī for Teochew in 1875.
UnderJapanese rule, POJ was suppressed and then outlawed, withTaiwanese kana becoming the dominant script for Taiwanese Hokkien, although its role in daily life was much reduced.[19] Although after World War II, theKuomintang initially had a liberal attitude towards Southern Min, the use of POJ was put under ever increasing restrictions, leading to an outright prohibition in the 1970s.[19]
With the lifting of martial law and Taiwan’s democratization in the late 1980s and 1990s, the use of Taiwanese Hokkien increased, and various new romanizations were devised.[19] In 2006, theMinistry of Education of Taiwan officially selected one orthography, often known asTâi-Lô, for pedagogical use in the school system. The following year, it released the first list ofTaiwanese Southern Min Recommended Characters, with subsequent lists providing further standardization of the Chinese characters used.[19]
The Min homeland of Fujian was opened to Han Chinese settlement by the defeat of theMinyue state by the armies ofEmperor Wu of Han in 110 BC.[20] The area features rugged mountainous terrain, with short rivers that flow into theSouth China Sea. Most subsequent migration from north to south China passed through the valleys of theXiang andGan rivers to the west, so that Min varieties have experienced less northern influence than other southern groups.[21] As a result, whereas mostvarieties of Chinese can be treated as derived fromMiddle Chinese, the language described byrhyme dictionaries such as theQieyun (601 AD), Min varieties contain traces of older distinctions.[22] Linguists estimate that the oldest layers of Min dialects diverged from the rest of Chinese around the time of theHan dynasty.[23][24] However, significant waves of migration from theNorth China Plain occurred.[25] These include:
^Bodman, Nicholas C. (1985). Acson, Veneeta; Leed, Richard L. (eds.).The Reflexes of Initial Nasals in Proto-Southern Min-Hingua. Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications. Vol. 20. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 2–20.ISBN978-0-8248-0992-8.JSTOR20006706.
^Kwok, Bit-Chee (2018).Southern Min: comparative phonology and subgrouping. Routledge studies in East Asian linguistics. Vol. 2. New York: Routledge.ISBN978-1-138-94365-0.
^Lien, Chinfa (2015). "Min languages". In Wang, William S.-Y.; Sun, Chaofen (eds.).The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Linguistics. Oxford University Press. pp. 160–172.ISBN978-0-19-985633-6.
Norman, Jerry (1991), "The Mǐn dialects in historical perspective", in Wang, William S.-Y. (ed.),Languages and Dialects of China,Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, vol. 3, Chinese University Press, pp. 325–360,JSTOR23827042,OCLC600555701.
Ting, Pang-Hsin (1983), "Derivation time of colloquial Min from Archaic Chinese",Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology,54 (4):1–14.
Yan, Margaret Mian (2006),Introduction to Chinese Dialectology, LINCOM Europa,ISBN978-3-89586-629-6.
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.ISBN3-11-015831-0.
Chung, Raung-fu (1996).The segmental phonology of Southern Min in Taiwan. Taipei: Crane Pub. Co.ISBN957-9463-46-8.
Iûⁿ, Ún-giân.台語線頂字典 [Taiwanese Hokkien Online Character Dictionary] (in Minnan and Chinese (Taiwan)). Archived fromthe original on 2018-12-25. Retrieved2015-02-06.
ISO 639-3 Change Request Documentation: 2008-083, requesting to replace codenan (Minnan Chinese) with dzu (Chaozhou) and xim (Xiamen), rejected because it did not include codes to cover the rest of the group.
ISO 639-3 Change Request Documentation: 2021-045, requesting to replace codenan with 11 new codes. Codes were added for Leizhou and Hainan Min, but the others were rejected for lack of evidence in published research.
