Southern Min forms part of the , alongside several other divisions. The Min languages/dialects are part of the Chinese language group, itself a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Southern Min is not with , , or . As with other varieties of , there is a political dispute as to whether the Southern Min language should be called a language or a dialect.
Geographic distribution
Southern Min 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 . 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 and in other schemes as separate.
A form of Southern Min akin to that spoken in southern Fujian is also spoken in Taiwan, where it has the native name of T?i-o?n-oē or . The ethnic group for which Southern Min is considered a native language is known as the or , 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 Southern Min fluently.
There are many Southern Min speakers also among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Many ethnic emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Indonesia and present day Malaysia and Singapore . In general, Southern Min 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 , the variant of Southern Min from that region. Southern Min is reportedly the native language of up to 98.5% of the in the Philippines, among whom it is also known as Lan-nang or Lán-l?ng-oē . Southern Min 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 dialects. They are known by the geographic locations to which they correspond :
* Quanzhou
* Xiamen
* Zhangzhou
As Xiamen is the principal city of southern Fujian, the Xiamen dialect is considered the most important, or even prestige dialect. The Xiamen dialect is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. Xiamen and the Amoy dialect have played an influential role in history, especially in the relations of nations with China, and was one of the most frequently learned of all Chinese languages/dialects by ers during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.
The variants of Southern Min 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 major pole of the language. Those Southern Min variants that are collectively known as "Hokkien" in Southeast Asia also originate from these variants. The variants of Southern Min in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province are collectively known as or Chaozhou. Teochew is of great importance in the Southeast Asian Chinese diaspora, particularly in Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Sumatra and western Kalimantan.
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 Hokkien has developed. In Penang, it is called Penang Hokkien while across the Malacca Strait in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as .
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
Southern Min has , unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. This distinction makes Southern Min one of the harder dialects for non-native speakers to learn. For example, the words for opening and closing a door have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and nasality of the vowel. In addition, Southern Min also has labial initial consonants such as m in m?-sī .
Finals
Unlike Mandarin, Southern Min retains all the final consonants of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the n and ? finals, Southern Min also preserves the m, p, t and k finals and developed the ? .
Vowels
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Tones
In general, Southern Min variants have seven to eight s, 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 and for more examples.
:
Comparison
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 . In contrast, speech is significantly different from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech in both pronunciation and vocabulary.
Mutual intelligibility
*Spoken: Quanzhou speech, Xiamen speech, Zhangzhou speech and Taiwanese are mutually intelligible. Chaozhou speech and Amoy speech are 84.3% phonetically similar and 33.8% lexically similar, whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar and 15.1% lexically similar. In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar. In other words, Chao-Shan, including Swatow , has very low intelligibility with Amoy, 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: Southern Min dialects lack a standardized written language. Southern Min 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 . For a phonological and lexical comparison of major Sino-tibetan languages , see .
Scripts and orthographies
Like most ethnic , whether from mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, or other parts of Southeast Asia, when writing , 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 . 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
Southern Min, especially Taiwanese, can be written with the Latin alphabet using a orthography called Pe?h-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 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'' , supposedly the earliest Southern Min colloquial text.
Computing
Southern Min is registered per RFC 3066 as .
When writing Southern Min in 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, , and . These are usually not encoded in Unicode , thus creating problems in computer processing.
All Latin characters required by Pe?h-oē-jī can be represented using Unicode , using precomposed or combining 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 character ''Interpunct'' or less commonly the combining character ''dot above'' . 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, —to encode a new combining character ''dot above right''. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 . Font support is expected to follow.
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