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Mǐn Nán (Chinese: 閩南語), also spelt as Minnan or Min-nan; native name Bân-lâm-gú; literally means "Southern Min" or "Southern Fujian" and refers to the local language/dialect of southern Fujian province, China. It is often known simply as Hokkien (i.e. "Fujian(ese)") or Teochew, especially in Southeast Asia.
Northern and Southern Min can be grouped together as Min. Both are often classified as dialects of the Chinese language (itself part of the Sino-Tibetan language family). However, Min Nan, Northern Min and Mandarin (the Chinese official dialect) are not mutually intelligible.
Min Nan is spoken in the southern part of the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by descendents of migrants from this province in Taiwan, Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou, and Leizhou peninsula), Hainan, two counties in southern Zhejiang and Zhoushan archipelago offshore Ningbo. There are many Min Nan speakers also among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, it also has the native name of Hō-ló-oē. In the Philippines, it has the name Lán-lâng-oē ("our people's language") among the Chinese Filipinos, many of which are descendants of Fujian people.
Like all other varieties of Chinese, there is plenty of dispute as to whether Min Nan is a language or a dialect. Please see here for the issues surrounding this dispute.
Classification
There are three main dialects of Min Nan in southern Fujian, corresponding to the areas of:
As Amoy is the principal city of southern Fujian, its dialect is the most important variant. Outside Fujian, the following major variants of Min Nan can be found:
The variant(s) spoken in Taiwan, though similar to the three southern Fujian variants, are collectively known as Taiwanese.
See also Taiwanese language and Penang Hokkien for more extensive descriptions of those variants.
Tones
Min Nan retains seven of the eight Middle Chinese tones, namely:
- 陰平 Yin-ping |44|
- 上聲 Shang-sheng |51|
- 陰去 Yin-qu |31|
- 陰入 Yin-ru |3|
- 陽平 Yang-ping |24|
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- 陽去 Yang-qu |33|
- 陽入 Yang-ru |5|
The numbers given in | | are tone contours (in the Amoy sub-dialect), where 1 is the lowest and 5 is highest. Unlike some Chinese languages, such as Cantonese, all tones in Min Nan are subject to tone sandhi, that is a given syllable's tone changes when it appears in front of another syllable.
See also
External links
Wikipedia articles written in this language are located at the
Min Nan Wikipedia
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