Hokkien
| Hokkien 福建 话 / 福建 話 |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Spoken in |
Fujian ( PR China ), Taiwan , Southeast Asia | |
| Linguistic classification |
||
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639 -1 |
zh (Chinese languages) |
|
| ISO 639 -2 | ( B ) chi (Chinese languages) | ( T ) zho (Chinese languages) |
| ISO 639-3 |
nan (Min Nan), zho (macro language, Chinese languages) |
|
Hokkien ( Chinese 福建 话 / 福建 話 , Pinyin Fújiànhuà , Pe̍h-ōe-jī Hok-kiàn-oē ), also called Quanzhang ( 泉 漳 片 ) (after the cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou ), is a variant of the southern Chinese language Min-Nan and is spoken in the south of Fujian Province , Taiwan, and much of Southeast Asia .
The name of the language is derived from Fujian Province ( earlier transcription : "Fukien"), which is pronounced "Hokkien" in Min Nan. This is why the term “Fukien dialect” was used in the past. The variant spoken in Taiwan is called " Taiwanese ".
Geographical distribution
Hokkien originally comes from Fujian Province , spread across large parts of Asia via the South China Sea and is now the most widely spoken dialect belonging to the Chinese language family in Southeast Asia. The ethnic group who use Hokkien as their mother tongue are the Hoklo , mainly found in Malaysia , the Philippines , Singapore , Indonesia , Myanmar , Thailand , Guangdong and Hong Kong .
In the Philippines, Hokkien is the mother tongue of 98.5% of the Filipino Chinese , the people called Feilübin Huaren in standard Chinese and Tsinoy in Tagalog . These make up 2% of the population (1.5 million as of 2007). They call the language Lan-Nang , "language of our people".
In Singapore, 2.8 million of the 3.4 million population are ethnic Chinese. The state encourages the use of standard language with a “Speak Mandarin Campaign”, and now most Chinese at home speak predominantly standard language or English; only 16% still mainly speak Hokkien or other “dialects”. Most of the Singaporean Chinese who speak Hokkien are united in their umbrella organization, Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan .
Individual evidence
- ↑ General Household Survey 2015 . ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) Department of Statistics Singapore, p. 19
