Brunei Hokkien (Bandar Seri Begawan, Kuala Belait, Limbang, Labuan)
Java Hokkien (Jakarta, Semarang, Surakarta, etc.)
Hong Kong Hokkien (North Point, Causeway Bay, Kowloon Bay)
Yangon Hokkien (Yangon Region)[6]
Phuket Hokkien (Phuket province)[6]
Saigon Hokkien (Chợ Lớn, Ho Chi Minh City)[6]
Writing system
Written Hokkien (Chinese characters)
Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Latin letters)
Tâi-lô (Latin letters)
Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols
Official status
Official language in
Taiwan[7][8][9] (also a statutory language for public transport announcements in Taiwan)[10]
Regulated by
Taiwan Ministry of Education
Language codes
ISO 639-3
nan for Southern Min (hbl is proposed[11])
Glottolog
hokk1242
Distribution of Southern Min languages, with Hokkien in dark green
Polities by number of Hokkien speakers
≥1,000,000
≥500,000
≥100,000
≥50,000
Significant minority populations
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/HOH-kee-en)[12] is a variety of the Southern Min languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang (Chinese: 泉漳; pinyin: Quánzhāng), from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.
Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity.[6]
In maritime Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia. This applied to a lesser extent to mainland Southeast Asia.[13] The Betawi Malay language, spoken by some five million people in and around the Indonesian capital Jakarta, includes numerous Hokkien loanwords due to the significant influence of the Chinese Indonesian diaspora, most of whom are of Hokkien ancestry and origin. Hokkien Kelantan 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.
Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).
^ abHokkien at Ethnologue (23rd ed., 2020)
^Ethnologue. "Languages of Singapore – Ethnologue 2017". Retrieved 14 July 2017.
^Mei, Tsu-lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30: 86–110, doi:10.2307/2718766, JSTOR 2718766
^Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984), Middle Chinese: A study in Historical Phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8
^Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (10 July 2023). "Glottolog 4.8 - Min". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 13 October 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
^ abcdefghijkl"Reclassifying ISO 639-3 [nan]: An Empirical Approach to Mutual Intelligibility and Ethnolinguistic Distinctions" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 September 2021.
^"Draft National Language Development Act Clears Legislative Floor". Focus Taiwan. CNA. 25 December 2018.
^立院三讀《國家語言發展法》 公廣集團可設台語電視台. Apple News (in Chinese). 25 December 2018. Archived from the original on 14 April 2020. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
^Zhou Siyu (周思宇) (25 December 2018). 《國家語言發展法》立院三讀！政府得設台語專屬頻道 [Third Reading of the National Language Development Law! The Government Must Set Up a Taiwanese-Only Channel]. ltn.com.tw (in Chinese). Yahoo!.
^大眾運輸工具播音語言平等保障法 [Public Transport Broadcast Language Equality Guarantee Law] (in Chinese) – via Chinese Wikisource.
^"Change Request Documentation: 2021-045". 31 August 2021. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
^"Hokkien, adjective & noun". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 14 September 2023.
^West, Barbara A. (2009). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania. Facts on File. pp. 289–290. ISBN 978-0-816-07109-8.
Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/ HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/ HOH-kee-en) is a variety of the Southern Min languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region...
Hokkien mee, literally "Fujian noodles", is a series of related Southeast Asian dishes that have their origins in the cuisine of China's Fujian (Hokkien)...
Hokkien is one of the largest Chinese language groups worldwide. Profanity in Hokkien most commonly involves sexual references and scorn of the object's...
This article contains Hokkien text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hàn-jī, Pe̍h-ōe-jī...
Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch of Min Chinese descended directly from Old Chinese of the Sinitic family...
Asia include Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien, Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, and Philippine Hokkien. Teo-Swa or Chaoshan speech...
Medan Hokkien is a local variety of Hokkien spoken amongst Chinese Indonesians in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia. It is the lingua franca in Medan as...
Singaporean Hokkien is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect...
officials and explorers. It is closely related to Hokkien, as it shares some cognates and phonology with Hokkien. Teochew preserves many Old Chinese pronunciations...
people Hokkien culture Hokkien architecture Written HokkienHokkien media Penang Hokkien Singaporean Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien Medan Hokkien Philippine...
Hokkien text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hàn-jī, Pe̍h-ōe-jī and Tâi-lô. Hokkien...
Minnan culture or Hokkien/Hoklo culture (Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm bûn-hòa; Chinese: 閩南文化), also considered as the Mainstream Southern Min Culture, refers...
Hokkien, a Southern Min variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system...
Eastern Min of Northeastern Fujian province and various Southern Min and Hokkien dialects of southeastern Fujian. The capital city of Fuzhou and Fu'an of...
Hokkien fried rice (Jyutping: fuk1 gin3 caau2 faan6; also known as Fujian fried rice) is a popular Cantonese-style wok fried rice dish in many Chinese...
Hokkien pop, also known as Taiwanese Hokkien popular music, T-pop (Chinese: 臺語流行音樂), Tai-pop, Minnan Pop and Taiwanese folk (Chinese: 臺語歌), is a popular...
This article contains Hokkien text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hàn-jī, Pe̍h-ōe-jī...
different Sinitic languages into Taiwan. These languages include Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, which have become the major languages spoken in present-day...
more pronounced in informal speech. It is usually a mixture of English, Hokkien, Cantonese, Malay, and Tamil, and sometimes other Chinese languages like...
This article contains Hokkien text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hàn-jī, Pe̍h-ōe-jī...
Hokkien Kelantan is a mixed language spoken by about 20,000 people in northern Malaya. It derives from Hokkien Chinese, Southern Thai and Kelantan Malay...
mainland China is Hokkien, a variety of Southern Min which has its origin in southern Fujian. Amoy Hokkien is the prestige dialect of Hokkien in Fujian, while...
China, especially the Hokkien-speaking region in Southern Fujian. Chinese Filipinos of this background typically have Philippine Hokkien as a heritage language...
are predominantly Hokkien (Min Nan) speakers, and there are also two different variants of Hokkien being used, such as Medan Hokkien, which is based on...
Hokkien media is the mass media produced in Hokkien. Taiwan is by far the largest producer of Hokkien-language media. The "golden age" of both Hokkien...
Global Information
Taiwan[7][8][9] (also a statutory language for public transport announcements in Taiwan)[10]
