Min-nan

zh-cn:闽南语 zh-tw:閩南語

Min-nan (閩南(語); native name Bân-lâm(-gú); sometimes Hokkien or Hok-kiàn especially in Singapore) literally means "Southern Fujian (language)", that is, the local language (sometimes categorized under the Min dialect) of which variants are spoken in southern Fujian province and eastern Guangdong province (Mainland China), on Taiwan and in the Overseas Chinese communities of Southeast Asia. In Taiwan, it also has the native name of Hō-ló-oē.

Table of contents

1 Classification 2 Tones 3 Miscellanea 4 External links

Classification

There are four main variants of Min-nan in Mainland, corresponding to the areas of:

• Amoy (Xiamen),
• Changchew (Zhangzhou),
• Chinchew (Quanzhou), and
• Teochew (Chaozhou).

See Taiwanese language for a more extensive description for Taiwan variant thereof.

Tones

Min-nan retains seven of the eight Middle Chinese toness, namely:

1. 陰平 Yin-ping (44)
2. 上聲 Shang-sheng (51)
3. 陰去 Yin-qu (31)
4. 陰入 Yin-ru (3)
5. 陽平 Yang-ping (24)
7. 陽去 Yang-qu (33)
8. 陽入 Yang-ru (5)

The numbers given are tone contours where 1 is the lowest and 5 is highest

Miscellanea

The language is registered per RFC 3066 as zh-min-nan [1].

External links

• Ethnologue data