Hokkien, a variety of Chinese spoken by approximately 47 million people, is widely used across China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other Southeast Asian countries. Belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family, Hokkien is traditionally written with Chinese characters and is known for its complex tonal system, with five tones in many dialects. As an analytic language with SVO word order, Hokkien has played a significant role in trade, business, and cultural exchange, particularly among overseas Chinese communities. Despite Mandarin's dominance, Hokkien remains an important linguistic and cultural heritage, with continued efforts to preserve its use through media and education.
Stats
Language Family: Sino-Tibetan
Writing System: Chinese
Writing System Type: Logographic
Writing Direction: L to R
Tones / Pitch Accent: 5
Morphology: Analytic
Cases: None
Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: None
Number of Verb Tenses: None
Word Order: SVO
Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 8
Number of Consonants: 17
Areas Where Spoken
Brunei (2.94%) (13,300)
Cambodia (2.07%) (350 k)
China (1.96%) (27.7 mil)
Hong Kong (0.94%) (70,500)
Indonesia (0.28%) (766 k)
Malaysia (5.89%) (2.02 mil)
Philippines (0.85%) (1 mil)
Singapore (25.3%) (1.5 mil)
Taiwan (57.6%) (13.5 mil)
Thailand (0.02%) (17,600)
Vietnam (0.05%) (45 k)
Resources
Articles
The grammatical category of aspect in Southern Min: Preverbal coding of aspect in Min-Xiamen
The origin of Minnan and Hakka, the so-called “Taiwanese”, inferred by HLA study
Dictionary
itaigi.tw: Type in the Chinese and it'll tell you how to say it
moedict.tw: The top left can toggle between 國語 and 閩南話, so you can search for a word in Mandarin, and often at the bottom you will see 閩 and you can click on it to find the Taiwanese
Podcast
Textbooks
Jen Pin 真平 (Chinese only): Wealth of material here made for elementary to high school students in Taiwan covering from around A1 to B2
Website
Tâi Kheh Kuí: Provides Tâi-lô and proper Chinese characters of song lyrics
NTU Southern Hokkien Videos: If you can understand Mandarin Chinese
Learn Taigi: Intermediate Taiwanese Hokkien vocab
YouTube
Videos
The Sound of the Philippine Hokkien language (Numbers, Greetings, Phrases, Story & Tongue Twister)
SomeBunnyYouKnow: Basic Hokkien - Part 1 of 2, Basic Hokkien - Part 2 of 2
這些人這些事: Show about history
Channels
無事做巴士: Listening practice with subtitles
Playlists
How Do You Say in Hokkien · Singapore: A series of English podcasts that teaches you commonly-used Hokkien phrases in Singapore