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Hokkien

Hokkien

Summary

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

Dictionary

  • niawdeleon.com

  • forvo.com

  • 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

Website

YouTube

Videos

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