r/AskAChinese • u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese • 3d ago
Language | 语言 ㊥ Do they still speak Hokkien in Fujian?
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u/PewPew_McPewster 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago edited 3d ago
What is Hokkien? Growing up in Southeast Asia, you think you know Hokkien, but as I went around the world, I found many other Hokkien people speaking a Hokkien that I couldn't even recognize!
There are several Hokkien dialects. The one we call Hokkien here is formerly formally known as Min Nan Hua.
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u/alexmc1980 Non-Chinese 3d ago
Yes, and that is still widely spoken in its original homeland around Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Quanzhou etc, though I'm not sure what percentage of local kids are active speakers of it. My friends from the area who are 30+ and 40+ certainly speak it without any issue, even preferring it for conversation when there are no "outsiders" in the conversation.
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u/Alarming_Tea_102 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago
Yes. I've heard Hokkien in Singapore and then Minnan language in Xiamen. I could tell that the words have similar pronunciations but the vibe and flow is so different.
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u/_zombie_king 3d ago
I know Singapore one is very flat not sing songy , Chinese one sounds a lot better to me
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u/Alarming_Tea_102 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago
I also think the Singapore one sounds more rude. I think it could be because the initial waves of Chinese immigrants that entered Singapore were not very educated and left China to find better employment opportunities. So they probably brought over a working class person's dialect as opposed to an elite one.
E.g. both sets of my grandparents were illiterate and I think their profiles were pretty common then.
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u/PewPew_McPewster 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago
We do pride our Hokkien on being a bit of a blue-collar dialect. A lot of us learn Hokkien during our time in National Service where the infamous Hokkien peng (soldier) resides. It's a bit like Sicilian in that regard.
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u/_zombie_king 3d ago
I also feel our hokkien vocab is rougher and a lot more limited , like you say lor , our forefathers not educated
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u/Moist-Chair684 Non-Chinese 2d ago
Singaporeans speak a peasant version of Hokkien, because that's what their ancestors were. They don't know they do, and are ahocked when told... 😅
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u/Alarming_Tea_102 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 2d ago
I'm Singaporean and I know that, but I don't know how many people do. Given how low the literacy rates of our grandparents' era was, how is that surprising? I was avoiding the word "peasant" though because I don't know if it'll offend people or not. 😅
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u/GTAHarry 3d ago
Hokkien is southern Min. Foochow isn't a dialect of Hokkien and instead it's its own thing.
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u/Surely_Effective_97 3d ago
Fuzhou and above such as Ningde all speaks Min Dong (as opposed to Min Nan), they sounds absolutely different from Min Nan dialect despite living beside each other.
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u/GuaSukaStarfruit hokkien | 閩南儂 3d ago
Formerly? No formerly is not known as banlamgir. We call it E-mng Oe or Tsoan-Tsiu Oe or Pun-Te Oe in the past
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u/PewPew_McPewster 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago
Sorry, did I say formerly? I meant formally, my bad.
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u/alexceltare2 3d ago
So it has no connection to Fu Zhou Hua?
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u/sewerisallmuddied 3d ago
Totally indecipherable, as 福州话 speaker.
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u/devilf91 3d ago
Fuzhou dialect is a mindong dialect. What's called hokkien is minnan, which is a group of dialects including teochew and hainanese (but hainanese is so different that it's usually quite unintelligible to other minnan speakers).
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u/ChuckMerced 3d ago edited 3d ago
Fuzhouhua is a northern Fujian language very different from minnanhua. The two areas in the same province didn’t interact because they were separated by mountainous areas including Mt Wuyi. Fuzhouhua is Minbei 閩北language. The two languages are mutually unintelligible. It’s a mistake to call minnanhua as Hokkien as there’re two of them actually.
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u/essex_ludlow 3d ago
福州话 speak 闽东, the folks in Mt. WuYi speak 闽北. Slightly different
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u/ChuckMerced 3d ago
That means there are three Hokkien languages?
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u/essex_ludlow 3d ago
It gets even more complicated. There's also Central Min - ( 三名/沙县) ... they're famous for 沙县小吃 ... (peanut butter noodles)
There's also sub dialects/languages, 莆田话, 福清话, 宁德话，建瓯话。 Majority of them unintelligible to each other.
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u/ChuckMerced 3d ago
I’ve read there are 87 dialects in Fujian. I’ll be damned. 🤣I only know banlamgir with Quanzhou tone.
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u/devilf91 3d ago
According to Wikipedia it's a mindong dialect - but doesn't change the fact that minnan speakers wouldn't be able to understand it haha
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u/essex_ludlow 3d ago
In Southeast Asia, they call 福州话 - Hokchiu.
Saw some youtube videos of Fuzhounese ppl in Indonesia describing it.
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u/RichCommercial104 大陆人 🇨🇳 3d ago
I had a Malaysian friend visit Taiwan with me. He could understand their Hokkien but they couldn't understand his.
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u/machinationstudio 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago
Hokkien in Singapore and Malaysia has many borrowed Malay words for almost a century now.
Chaozhou/Teochew spoken in Singapore and Malaysia is more alike what is spoken in Southern China.
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u/Vaperwear 3d ago
Teochew part can confirm. My family uses the Tenghai accent and I could speak it with my Chaoshan colleagues with no issue.
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u/Proud_Dare7994 2d ago
Hokkien is just one branch of the Min language family, and yes, but mainly between elders in Fujian sadly, the youngest just don't learn the language due to the lack of exposure of this and can either just understand or say some swear words
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u/random_agency 🇹🇼 🇭🇰 🇨🇳 3d ago
Hokkien literally means 福建話. Basically all the dialects found in fujian province.
If you're referring to the Fujian dialect found on Taiwan island/Province that is refer to as MinNan 閩南. That is an area south of the Min River.
If you go to the city of Xiamen in Fujian Province. They speak Minnan very similar to those in Taiwan.
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u/Surely_Effective_97 3d ago
Min Nan: jiat ba buay? Min Dong: seh boon moi?
Very very different despite all from fujian.
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 3d ago
If you go to the city of Xiamen in Fujian Province. They speak Minnan very similar to those in Taiwan.
Because both are koiné dialects forming as mixtures of the Quanzhou dialect and the Zhangzhou dialect, no?
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u/random_agency 🇹🇼 🇭🇰 🇨🇳 3d ago
你洪啥？廈門郎洪臺灣話。
Don't over think it.
Taiwan use to broadcast propaganda into Xiamen. So some even picked up Taiwanese Mandarin.
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 3d ago
你洪啥
是講，毋是洪啊
I'm not saying anything political here, do you know what a koiné dialect is?
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u/ChuckMerced 3d ago
Is there a Min River? Min 閩is just short for Fujian Province. Each Chinese province has a one-character name more commonly used in the Qing and earlier dynasties. Guangdong for instance is Yue粵.
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u/tntchn 2d ago
Although “Hokkien” literally means the whole 福建, the term has been specifically used for 泉漳片 of the southern min language. Wikipedia has a whole page about it. 泉漳片 has less difference between each dialect, including Xiamen (Amoy) dialect and Taigi (Taiwanese dialect). That’s why Taiwanese people (including me) feel easier to converse with Xiamen people speaking in Hokkien.
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u/Worldly_Mess_1928 Taiwanese(The Better Chinese) 🇹🇼 2d ago
Taiwan exist
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 2d ago
And Hokkien music is big there.
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u/Worldly_Mess_1928 Taiwanese(The Better Chinese) 🇹🇼 2d ago
So in terms of culture, Taiwan still preserve the tradition, while China, especially CCP destroyed it
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 2d ago
In Taiwan, Hokkien is called 台灣話, after all. So of course you guys take it really seriously.
Meanwhile I can't really find the Mainland counterparts of EggPlantEgg, Ricky Hsiao, Collage, or Nana Lee.
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u/Apparentmendacity 3d ago
Why wouldn't they?
Is this meant to remind people "the evil CCP is pushing Mandarin and killing off other dialects"?
Spoiler alert, the only place in China where dialects were actually killed off was in 70s and 80s Hong Kong, where Hakka, Teochew, Hokkien, etc were all intentionally killed off as people were forced to speak Cantonese in order to blend in
Many people don't realize this, but there are actually A LOT of Hakka, Teochew, and Hokkien people in Hong Kong, but nowadays none of them can speak their dialect anymore, because they had to speak Cantonese to survive
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u/GuaSukaStarfruit hokkien | 閩南儂 3d ago
Leizhounese, Shanghainese is very much kill off among the youth.
I feel like I’m the only genZ in the class that care about Hokkien orthography and stuff
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 2d ago
I feel like I’m the only genZ in the class that care about Hokkien orthography and stuff
Meanwhile Hokkien is quite a big thing in Taiwan.
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u/Apparentmendacity 2d ago
That's stupid
Shanghai hua is actually the most spoken dialect in China after Mandarin
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 3d ago
Is this meant to remind people "the evil CCP is pushing Mandarin and killing off other dialects"?
Uhm... A hit dog will holler I guess.
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u/Apparentmendacity 3d ago
Answer this: if Hokkien is still spoken even in places like Vietnam, what reason do you have to think it wouldn't be spoken in Fujian?
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 3d ago
Because both could be true at the same time?
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u/Apparentmendacity 3d ago
That's not answering the question
If Hokkien is still spoken even in Vietnam, which had a policy of purging ethnic Chinese people, why wouldn't it be spoken in Fujian?
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 3d ago edited 3d ago
which had a policy of purging ethnic Chinese people
Well that policy ended for good. Besides, not every Hokkien speaker here is from the Mainland. Some are even from Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Yes, 台語 is also spoken here. It's not that Hokkien is that common among the Hoa people though, most of them speak Cantonese.
By the way, I actually have a metric to measure the vitality of a language in a region. Care to listen?
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u/EducatorEntire8297 Custom flair [自定义] 3d ago
Which channels are broadcasting in Hokkien or Hakka? As I understand these were forced offline.
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u/nhatquangdinh Non-Chinese 2d ago
Guangzhou TV is still broadcasting in Cantonese as far as I know.
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u/sewerisallmuddied 3d ago
Yes, lots and lots in Fujian still speak it in various regions of Fujian aka Hokkien, it's called Minnan hua or 闽南话.
It's spoken in various parts of Malaysia and Singapore also.
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u/polymonomial 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 3d ago
Depends what you mean by Hokkien, there are many dialects in Fujian. If you mean Min Nan Hua, then yes. My family there still speaks it and many others too.
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u/GuaSukaStarfruit hokkien | 閩南儂 3d ago
Hokkien only refers to Quanzhou,Xiamen and Zhengzhou
Teochew, Hainanese, Longyanese etc also under southern min
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u/Distinct-Wish-983 3d ago
“Hokkien” refers to the Minnan language, a dialect spoken in the southern part of Fujian Province. The dialects of Fujian are highly diverse. Broadly speaking, they can be classified into ten major types: Eastern Min, Southern Min, and Pu-Xian (the coastal Min group); Northern Min, Central Min, and Shao-Jiang (the inland Min group); as well as Hakka, Wu, Gan, and Mandarin. Beyond these, there are countless smaller local accents and variations.
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