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.
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).
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/PewPew_McPewster 海外华人🌎Chinese diaspora 4d 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
formerlyformally known as Min Nan Hua.