Utilisateur:Assassas77/Brouillon

Hokkien-Taiwanese, minnan standard, quanzhang 閩南語 / 泉漳片 闽台泉漳话 / Bân-lâm-oē
Pays	Chine, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and communautés chinoises d'outre-mer
Région	Southern Fujian province and other south-eastern coastal areas of Mainland China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia
Nombre de locuteurs	37 million[réf. nécessaire]
Nom des locuteurs	Hoklo (subgroup of Han Chinese)
Classification par famille
- langues sino-tibétaines - langues chinoises - groupe min - minnan - hokkien
Statut officiel
Langue officielle	None (one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in Taiwan)
Régi par	Ministry of Education in Taiwan and NGOs in Taiwan.
Codes de langue
Glottolog	hokk1242 – Hokkien fuki1235 – Fukienese
Carte
Distribution of Quanzhang (Minnan Proper) dialects within Fujian Province and Taiwan. Lengna dialect (Longyan Min) is a variant of Southern Min that is spoken near the Hakka speaking region in Southwest Fujian.

Le hokkien ([ˈhɒkiɛn], chinois simplifié : 福建话 ; chinois traditionnel : 福建話 ; pinyin : Fújiànhuà ; pe̍h-ōe-jī : hok-kiàn-oē) ou hoklo (福佬话 / 福佬話, pe̍h-ōe-jī : hok-ló-oē), aussi appelé dialecte de Quanzhang (d'après le nom des villes Quanzhou-Zhangzhou / Chinchew–Changchew) ou minnan standard (閩南話 / 閩南語),

est un dialecte minnan originaire du Sud-Est de la province du Fujian, dans le Sud-Est de la Chine et compte des locuteurs à Taïwan et dans la diaspora chinoise en Malaisie, à Singapour, en Indonésie, aux Philippines et dans d'autres régions d'Asie du Sud-Est, et parmi les chinois d'outre-mer dans le monde. C'est la forme la plus courante de minnan. Il a un lien proche avec le dialecte teochew, avec lequel il a une intelligibilité mutuelle limitée. Il a un lien plus éloigné avec le hainanais et le dialecte de Leizhou.

Le hokkien a servi historiquement de lingua franca dans les communautés chinoises d'outre-mer en Asie du Sud-Est, et reste à ce jour la variété de chinois la plus parlée dans la région comprenant Singapour, la Malaisie, l'Indonésie, les Philippines et certaines parties de l'Indochine, en particulier la Thaïlande, le Laos et le Cambodge.

Le malais betawi, parlé par cinq millions de personnes autour de Jakarta, contient de nombreux emprunts hokkien à cause de l'influence significative de la population d'origine chinoise en Indonésie, dont la plupart a des origines hokkien.

Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups in Southeast Asia, and remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and some parts of Indochina (particularly Thailand, Laos and Cambodia).

The Betawi Malay language, spoken by some five million people in and around the Indonesian capital Jakarta, includes numerous Hokkien loanwords due to the significant influence of the Chinese Indonesian diaspora, most of whom are of Hokkien ancestry and origin.

Dénominations

Chinese speakers of the Quanzhang variety of Southern Min refer to the mainstream Southern Min language as

• Bân-lâm-gú / Bân-lâm-ōe (闽南语/闽南话 / 閩南語/閩南話, literally 'language or speech of Southern Min') in Mainland China and Taiwan.
• Tâi-gí (臺語, literally 'Taiwanese language') in Taiwan.
• Hok-kiàn-ōe ((zh), literally 'Fujian speech') in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
• Lán-lâng-ōe (咱儂話, literally 'our people's language') in the Philippines.

In parts of Southeast Asia and in the English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien ([hɔk˥kiɛn˨˩]) is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian (福建), the province from which the language hails. In Southeast Asia and the English press, Hokkien is used in common parlance to refer to the Southern Min dialects of southern Fujian, and does not include reference to dialects of other Sinitic branches also present in Fujian such as Eastern Min or Hakka. In Chinese linguistics, these dialects are known by their classification under the Quanzhang division (泉漳片, Quánzhāng piàn) of Min Nan, which comes from the first characters of the two main Hokkien urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

Histoire

Variants of Hokkien dialects can be traced to two sources of origin: Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Both Amoy and most Taiwanese are based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, while the rest of the Hokkien dialects spoken in South East Asia are either derived from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, or based on a mixture of both dialects.

Xiamen

Amoy dialect is the main dialect spoken in the Chinese city of Xiamen and its surrounding regions of Tong'an and Xiang'an, both of which are now included in the greater Xiamen area. This dialect developed in the late Ming dynasty when Xiamen was increasingly taking over Quanzhou's position as the main port of trade in southeastern China. Quanzhou traders began travelling southwards to Xiamen to carry on their businesses while Zhangzhou peasants began traveling northwards to Xiamen in search of job opportunities. A need for a common language arose. The Quanzhou and Zhangzhou varieties are similar in many ways (as can be seen from the common place of Henan Luoyang where they originated), but due to differences in accents, communication can be a problem. Quanzhou businessmen considered their speech to be the prestige accent and considered Zhangzhou's to be a village dialect. Over the centuries, dialect leveling occurred and the two speeches mixed to produce the Amoy dialect.

Premières sources écrites

Several playscripts survive from the late 16th century, written in a mixture of Quanzhou and Chaozhou dialects. The most important is the Romance of the Litchi Mirror, with extant manuscripts dating from 1566 and 1581.

In the early 17th century, Spanish missionaries in the Philippines produced materials documenting the Hokkien varieties spoken by the Chinese trading community who had settled there in the late 16th century:

• Diccionarium Sino-Hispanicum (1604), a Spanish-Hokkien dictionary, giving equivalent words, but not definitions.
• Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china (1607), a Hokkien translation of the Doctrina Christiana.
• Bocabulario de la lengua sangleya (c. 1617), a Spanish-Hokkien dictionary, with definitions.
• Arte de la Lengua Chiõ Chiu (1620), a grammar written by a Spanish missionary in the Philippines.

These texts appear to record a Zhangzhou dialect, from the area of Haicheng (an old port that is now part of Longhai).

Chinese scholars produced rhyme dictionaries describing Hokkien varieties at the beginning of the 19th century:

• Huìyīn Miàowù (彙音妙悟 "Understanding of the collected sounds") was written around 1800 by Huang Qian (黃謙), and describes the Quanzhou dialect. The oldest extant edition dates from 1831.
• Huìjí yǎsútōng shíwǔyīn (彙集雅俗通十五音 "Compilation of the fifteen elegant and vulgar sounds") by Xie Xiulan (謝秀嵐) describes the Zhangzhou dialect. The oldest extant edition dates from 1818.

Walter Henry Medhurst based his 1832 dictionary on the latter work.

Hokkien standard

Hokkien-Taiwanese originated from Quanzhou.^{[réf. à confirmer]} After the Opium War in 1842, Xiamen (Amoy) became one of the major treaty ports to be opened for trade with the outside world. From the mid-19th century onwards, Xiamen slowly developed to become the political and economical center of the Hokkien-Taiwanese speaking region in China. This caused Amoy dialect to gradually replace the position of dialect variants from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. From the mid-19th century until the end of World War II, ^{[réf. nécessaire]} western diplomats usually learned Amoy as the preferred dialect if they were to communicate with the Hokkien-speaking populace in China or South-East Asia. In the 1940s and 1950s, Taiwan^[Qui ?] also held Amoy Minnan as its standard and tended to incline towards Amoy dialect.

However, from the 1980s onwards, the development of Taiwanese Min Nan pop music and media industry in Taiwan caused the Hokkien cultural hub to shift from Xiamen to Taiwan.^{[réf. nécessaire]} The flourishing Taiwanese Min Nan entertainment and media industry from Taiwan in the 1990s and early 21st century led Taiwan to emerge as the new significant cultural hub for Hokkien.

In the 1990s, marked by the liberalization of language development and mother tongue movement in Taiwan, Taiwanese Hokkien had undergone a fast pace in its development. In 1993, Taiwan became the first region in the world to implement the teaching of Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwanese schools. In 2001, the local Taiwanese language program was further extended to all schools in Taiwan, and Taiwanese Hokkien became one of the compulsory local Taiwanese languages to be learned in schools. The mother tongue movement in Taiwan even influenced Xiamen (Amoy) to the point that in 2010, Xiamen also began to implement the teaching of Hokkien dialect in its schools. In 2007, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan also completed the standardization of Chinese characters used for writing Hokkien and developed Tai-lo as the standard Hokkien pronunciation and romanization guide. A number of universities in Taiwan also offer Taiwanese degree courses for training Hokkien-fluent talents to work for the Hokkien media industry and education. Taiwan also has its own Hokkien literary and cultural circles whereby Hokkien poets and writers compose poetry or literature in Hokkien.

Thus by the 21st century, Taiwan has truly emerged as one of the most significant Hokkien cultural hubs of the world. The historical changes and development in Taiwan had led Taiwanese Hokkien to become the more influential pole of the Hokkien dialect after the mid-20th century. Today, Taiwanese prestige dialect (Taiyu Youshiqiang/Tongxinqiang 台語優勢腔/通行腔), which is based on Tainan variant and heard on Taiwanese Hokkien media.

Classification

Quanzhou

Zhangzhou

Xiamen

Locations of Hokkien (Quanzhang) varieties in Fujian

Southern Fujian is home to three principal Minnan Proper (Hokkien) dialects: Chinchew, Amoy, Chiangchew, originating from the cities of Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou(respectively).

Traditionally speaking, Quanzhou dialect spoken in Quanzhou is the Traditional Standard Minnan, it is the dialect that is used in Liyuan Opera (梨园戏) and Nanying music (南音). Being the Traditional Standard Minnan, Quanzhou dialect is considered to have the purest accent and the most conservative Minnan dialect.

In the late 18th to the early 19th century, Xiamen (Amoy) became the principal^{[réf. nécessaire]} city of southern Fujian. Xiamen (Amoy) dialect is adopted as the Modern Standard Minnan. It is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. It has played an influential role in history, especially in the relations of Western nations with China, and was one of the most frequently learnt dialect of Quanzhang variety by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century.

Same as Amoy dialect, the Modern Standard form of Quanzhang accent spoken around the city of Tainan in Taiwan is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. All Quanzhang dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just Taiwanese. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, forming the second (and perhaps today most significant) major pole of the language due to the popularity of Taiwanese-language media.

Asie du Sud-Est

The varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects.

The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesia's Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzhou area. They speak a distinct form of Quanzhou Hokkien called Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien (SPMH).

Among ethnic Chinese inhabitants of Penang, and other states in Northern Malaysia and Medan, with other areas in North Sumatra, Indonesia, a distinct form of Zhangzhou Hokkien has developed. In Penang, it is called Penang Hokkien while across the Malacca Strait in Medan, an almost identical variant is known as Medan Hokkien.

The Philippines variant is mostly from Quanzhou or Amoy (Xiamen), as most of their ancestors are from the aforementioned area.

Comparaison

The Amoy dialect (Xiamen) is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. Taiwanese is also a hybrid of these two dialects. Taiwanese in northern and coastal Taiwan tends to be based on the Quanzhou variety, whereas the Taiwanese spoken in central, south and inland Taiwan tends to be based on Zhangzhou speech. There are minor variations in pronunciation and vocabulary between Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects. The grammar is generally the same. Additionally, extensive contact with the Japanese language has left a legacy of Japanese loanwords in Taiwanese Hokkien. On the other hand, the variants spoken in Singapore and Malaysia have a substantial number of loanwords from Malay and to a lesser extent, from English and other Chinese varieties, such as the closely related Teochew and some Cantonese.

Penang Hokkien and Medan Hokkien are based on Zhangzhou dialect, whereas Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien is based on Quanzhou dialect.

Intelligibilité mutuelle

he Quanzhou dialect, Xiamen dialect, Zhangzhou dialect, Taiwanese are mutually intelligible. The overseas variants such as Penang Hokkien and Singaporean Hokkien are slightly less mutually intelligible to mainland Min Nan dialects and Taiwanese dialects due to the existence of foreign loanwords.

The Min Nan varieties of Teochew and Amoy are 84% phonetically similar,^{[réf. nécessaire]} and 34% lexically similar,^{[réf. nécessaire]} whereas Mandarin and Amoy Min Nan are 62% phonetically similar^{[réf. nécessaire]} and 15% lexically similar.^{[réf. nécessaire]} In comparison, German and English are 60% lexically similar.

Hainanese, which is sometimes considered Southern Min, has almost no mutual intelligibility with any form of Hokkien.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

Distribution géographique

Hokkien originated in the southern area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration, and has since become one of the most common Chinese varieties overseas. The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, where, during the 200 years of Qing dynasty rule, thousands of immigrants from Fujian arrived yearly. The Taiwanese version mostly have origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since then, the Amoy dialect is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language.

There are many Minnan(Hokkien) speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States (Hoklo Americans). Many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, and brought the language to what is now Burma (Myanmar), Indonesia (the former Dutch East Indies) and present day Malaysia and Singapore (formerly Malaya and the British Straits Settlements). Many of the Minnan dialects of this region are highly similar to Xiamen dialect(Amoy) and Taiwanese Hokkien with the exception of foreign loanwords. Hokkien is reportedly the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, among which is known locally as Lan-nang or Lán-lâng-oē ("Our people’s language"). Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

Écriture

Hokkien, a Min Nan variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). Since there is no official standardizing body for Hokkien except the Republic of China Ministry of Education in Taiwan, there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in the Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.

Histoire de la langue écrite

Prior to the modern era, the main written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on Old Chinese used in ancient times. Whilst the written form of Chinese mostly remained static, the spoken varieties of Chinese diverged from Old Chinese. In the early 20th century, reformers in China saw the need for language reform and championed the development of a writing system that allowed Chinese people to write the language the same way they speak, a system called written Vernacular Chinese. Because the various Mandarin Chinese dialects had the largest number of speakers amongst all varieties of Chinese, it was chosen as the basis for the vernacular standard.

However, there are various differences between the spoken Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien, such as variations in vocabulary and grammatical particles, meaning that Vernacular Chinese is less suited for writing texts spoken in Hokkien. Various expressions in Hokkien, as with other Chinese varieties, do not have associated Chinese characters in Vernacular Chinese, meaning that some words originally could not be written. In the case of Cantonese, a vernacular system specifically for writing Cantonese was developed in Hong Kong, then a British colony. On the other hand, since Hokkien was never standardized, different people began to use various separate methods to solve the issue of Hokkien-specific words, where such words would eventually be written using either a Latin-based script, phonetically using bopomofo, or through the use of a Chinese character chosen phonetically with no relation to the original word via meaning.

Varieties of Hokkien are spoken in Fujian Province in mainland China, Taiwan, Chinese communities in Malaysia, Singapore, and other Chinese expatriate communities. Initially there was no effort by the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan, nor other governments, to create a standardized Hokkien vernacular. During the initial stages of Kuomintang rule in Taiwan, the official Kuomintang language policy was to promote the use of Mandarin Chinese in everyday speech, and to discourage the use of other dialects such as Hokkien and Hakka; this was done in an attempt to promote national linguistic unity, and to promulgate a Chinese identity over that of a Taiwanese one for political reasons. Following the Taiwan localization movement, education and everyday usage of spoken and written Hokkien by local Taiwanese became more widely used. A Chinese character online dictionary for Hokkien was released in 2008 by the ROC Ministry of Education. Nevertheless, within literature circles there is still ongoing debate over which writing system should be used to write Taiwanese Hokkien, and controversy exists between the various rival systems currently used to write Hokkien. Today usage of languages remains a politicized issue in Taiwan. In Singapore, in an effort to promote Mandarin as a lingua franca amongst ethnic Chinese through the Speak Mandarin Campaign, usage of other varieties such as Hokkien is discouraged.

Today, whilst Taiwanese Hokkien speakers speak in their variety of Hokkien, they would officially write in Vernacular Chinese for formal documents, and only use vernacular Hokkien writings during informal occasions, if at all. In Taiwan, vernacular Chinese is used for academic writings, newspaper articles and television news report headlines, whilst Hokkien writings are used in novels, songs lyrics, film subtitles, theatrical and opera scripts, and in informal communication.

Sinogrammes

Hokkien dialects are typically written using Chinese characters (漢字, Hàn-jī). However, the written script was and remains adapted to the literary form, which is based on classical Chinese, not the vernacular and spoken form. Furthermore, the character inventory used for Mandarin (standard written Chinese) does not correspond to Hokkien words, and there are a large number of informal characters (替字, thè-jī or thòe-jī; 'substitute characters') which are unique to Hokkien (as is the case with Cantonese). For instance, about 20 to 25% of Taiwanese morphemes lack an appropriate or standard Chinese character.

While most Hokkien morphemes have standard designated characters, they are not always etymological or phono-semantic. Similar-sounding, similar-meaning or rare characters are commonly borrowed or substituted to represent a particular morpheme. Examples include "beautiful" (美 bí is the literary form), whose vernacular morpheme suí is represented by characters like 媠 (an obsolete character), 婎 (a vernacular reading of this character) and even 水 (transliteration of the sound suí), or "tall" (高 ko is the literary form), whose morpheme kôan is 懸. Common grammatical particles are not exempt; the negation particle m̄ (not) is variously represented by 毋, 呣 or 唔, among others. In other cases, characters are invented to represent a particular morpheme (a common example is the character 𪜶 in, which represents the personal pronoun "they"). In addition, some characters have multiple and unrelated pronunciations, adapted to represent Hokkien words. For example, the Hokkien word bah ("meat") has been reduced to the character 肉, which has etymologically unrelated colloquial and literary readings (he̍k and jio̍k, respectively). Another case is the word 'to eat,' chia̍h, which is often transcribed in Taiwanese newspapers and media as 呷 (a Mandarin transliteration, xiā, to approximate the Hokkien term), even though its recommended character in dictionaries is 食.

Moreover, unlike Cantonese, Hokkien does not have a universally accepted standardized character set. Thus, there is some variation in the characters used to express certain words and characters can be ambiguous in meaning. In 2007, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China formulated and released a standard character set to overcome these difficulties. These standard Chinese characters for writing Taiwanese Hokkien are now taught in schools in Taiwan.

The character for the third person plural (they) in some Hokkien dialects, 𪜶 (in), is present within the Unicode Standard (U+2A736 𪜶); however only a very limited number of fonts currently support its display.

Writing Hokkien using Chinese characters is a common method of writing in Taiwanese literature. However, there are various problems relating to the use of Chinese characters to write vernacular Hokkien, and in many cases Chinese characters are used alongside other scripts, such as bopomofo or POJ. The problem with using only Chinese characters to write Min Nan is that there are many morphemes (estimated to be around 15 percent of running text) which are not definitively associated with a particular character. Various strategies have been developed to deal with the issue, including researching and reviving the etymologically correct Chinese character from ancient Chinese texts, and classical Chinese, creating new characters, allocating Chinese characters used in written Mandarin with similar meanings, but dissimilar etymology, to represent the missing characters, or using romanization for the "missing 15%".

In many cases, when writing Hokkien using Chinese characters phonetically, the use of characters is entirely unrelated to the original meaning of the phrase. While most Hokkien morphemes have standard designated characters, they are not always etymologically correct or phono-semantic. Similar-sounding, similar-meaning or rare characters are commonly borrowed or substituted to represent a particular morpheme. In addition, there may be many different ways to write a specific Hokkien phrase using Chinese characters. Wanhua District in Taipei is commonly written as 萬華 in Chinese (literally "ten thousand flowers"); however, the original meaning of the location name, pronounced Báng-kah in Taiwanese Hokkien (old character form 艋舺), is a rendering of a non-Chinese indigenous name for "boat". Along with location names, common words also have orthography problems due to non-standardization; chhit-thô or thit-thô (lit. "play (around)") is commonly written as 𨑨迌; however, neither characters have anything to do with the act of "playing" (the characters mean "near" and "cunning, deceitful"). Within Robert Cheng's publication of a Han character edition of the Taiwanese Hokkien novella Khó-ài ê Sîu-jîn (lit. "Beloved Enemy") by Lai Jinsheng, the word lô͘-môa, meaning "gangster" and cognate with Vernacular Chinese liúmáng (流氓), is transcribed as 鱸鰻; these two phonetically-used characters literally translate to "perch-eel".

Additional examples include the word for "beautiful" (美 bí is the literary form), which has the vernacular morpheme suí represented by characters such as 媠 (an obsolete character), 婎 (a vernacular reading of this character) and even 水 (transliteration of the sound suí), and "tall" (高 ko is the literary form), whose morpheme kôan is 懸. Common grammatical particles are not exempt; the negation particle m̄ (not) is variously represented by 毋, 呣 or 唔, among others. In other cases, characters are invented to represent a particular morpheme (a common example is the non-standard character 𪜶 in, which represents the personal pronoun "they"). In addition, some characters have multiple and unrelated pronunciations, adapted to represent Hokkien words. For example, the Hokkien word bah ("meat") has been reduced to writing via 肉, which has etymologically unrelated colloquial and literary readings (he̍k and jio̍k, respectively). In other cases, a character is borrowed to represent a morpheme with the same meaning, but a different pronunciation; the morpheme kē ("low", as in kē-thn̂g 低糖 'low sugar') has been assigned the character 低, whose phonetic reading is te, by the Republic of China's Ministry of Education. Another case is the word 'to eat,' chia̍h, which is often transcribed in Taiwanese newspapers and media as 呷 (a Mandarin transliteration, xiā, to approximate the Hokkien term), even though its recommended character in dictionaries is 食.

Victor H. Mair makes an estimate that if "pure, unadulterated spoken vernacular Taiwanese" were written exclusively in Chinese characters, with minimal use of Mandarin phrases, over 25% of morphemes would have no character, about 25% would have arbitrarily selected (yet more or less conventionally accepted) characters that are homophones or near-homophones, 10% would be written using characters exclusive to Hokkien, and 40% would be written with characters that have the correct sound and meaning. However, in more colloquial styles of Taiwanese Hokkien, the proportion of morphemes written with conventionally accepted characters would drop even lower than 40%.

Moreover, unlike Cantonese, Hokkien does not have a universally accepted standardized character set. Thus, there is some variation in the characters used to express certain words and characters are can be ambiguous in meaning. In 2007, Taiwan's Ministry of Education formulated and released a standard character set to overcome these difficulties. These standard Chinese characters for writing Taiwanese Hokkien are now taught in schools in Taiwan.

When writing Hokkien in Chinese characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it impossible to use existing ones; this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in Cantonese, Vietnamese chữ nôm, Korean hanja and Japanese kanji. These are usually not encoded in Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), thus creating problems in computer processing.

Alphabet latin

Hokkien, especially Taiwanese Hokkien, is sometimes written in the Latin script using one of several alphabets. Of these the most popular is POJ, developed first by Presbyterian missionaries in China and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Use of this script and orthography has been actively promoted since the late 19th century. The use of a mixed script of Han characters and Latin letters is also seen, though remains uncommon. Other Latin-based alphabets also exist.

Min Nan texts, all Hokkien, can be dated back to the 16th century. One example is the Doctrina Christiana en letra y lengua china, presumably written after 1587 by the Spanish Dominicans in the Philippines. Another is a Ming Dynasty script of a play called Tale of the Lychee Mirror (1566), supposedly the earliest Southern Min colloquial text, although it is written in Teochew dialect.

Taiwan has developed a Latin alphabet for Taiwanese Hokkien, derived from POJ, known as Tai-lo. Since 2006, it has been officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and taught in Taiwanese schools. Xiamen University has also developed an alphabet based on Pinyin called Bbánlám pìngyīm.

Pe̍h-ōe-jī

A sample of Pe̍h-ōe-jī text.

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (chinois : 白話字) is a Latin alphabet developed by Western missionaries working in Southeast Asia in the 19th century to write Hokkien. Pe̍h-ōe-jī allows Hokkien to be written phonetically in the Latin script, meaning that phrases specific to Hokkien can be written without having to deal with the issue of non-existent Chinese characters. Currently usage of Pe̍h-ōe-jī is restricted to some Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of Hokkien, and native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan. POJ remains the Taiwanese script with "the richest inventory of written work, including dictionaries, textbooks, literature [...] and other publications in many areas".

Pe̍h-ōe-jī can also be used along with Chinese characters in a mixed script called Hàn-lô, where words specific to Hokkien are written in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, and words with associated characters written in Han Characters.

Sample mixed orthography text: 翻 tńg 工，我 koh hap i tī Hotel ê 餐廳食西式 ê chái 起，我講 beh tò 去稅厝 ê 所在，i beh 送我去，我 kā 拒絕，mā 無 beh hō͘ i 知我 ê 地址、電話番，講若有緣就會 koh 再相會。I 講人海茫茫，我若無 tī hit 間跳舞、唱歌，i beh 去 toh 位 chhōe--我？「就是 án-ni m̄-chiah 講是緣」，我嘴是 án-ni 應，心肝內知影 kap i 自細漢到這時 ê 牽連、綿纏無 hiah 簡單就煞。

Traitement informatique

The character for the third person pronoun (they) in some Hokkien dialects, 𪜶 (in), is now supported by the Unicode Standard at U+2A736.

Hokkien is registered as "Southern Min" per RFC 3066 as zh-min-nan.

When writing Hokkien in Chinese characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it impossible to use directly or borrow existing ones; this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in Cantonese, Vietnamese chữ nôm, Korean hanja and Japanese kanji. Some of these are not encoded in Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), thus creating problems in computer processing.

All Latin characters required by Pe̍h-ōe-jī can be represented using Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), using precomposed or combining (diacritics) characters. Prior to June 2004, the vowel akin to but more open than o, written with a dot above right, was not encoded. The usual workaround was to use the (stand-alone; spacing) character Interpunct (U+00B7, ·) or less commonly the combining character dot above (U+0307). As these are far from ideal, since 1997 proposals have been submitted to the ISO/IEC working group in charge of ISO/IEC 10646—namely, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2—to encode a new combining character dot above right. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see documents N1593, N2507, N2628, N2699, and N2713). Font support is expected to follow.

Bopomofo

Bopomofo is another script used in Taiwanese Hokkien writings. It is commonly used in Taiwanese literature to represent Hokkien-specific grammatical particles, along with Chinese characters, and can also be used to gloss Chinese characters with their Hokkien readings.

Sample text: 我像離水ㄟ魚 ("I am like the fish that has left the water", with ㄟ [ei] being used as a replacement for ㆤ ê [e].)

Kana taïwanais

During the period of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a Kana-based system was introduced to gloss Hokkien writing in Chinese characters, as well writing as other languages of Taiwan.

Transférer dans l'article taïwanais

Prononciation

Hokkien has one of the most diverse phoneme inventories among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese. Vowels are more-or-less similar to that of Standard Mandarin. Hokkien varieties retain many pronunciations that are no longer found in other Chinese varieties. These include the retention of the /t/ initial, which is now /tʂ/ (Pinyin 'zh') in Mandarin (e.g. 'bamboo' 竹 is tik, but zhú in Mandarin), having disappeared before the 6th century in other Chinese varieties.

Initiales

Southern Min has aspirated, unaspirated as well as voiced consonant initials. For example, the word khui (開; "open") and kuiⁿ (關; "close") have the same vowel but differ only by aspiration of the initial and nasality of the vowel. In addition, Southern Min has labial initial consonants such as m in m̄-sī (毋是; "is not").

Another example is cha-po͘-kiáⁿ (查埔囝; "boy") and cha-bó͘-kiáⁿ (查某囝; "girl"), which differ in the second syllable in consonant voicing and in tone.

Finales

Unlike Mandarin, Hokkien retains all the final consonants corresponding to those of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the n and ŋ finals, Southern Min also preserves the m, p, t and k finals and developed the ʔ (glottal stop).

Voyelles

The vowels of Hokkien are /i, y, ɨ, u, e, ə, ɤ, o, ɛ, ɔ, a, ɐ/.

The following table illustrates some of the more commonly seen vowel shifts. Characters with the same vowel are shown in parentheses.

English	Chinese character	Accent	Pe̍h-ōe-jī	IPA	Teochew Peng'Im
two	二	Quanzhou, Taipei	lī	li˧	jĭ (zi˧˥)
		Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Tainan	jī	dzi˧
sick	病 (生)	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	pīⁿ	pĩ˧	pēⁿ (pẽ˩)
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	pēⁿ	pẽ˧
egg	卵 (遠)	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taiwan	nn̄g	nŋ˧	nn̆g (nŋ˧˥)
		Zhangzhou	nūi	nui˧
chopsticks	箸 (豬)	Quanzhou	tīr	tɯ˧	tēu (tɤ˩)
		Xiamen, Taipei	tū	tu˧
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	tī	ti˧
shoes	鞋 (街)
		Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	oê	ue˧˥	ôi (tɤ˩)
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	ê	e˧˥
leather	皮 (未)	Quanzhou	phêr	pʰə˨˩	phuê (pʰue˩)
		Xiamen, Taipei	phê	pʰe˨˩
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	phôe	pʰue˧
chicken	雞 (細)	Quanzhou, Xiamen, Taipei	koe	kue˥˥	koi
		Zhangzhou, Tainan	ke	ke˥˥
hair	毛 (兩)	Quanzhou, Taiwan, Xiamen	mn̂g	mŋ	mo
		Zhangzhou, Taiwan	mo͘	mõ
return	還	Quanzhou	hoan	huaⁿ	huêng
		Xiamen	hâiⁿ	hãɪ²⁴
		Zhangzhou, Taiwan	hêng	hîŋ
Speech	話 (花)	Quanzhou, Taiwan	oe	ue
		Zhangzhou	oa	ua

Tons

In general, Hokkien dialects have 5 to 7 phonemic tones. According to the traditional Chinese system, however, there are 7 to 9 tones if the two additional entering tones (see the discussion on Chinese tone). Tone sandhi is extensive. There are minor variations between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou tone systems. Taiwanese tones follow the patterns of Amoy or Quanzhou, depending on the area of Taiwan. Many dialects have an additional phonemic tone ("tone 9" according to the traditional reckoning), used only in special or foreign loan words.

Tones		平		上		去		入
		陰平	陽平	陰上	陽上	陰去	陽去	陰入	陽入
Tone Number		1	5	2	6	3	7	4	8
調值	Xiamen, Fujian	44	24	53	-	21	22	32	4
		東 taŋ1	銅 taŋ5	董 taŋ2	-	凍 taŋ3	動 taŋ7	觸 tak4	逐 tak8
	Taipei, Taiwan	44	24	53	-	11	33	32	4
					-
	Tainan, Taiwan	44	23	41	-	21	33	32	44
					-
	Zhangzhou, Fujian	34	13	53	-	21	22	32	121
					-
	Quanzhou, Fujian	33	24	55	22	41		5	24
					-
	Penang, Malaysia	33	23	445	-	21		3	4
					-

Grammaire

Hokkien is an analytic language; in a sentence, the arrangement of words is important to its meaning. A basic sentence follows the subject–verb–object pattern (i.e. a subject is followed by a verb then by an object), though this order is often violated because Hokkien dialects are topic-prominent. Unlike synthetic languages, seldom do words indicate time, gender and plural by inflection. Instead, these concepts are expressed through adverbs, aspect markers, and grammatical particles, or are deduced from the context. Different particles are added to a sentence to further specify its status or intonation.

A verb itself indicates no grammatical tense. The time can be explicitly shown with time-indicating adverbs. Certain exceptions exist, however, according to the pragmatic interpretation of a verb's meaning. Additionally, an optional aspect particle can be appended to a verb to indicate the state of an action. Appending interrogative or exclamative particles to a sentence turns a statement into a question or shows the attitudes of the speaker.

Hokkien dialects preserve certain grammatical reflexes and patterns reminiscent of the broad stage of Archaic Chinese. This includes the serialization of verb phrases (direct linkage of verbs and verb phrases) and the infrequency of nominalization, both similar to Archaic Chinese grammar.

你(Lí) 去(khì) 買(bé) 有(ū) 錶仔(pió-á) 無(bo)？

You-go-buy-have watch-no (Gloss)

"Did you go to buy a watch?"

Choice of grammatical function words also varies significantly among the Hokkien dialects. For instance, 乞 khit (denoting the causative, passive or dative) is retained in Jinjiang (also unique to the Jinjiang dialect is 度 thoo) and in Jieyang, but not in Longxi and Xiamen, whose dialects use 互 (hoo) instead.

Pronoms

Hokkien dialects differ in their preferred choice of pronouns. For instance, while the second person pronoun lí (你) is standard in Taiwanese Hokkien, the Teochew loanword lú (汝) is more common among Hokkien-speaking communities in Southeast Asia. The plural personal pronouns tend to be nasalized forms of the singular ones. Personal pronouns found in the Hokkien dialects are listed below:

Person	Singular	Plural
First person	我 góa	阮1, 3gún, góan 咱2, 3 or 俺 lán or án 我儂 góa-lâng
Second person	你 lí 汝 lú	恁 lín 恁儂 lín lâng
Third person	伊 i	𪜶 in 伊儂 i lâng

¹ Inclusive

² Exclusive

³ 儂 (-lâng) is typically suffixed in Southeast Asian Hokkien dialects

Possessive pronouns are marked by the particle ê (的), or its literary version chi (之). Plural pronouns are typically unmarked (the nasalized final serves as the possessive indicator):

阮(góan) 翁(ang) 姓(sèⁿ) 陳(Tân)。

"My husband's surname is Tan."

Reflexive pronouns are made by appending the pronouns ka-kī, ka-tī (家己) or chū-kí (自己).

Hokkien dialects use a variety of differing demonstrative pronouns, which are as follows:

• this - che (這, 即), chit-ê (這個, 即個)
• that - he (許, 彼), hit-ê (彼個)
• here - chia (者), hia/hiâ (遮, 遐), chit-tau 這兜)
• there - hia (許, 遐), hit-tau (彼兜)

The interrogative pronouns are:

• what - siáⁿ-mih (啥物), sīm-mi̍h (甚麼)
• when - tī-sî (底時), kī-sî (幾時), tang-sî (當時), sīm-mi̍h-sî-chūn (甚麼時陣)
• where - to-lo̍h (倒落), tó-uī (佗位, 叨位)
• who - siáⁿ-lâng (啥人) or siáⁿ (啥)
• why - án-chóaⁿ (按怎), khah (盍)
• how - án-chóaⁿ (按怎) lû-hô (如何) chóaⁿ-iūⁿ (怎樣)

Copule

States and qualities are generally expressed using stative verbs that do not require the verb "to be":

我(goá) 腹肚(pak-tó͘) 枵(iau)。

"I am hungry." (lit. I-stomach-hungry)

With noun complements, the verb sī (是) serves as the verb "to be".

昨昏(cha-hng) 是(sī) 八月節(peh-go̍eh-cheh)。

"Yesterday was the Mid-Autumn festival."

To indicate location, the words tī (佇) tiàm (踮), teh/leh (咧), which are collectively known as the locatives or sometimes coverbs in Chinese linguistics, are used to express "(to be) at":

我(goá) 踮(tiàm) 遮(chia) 等(tán) 你(lí)。

"I am here waiting for you."

伊(i) 這馬(chit-má) 佇(tī) 厝(chhù) 裡(lí) 咧(teh) 睏(khùn)。

"He's sleeping at home now."

Négation

Hokkien dialects have a variety of negation particles that are prefixed or affixed to the verbs they modify. There are five primary negation particles in Hokkien dialects:

1. m̄ (毋, 呣, 唔)
2. bē, bōe (袂, 未)
3. mài (莫, 勿)
4. bô (無)
5. put (不) - literary

Other negative particles include:

1. biàu (嫑) - a contraction of bô iàu (無要), as in biàu-kín (嫑緊) ^{[réf. nécessaire]}
2. bàng (甭)
3. bián (免)
4. thài (汰)

The particles m̄ (毋, 呣, 唔) is general and can negate almost any verb:

伊(i) 毋(m̄) 捌(bat) 字(jī)。

"He cannot read." (lit. he-not-know-word)

The particle mài (莫, 勿), a concatenation of m-ài (毋愛) is used to negate imperative commands:

莫(mài) 講(kóng)!

"Don't speak!"

The particle bô (無) indicates the past tense:

伊(i) 無(bô) 食(chia̍h)。

"He did not eat."

The verb 'to have', ū (有) is replaced by bô (無) when negated (not 無有):

伊(i) 無(bô) 錢(chîⁿ)。

"He does not have any money."

The particle put (不) is used infrequently, mostly found in literary compounds and phrases:

伊(i) 真(chin) 不孝(put-hàu)。

"He is truly unfilial."

Lexique

The majority of Hokkien vocabulary is monosyllabic.^{[réf. à confirmer]} Many Hokkien words have cognates in other Chinese varieties. That said, there are also many indigenous words that are unique to Hokkien and are potentially not of Sino-Tibetan origin, while others are shared by all the Min dialects (e.g. 'congee' is 糜 mê, bôe, bê, not 粥 zhōu, as in other dialects).

As compared to Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Hokkien dialects prefer to use the monosyllabic form of words, without suffixes. For instance, the Mandarin noun suffix 子 (zi) is not found in Hokkien words, while another noun suffix, 仔 (á) is used in many nouns. Examples are below:

• 'duck' - 鸭 ah or 鴨仔 ah-á (SC: 鸭子 yāzi)
• 'color' - 色 sek (SC: 顏色 yán sè)

In other bisyllabic morphemes, the syllables are inverted, as compared to Standard Chinese. Examples include the following:

• 'guest' - 人客 lâng-kheh (SC: 客人 kèrén)

In other cases, the same word can have different meanings in Hokkien and standard written Chinese. Similarly, depending on the region Hokkien is spoken in, loanwords from local languages (Malay, Tagalog, Burmese, among others), as well as other Chinese dialects (such as Southern Chinese dialects like Cantonese and Teochew), are commonly integrated into the vocabulary of Hokkien dialects.

The following table lists a few examples displaying differences in vocabulary between Vernacular Chinese based on Mandarin, and Taiwanese Hokkien written in Chinese characters:

English	Vernacular Chinese	Written Hokkien
Have you eaten enough yet?	你吃飽了沒有	你食飽未
I will leave now.	我先走了	我先來走
Where?	哪裡	叨位
What?	什麼	啥物，啥咪
(I) don't understand	聽不懂	聽無
Thank you	謝謝	多謝 or 感謝
different	不一樣	無同款

In addition, Hokkien literature can consist of phrases that are vernacular to Hokkien, as well as literary terms originating from Classical Chinese. The following list of Taiwanese Hokkien words is adapted from a list by scholar Ong Iok-tek, contrasting vernacular terms with relevant literary terms; the English translations have been added by Mair.

English	Vernacular phrase	Literary equivalent
beautiful	súi 媠	美 bí
wild, crazy	siáu 痟	狂 kông
stand	khiā 徛	豎 sū
go against	koāi	乖 koai
window	thang 窗	窗 chhong
man	cha-po͘ 查埔	男人 lâm-jîn

Lecture vernaculaire et littéraire

The existence of literary and colloquial readings is a prominent feature of some Hokkien dialects and indeed in many Sinitic varieties in the south. The bulk of literary readings (文讀, bûn-tha̍k), based on pronunciations of the vernacular during the Tang Dynasty, are mainly used in formal phrases and written language (e.g. philosophical concepts, surnames, and some place names), while the colloquial (or vernacular) ones (白讀, pe̍h-tha̍k) are basically used in spoken language and vulgar phrases. Literary readings are more similar to the pronunciations of the Tang standard of Middle Chinese than their colloquial equivalents.

However, some dialects of Hokkien, such as Penang Hokkien as well as Philippine Hokkien overwhelmingly favor colloquial readings. For example, in both Penang Hokkien and Philippine Hokkien, the characters for 'university,' 大學, are pronounced tōa-o̍h (colloquial readings for both characters), instead of the literary reading tāi-ha̍k, which is common in Taiwanese and Mainland Chinese dialects.

The pronounced divergence between literary and colloquial pronunciations found in Hokkien dialects is attributed to the presence of several strata in the Min lexicon. The earliest, colloquial stratum is traced to the Han dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE); the second colloquial one comes from the period of the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 - 589 CE); the third stratum of pronunciations (typically literary ones) comes from the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and is based on the prestige dialect of Chang'an (modern day Xi'an), its capital.

Some commonly seen sound correspondences (colloquial → literary) are as follows:

• p- ([p-], [pʰ-]) → h ([h-])
• ch-, chh- ([ts-], [tsʰ-], [tɕ-], [tɕʰ-]) → s ([s-], [ɕ-])
• k-, kh- ([k-], [kʰ-]) → ch ([tɕ-], [tɕʰ-])
• -ⁿ ([-ã], [-uã]) → n ([-an])
• -h ([-ʔ]) → t ([-t])
• i ([-i]) → e ([-e])
• e ([-e]) → a ([-a])
• ia ([-ia]) → i ([-i])

This table displays some widely used characters in Hokkien that have both literary and colloquial readings:

Chinese character	Reading pronunciations	Spoken pronunciations / †explications	English
白	pe̍k	pe̍h	white
面	biān	bīn	face
書	su	chu	book
生	seng	seⁿ / siⁿ	student
不	put	m̄†	not
返	hóan	tńg†	return
學	ha̍k	o̍h	to study
人	jîn / lîn	lâng	person
少	siàu	chió	few
轉	chóan	tńg	to turn

This feature extends to Chinese numerals, which have both literary and colloquial readings. Literary readings are typically used when the numerals are read out loud (e.g. phone numbers), while colloquial readings are used for counting items.

Numeral	Reading		Numeral	Reading
	Literary	Colloquial		Literary	Colloquial
一	it	chi̍t	六	lio̍k	la̍k
二	jī, lī		七	chhit
三	sam	saⁿ	八	pat	peh, poeh
四	sù, sìr	sì	九	kiú	káu
五	ngó	gō	十	si̍p	cha̍p

Hokkien separates reading pronunciations (讀音) from spoken pronunciations (語音) and explications (解說) of Chinese characters (see Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters). The following examples in Pe̍h-oē-jī show differences in readings in Taiwanese Hokkien:

Chinese character	Reading pronunciations	Spoken pronunciations / †explications	English
白	pe̍k	pe̍h	white
面	biān	bīn	face
書	su	chu	book
生	seng	seⁿ / siⁿ	student
不	put	m̄†	not
返	hóan	tńg†	return
學	ha̍k	o̍h	to study
人	jîn / lîn	lâng	person
少	siàu	chió	few
轉	chóan	tńg	to turn

Différences sémantiques entre hokkien et mandarin

Quite a few words from the variety of Old Chinese spoken in the state of Wu, where the ancestral language of Min and Wu dialect families originated, and later words from Middle Chinese as well, have retained the original meanings in Hokkien, while many of their counterparts in Mandarin Chinese have either fallen out of daily use, have been substituted with other words (some of which are borrowed from other languages while others are new developments), or have developed newer meanings. The same may be said of Hokkien as well, since some lexical meaning evolved in step with Mandarin while others are wholly innovative developments.

This table shows some Hokkien dialect words from Classical Chinese, as contrasted to the written Chinese standard, Mandarin:

Meaning	Hokkien		Mandarin
	Hanji	POJ	Hanzi	Pinyin
eye	目睭/目珠	ba̍k-chiu	眼睛	yǎnjīng
chopstick	箸	tī, tū	筷子	kuàizi
to chase	逐	jiok, lip	追	zhuī
wet	潤	jūn, lūn	濕	shī
black	烏	o͘	黑	hēi
book	冊	chheh	書	shū

For other words, the classical Chinese meanings of certain words, which are retained in Hokkien dialects, have evolved or deviated significantly in other Chinese dialects. The following table shows some words that are both used in both Hokkien dialects and Mandarin Chinese, while the meanings in Mandarin Chinese have been modified:

Word	Hokkien		Mandarin
	POJ	Meaning (and Classical Chinese)	Pinyin	Meaning
走	cháu	to flee	zǒu	to walk
細	sè, sòe	tiny, small, young	xì	thin, slender
鼎	tiáⁿ	pot	dǐng	tripod
食	chia̍h	to eat	shí	food
懸	kôan	tall, high	xuán	to hang, to suspend
喙	chhuì	mouth	huì	beak

Hypothèse minyue

Some commonly used words, shared by all^{[réf. nécessaire][Information douteuse]} Min Chinese dialects, came from the ancient Minyue languages. Jerry Norman suggested that these languages were Austroasiatic. Some terms are thought be cognates with words in Tai Kadai and Austronesian languages. They include the following examples, compared to the Fuzhou dialect, a Min Dong language:

Word	Hokkien POJ	Foochow Romanized	Meaning
骹	kha [kʰa˥]	kă [kʰa˥]	foot and leg
囝	kiáⁿ [kiã˥˩]	giāng [kiaŋ˧]	son, child, whelp, a small amount
睏	khùn [kʰun˨˩]	káung [kʰɑuŋ˧]	to sleep
骿	phiaⁿ [pʰiã˥]	piăng [pʰiaŋ˥]	back, dorsum
厝	chhù [tsʰu˨˩]	chuó, chió [tsʰuɔ˥˧]	home, house
刣	thâi [tʰai˨˦]	tài [tʰai˥˧]	to kill, to slaughter
(肉)	bah, mah	—	meat
媠	suí	—	beautiful

Emprunts

Loanwords are not unusual among Hokkien dialects, as speakers readily adopted indigenous terms of the languages they came in contact with. As a result, there is a plethora of loanwords that are not mutually comprehensible among Hokkien dialects.

Taiwanese Hokkien, as a result of linguistic contact with Japanese and Formosan languages, contains many loanwords from these languages. Many words have also been formed as calques from Mandarin, and speakers will often directly use Mandarin vocabulary through codeswitching. Among these include the following examples:

• 'toilet' - piān-só͘ (便所) from Japanese 便所 (benjo)

  Other Hokkien variants: 屎礐 (sái-ha̍k), 廁所 (chhek-só͘)

• 'car' - chū-tōng-chhia (自動車) from Japanese 自動車 (jidōsha)

  Other Hokkien variants: 風車 (hong-chhia), 汽車 (khì-chhia)

• 'to admire' - kám-sim (感心) from Japanese 感心 (kanshin)

  Other Hokkien variants: 感動 (kám-tōng)

• 'fruit' - chúi-ké / chúi-kóe / chúi-kér (水果) from Mandarin (水果, shuǐguǒ)

  Other Hokkien variants: 果子 (ké-chí / kóe-chí / kér-chí)

Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien and other Malaysian Hokkien dialects tend to draw loanwords from Malay, English as well as other Chinese dialects, primarily Teochew. Examples include:

• 'but' - tapi, from Malay

  Other Hokkien variants: 但是 （tān-sī）

• 'doctor' - 老君 lu-gun, from Malay dukun

  Other Hokkien variants: 醫生(i-sing)

• 'stone/rock' - batu, from Malay batu

  Other Hokkien variants: 石头(tsio-tau)

• 'market' - 巴剎 pa-sat, from Malay pasar from Persian bazaar (بازار)

  Other Hokkien variants: 市場 (chhī-tiûⁿ)

• 'they' - 伊儂 i lâng from Teochew (i1 nang5)

  Other Hokkien variants: 𪜶 (in)

• 'together' - 做瓠 chò-bú from Teochew 做瓠 (jo3 bu5)

  Other Hokkien variants: 做夥 (chò-hóe), 同齊 (tâng-chê) or 鬥陣 (tàu-tīn)

• 茶箍 (Sap-bûn) from Malay sabun from Arabic ṣābūn (صابون).

Philippine Hokkien dialects, as a result of centuries-old contact with both Philippine language and Spanish also incorporate words from these languages. Examples include:

• 'cup' - ba-su, from Spanish vaso and Tagalog baso

  Other Hokkien variants: 杯子 (poe-á)

• 'office' - o-pi-sin, from Spanish oficina and Tagalog opisina

  Other Hokkien variants: 辦公室 (pān-kong-sek)

• 'soap' - sa-bun, from Spanish jabon and Tagalog sabon

  Other Hokkien variants:

• 'but' - ka-so, from Tagalog kaso

  Other Hokkien variants: 但是 (tan-si)

  (em-ko)

Rôle culturel et politique

Hokkien (or Min Nan) can trace its roots through the Tang Dynasty and also even further to the people of the Baiyue, the indigenous non-Han people of modern-day southern China. Min Nan (Hokkien) people call themselves "Tang people," (唐人, pe̍h-ōe-jī : Tn̂g-lâng) which is synonymous to "Chinese people". Because of the widespread influence of the Tang culture during the great Tang dynasty, there are today still many Min Nan pronunciations of words shared by the Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese languages.

In 2002, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party with about 10% of the Legislative Yuan seats at the time, suggested making Taiwanese a second official language. This proposal encountered strong opposition not only from Mainlander groups but also from Hakka and Taiwanese aboriginal groups who felt that it would slight their home languages, as well as others including Hoklo who objected to the proposal on logistical grounds and on the grounds that it would increase ethnic tensions. Because of these objections, support for this measure was lukewarm among moderate Taiwan independence supporters, and the proposal did not pass.

English	Chinese characters	Mandarin Chinese	Taiwanese Hokkien	Korean	Vietnamese	Japanese
Book	冊	Cè	Chheh	Chaek	Tập/Sách	Saku/Satsu/Shaku
Bridge	橋	Qiáo	Kiô	Kyo	Cầu/Kiều	Kyō
Dangerous	危險	Wēixiǎn	Guî-hiám	Wiheom	Nguy hiểm	Kiken
Flag	旗	Qí	Kî	Ki	Cờ/Kỳ	Ki
Insurance	保險	Bǎoxiǎn	Pó-hiám	Boheom	Bảo hiểm	Hoken
News	新聞	Xīnwén	Sin-bûn	Shinmun	Tân Văn	Shinbun
Student	學生	Xuéshēng	Ha̍k-seng	Haksaeng	Học sinh	Gakusei
University	大學	Dàxué	Tāi-ha̍k (Tōa-o̍h)	Daehak	Đại học	Daigaku

Civil service examination controversy

Transférer dans l'article sur le taïwanais (?)

In 2003, there was a controversy in Taiwan when parts of the civil service examination for judges were written in characters used only in Hokkien. After strong objections, these questions were not used in scoring. As with the official-language controversy, objections to the use of Taiwanese came not only from Mainlander groups, but also Hoklo, Hakka and aborigines. The Control Yuan later created a rule that only allowed Standard Mandarin characters on civil service exams. According to public opinion surveys, more people support making English the second official language than do for Taiwanese.

Annexes

Voir aussi

• Penang Hokkien
• Taiwanese Hokkien
• Medan Hokkien
• Singaporean Hokkien
• Amoy dialect
• Lan-nang (Philippine dialect of Hokkien)
• Teochew dialect
• Languages of China
• Languages of Taiwan
• Amoy Min Nan Swadesh list
• Written Cantonese
• Vernacular Chinese
• Classical Chinese
• Taiwanese literature movement
• Comparison of Hokkien writing systems
• Amoy dialect
• Singaporean Hokkien
• Penang Hokkien

Bibliographie

• (en) David Prager Branner, Problems in Comparative Chinese Dialectology — the Classification of Miin and Hakka, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter, coll. « Trends in Linguistics series, no. 123 », 2000 (ISBN 3-11-015831-0)
• (en) R.-f Chung, The segmental phonology of Southern Min in Taiwan, Taipei, Crane Pub. Co, 196 (ISBN 957-9463-46-8)
• Jean DeBernardi, « Linguistic nationalism: the case of Southern Min », Sino-Platonic Papers, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, vol. 25,‎ 1991 (OCLC 24810816, lire en ligne)
• (en) Picus Sizhi Ding, Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language, Springer, 2016 (ISBN 978-981-287-593-8)
  • Norbert Francis, « Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language: A Comparative Study of Language Shift and Maintenance across National Borders by Picus Sizhi Ding (review) », China Review International, vol. 21,‎ 2014, p. 128–133 (DOI 10.1353/cri.2014.0008, lire en ligne)
• (en) Henning Klöter, The Language of the Sangleys: A Chinese Vernacular in Missionary Sources of the Seventeenth Century, BRILL, 2011 (ISBN 978-90-04-18493-0) An analysis and facsimile of the Arte de la Lengua Chio-chiu (1620), the oldest extant grammar of Hokkien.

Liens externes

• (en) Lìzhī jì (lire en ligne) A playscript from the late 16th century.
• (en) Doctrina Christiana, Manila, 1607 (lire en ligne) Hokkien translation of the Doctrina Christiana.
• (en) Arte de la Lengua Chio-chiu, Manila, 1620 (lire en ligne) A manual for learning Hokkien written by a Spanish missionary in the Philippines.
• (en) Huìjí yǎ sú tōng shíwǔ yīn, 1818 (lire en ligne) The oldest known rhyme dictionary of a Zhangzhou dialect.
• (en) Carstairs Douglas, Chinese-English dictionary of the vernacular or spoken language of Amoy, London, Presbyterian Church of England, 1899 (lire en ligne)
• (en) Walter Henry Medhurst, A dictionary of the Hok-këèn dialect of the Chinese language, according to the reading and colloquial idioms, Macao, C.J. Steyn, 1832 (lire en ligne)
• 當代泉州音字彙, a dictionary of Quanzhou speech
• Voyager - Spacecraft - Golden Record - Greetings From Earth - Amoy, includes translation and sound clip

  (The voyager clip says: Thài-khong pêng-iú, lín-hó. Lín chia̍h-pá--bē? Ū-êng, to̍h lâi gún chia chē--ô͘! 太空朋友，恁好。恁食飽未？有閒著來阮遮坐哦!)

{{Portal|China|Languages}} {{Southern Min Languages}} {{Chinese language}} [[Category:Chinese language]] [[Category:Hokkien]] [[Category:Hokkien writing system| ]] {{Southern Min Languages}} {{Min Chinese}} {{Chinese language}} {{Use dmy dates|date=August 2011}} [[Category:Hokkien| ]] [[Category:Southern Min-language dialects]] [[Category:Languages of China]] [[Category:Languages of Taiwan]] [[Category:Languages of Malaysia]] [[Category:Languages of Indonesia]] [[Category:Languages of the Philippines]] [[Category:Southern Min| ]]