Name:
闽 Min Dialect
Population:
38,950,000
Region:
Southeast China coastal areas; Fujian Province (福建省) and the Northeast of Guangdong.
Information:
Speakers of the Min dialect are historically seafaring traders and fisherman. They are found in many overseas Chinese communities and spread along the Southern coast. Taiwan is largely Min-speaking because of immigrants from Southern Fujian, so one variation of Southern Min is also known as Taiwanese, 台湾话 taiwanhua.
Fujian Province is geographically isolated from the rest of Mainland China by large mountain ranges and a lack of navigable rivers. As a result, the Min dialect has experienced different historical changes than other Chinese dialects. Some of it’s features are therefore considered archaic.
On account of the relative isolation of various groups of speaker, the Min dialect group is includes several sub-dialects that are not mutually intelligible. As a whole, the group shares some common features, different areas’ dialects are greatly different. There are at least nine mutually unintelligible groups in the Min region; these are generally divided into Northern and Southern groups plus a “Central” group located in the inner mountainous regions of Fujian.
Characteristics:
- No consonant f. Where an f developed in other dialects, such as mandarin, it never appeared in the Min region. Min Speakers tend to pronounce an h in places where Mandarin has f. This characteristic often persists in speakers’ accents when they speak Putonghua, making natives of Fujian easy to identify.
- Dental Stops (Pinyin t- and d-) in places where Mandarin has retroflex affricates (zh- and ch-).
- Seven Tones (Southern Min), with complex tone sandhi.
- Final Stops –p, -t, -k. These final consonants do not exist in Putonghua.
- Southern Min is also known for having very different pronunciations for reading and speaking.
More Detail
Name:
闽南话 Minnanhua; Southern Min
Also Known As: Hokkienese, Fujianese, Taiwanese
Population:
25,725,000 (PRC); 46,227,965 (All Countries)
Region:
Southeast China: Southern Fujian Province; Taiwan. Southeast Asia: Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore. Dialect varies by region.
Name:
闽北话 Minbeihua; Northern Min
Population:
8,820,252 (PRC), Speakers are all Bilingual with Putonghua 普通话
Region:
Northern Fujian Province. Also spoken in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand.
Name:
闽中话 Minzhonghua; Central Min
Population:
No Estimate
Region:
Mountainous regions in Fujian Province. Speakers are generally isolated from other speech communities.