Min Chinese

Primary branch of Sinitic spoken in southern China and Taiwan

Min
Miin 閩語 / 闽语
Ethnicity	Cangnan), Taiwan, Singapore; overseas communities in Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Macau, Brunei, Myanmar, Japan, Northeastern United States, Southwestern United States and Canada.
Linguistic classification	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese[a] Min
Proto-language	Proto-Min
Subdivisions	Pu-Xian Min, Southern Min Shao-Jiang Min
ISO 639-6	mclr
Linguasphere	79-AAA-h to 79-AAA-l
Glottolog	minn1248
Distribution of Min languages in mainland China and Taiwan[image reference needed]
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	闽语
Traditional Chinese	閩語
Hokkien POJ	Bân-gú / Bân-gír / Bân-gí / Mân-ú
Transcriptions Hinghwa BUC Máng-gṳ̂ Northern Min Jian'ou Romanized Mâing-ngṳ̌

Min (

mutually intelligible with one another nor with any other variety of Chinese (such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Gan, Xiang, or Hakka

).

There are many Min speakers among

Haklau Min, Leizhou Min, and Hainanese

can also be found in parts of the Chinese diaspora, such as in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Many Min languages have retained notable features of

linguistic substrate from the languages of the inhabitants of the region prior to its sinicization

.

History

The Min homeland of Fujian was opened to Han Chinese settlement by the defeat of the Minyue state by the armies of Emperor Wu of Han in 110 BC.^[5] The area features rugged mountainous terrain, with short rivers that flow into the South China Sea. Most subsequent migration from north to south China passed through the valleys of the Xiang and Gan rivers to the west, so that Min varieties have experienced less northern influence than other southern groups.^[6] As a result, whereas most varieties of Chinese can be treated as derived from Middle Chinese—the language described by rhyme dictionaries such as the Qieyun (601 AD)—Min varieties contain traces of older distinctions.^[7] Linguists estimate that the oldest layers of Min dialects diverged from the rest of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty.^[8][9] However, significant waves of migration from the North China Plain occurred:^[10]

• The
  Jin dynasty, particularly the Disaster of Yongjia
  in 311 AD, caused a tide of immigration to the south.
• In 669,
  Chen Yuanguang from Gushi County in Henan set up a regional administration in Fujian to suppress an insurrection by the She people
  .
• Ten Kingdoms in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period
  .

Jerry Norman identifies four main layers in the vocabulary of modern Min varieties:

1. A non-Chinese substratum from the
   Austroasiatic.^[11][12]
2. The earliest Chinese layer, brought to Fujian by settlers from Zhejiang to the north during the Han dynasty^[13] (compare Eastern Han Chinese).
3. A layer from the Northern and Southern dynasties period, which is largely consistent with the phonology of the Qieyun dictionary^[14] (Early Middle Chinese).
4. A
   literary layer based on the koiné of Chang'an, the capital of the Tang dynasty^[15]
   (Late Middle Chinese).

Laurent Sagart (2008) disagrees with Norman and Mei Tsu-lin's analysis of an Austroasiatic substratum in Min.

Austroasiatic one.^[18]

Geographic location and subgrouping

Pu-Xian

  Southern

  Leizhou

  Hainan

Min is usually described as one of seven or ten groups of varieties of Chinese but has greater dialectal diversity than any of the other groups. The varieties used in neighbouring counties, and in the mountains of western Fujian even in adjacent villages, are often mutually unintelligible.^[20]

Early classifications, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yuan Jiahua in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups.^[21][22] However, in a 1963 report on a survey of Fujian, Pan Maoding and colleagues argued that the primary split was between inland and coastal groups. A key discriminator between the two groups is a group of words that have a lateral initial /l/ in coastal varieties, and a voiceless fricative /s/ or /ʃ/ in inland varieties, contrasting with another group having /l/ in both areas. Norman reconstructs these initials in Proto-Min as voiceless and voiced laterals that merged in coastal varieties.^[22][23]

Coastal Min

The coastal varieties have the vast majority of speakers, and have spread from their homeland in Fujian and eastern Guangdong to the islands of Taiwan and Hainan, to other coastal areas of southern China and to Southeast Asia.^[24] Pan and colleagues divided them into three groups:^[25]

• Eastern Min (Min Dong), centered around the city of Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province, with Fuzhou dialect as the prestige form, also including the Fuqing dialect, etc.
  • The Longdu and Nanlang dialect of Zhongshan Min in Guangdong province^[26]
• Quanzhou dialect (Southern Min) and 39% shared with Fuzhou dialect (Eastern Min), and concluded that Pu-Xian was more closely related to Southern Min.^[27]
• Southern Min (Min Nan) originates from the south of Fujian and the eastern corner of Guangdong.
  • In popular usage, Southern Min usually refers to dialects of the Quanzhang type, which originated in southern Fujian (around Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Xiamen) and spread to Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Southern Vietnam, where they are known as Hokkien, and Taiwan, where they are known as Taiwanese.^[24]
  • The dialects of the
    Teochew and Swatow dialects, have difficult mutual intelligibility with the Amoy dialect of Hokkien.^[28] Teochew varieties are the most often spoken by Thai Chinese,^[22] Chinese Cambodians, and second most common among Hoa Vietnamese
    .
  • Zhenan Min of Cangnan County in southern Zhejiang is also of this type.^[29]
  • Chaoshan Min
    ).
  • Datian Min of Datian County in Sanming, Fujian
  • Potentially, also the Sanxiang dialect of Zhongshan Min in Guangdong province^{[26][clarification needed]}

The Language Atlas of China (1987) distinguished two further groups, which had previously been included in Southern Min:^[30]

• Leizhou Min, spoken on the Leizhou Peninsula in southwestern Guangdong.
• Tai–Kadai languages spoken on the island.^[31]

Coastal varieties feature some uniquely Min vocabulary, including pronouns and negatives.[32] All but the Hainan dialects have complex tone sandhi systems.^[33]

Inland Min

Although they have far fewer speakers, the inland varieties show much greater variation than the coastal ones.^[34] Pan and colleagues divided the inland varieties into two groups:^[25]

• Northern Min (Min Bei) is spoken in Nanping prefecture in Fujian, with Jian'ou dialect taken as typical.
• Central Min (Min Zhong), spoken in Sanming prefecture.

The Language Atlas of China (1987) included a further group:^[30]

• Shao-Jiang Min, spoken in the northwestern Fujian counties of Shaowu and Jiangle, were classified as Hakka by Pan and his associates.^[22] However, Jerry Norman suggested that they were inland varieties of Min that had been subject to heavy Gan or Hakka influence.^[35]

Although coastal varieties can be derived from a proto-language with four series of stops or affricates at each point of articulation (e.g. /t/, /tʰ/, /d/, and /dʱ/), inland varieties contain traces of two further series, which Norman termed "softened stops" due to their reflexes in some varieties.^[36][37][38] Inland varieties use pronouns and negatives cognate with those in Hakka and Yue.^[32] Inland varieties have little or no tone sandhi.^[33]

Vocabulary

Most Min vocabulary corresponds directly to cognates in other Chinese varieties, but there are also a significant number of distinctively Min words that may be traced back to proto-Min. In some cases a semantic shift has occurred in Min or the rest of Chinese:

• *tiaŋ^B 鼎 "wok". The Min form preserves the original meaning "cooking pot", but in other Chinese varieties this word (MC tengX > dǐng) has become specialized to refer to ancient ceremonial tripods.^[39]
• *dzhən^A "rice field". In Min this form has displaced the common Chinese term tián 田.
  terraced fields commonly found in Fujian.^[42]
• *tšhio^C 厝 "house".[43] Norman argues that the Min word is cognate with shù 戍 (MC syuH) "to guard".^[44][45]
• *tshyi^C 喙 "mouth". In Min this form has displaced the common Chinese term kǒu 口.^[46] It is believed to be cognate with huì 喙 (MC xjwojH) "beak, bill, snout; to pant".^[45]

Norman and Mei Tsu-lin have suggested an Austroasiatic origin for some Min words:

• *-dəŋ^A "shaman" may be compared with Vietnamese đồng (/ɗoŋ²/) "to shamanize, to communicate with spirits" and Mon doŋ "to dance (as if) under demonic possession".^[47][48]
• *kiɑn^B 囝 "son" appears to be related to Vietnamese con (/kɔn/) and Mon kon "child".^[49][50]

However, Norman and Mei Tsu-lin's suggestion is rejected by Laurent Sagart (2008),

• *khau^A 骹 "foot"[52]
• *-tsiɑm^B 䭕 "insipid"^[53]
• *dzyŋ^C 𧚔 "to wear"^[44]

Writing system

When using Chinese characters to write a non-Mandarin form, a common practice is to use characters that correspond etymologically to the words being represented, and for words with no evident etymology, to either invent new characters or borrow characters for their sound or meaning.^[54] Written Cantonese has carried this process out to the farthest extent of any non-Mandarin variety, to the extent that pure Cantonese vernacular can be unambiguously written using Chinese characters. Contrary to popular belief, a vernacular written in this fashion is not in general comprehensible to a Mandarin speaker, due to significant changes in grammar and vocabulary and the necessary use of large number of non-Mandarin characters.

For most Min varieties, a similar process has not taken place. For Hokkien, competing systems exist.

Minnan edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mindong edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Chinese in New York City

Notes

References

Citations