Hokkien

Hokkien
Min Nan, Fukien, Amoy
Koa-á books featuring Hokkien written in Chinese characters
Region	China,[a] Taiwan,[b] Singapore, Malaysia,[c] Philippines,[d] Indonesia,[e] Myanmar,[f] Cambodia,[g] Hong Kong,[h] Vietnam,[i] Thailand,[j] Brunei[k]
Ethnicity	Hokkien / Hoklo people
Native speakers	more than 47 million (est.)[m][1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Sinitic Chinese Min Coastal Min Southern Min Hokkien
Early forms	Proto-Sino-Tibetan Old Chinese[n] Proto-Min
Dialects	Amoy Quanzhou Zhangzhou Longyan Taiwanese Singaporean[6] Penang[6] Medan[6] Philippine[6] Southern Peninsular Malaysian[6] Riau Hokkien (Riau Province, Riau islands, Jambi)[6] Kelantan Hokkien (Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Southern Thailand)[6] Kuching Sarawak Hokkien (Kuching, Sarawak)[6] Brunei Hokkien (Bandar Seri Begawan, Kuala Belait, Limbang, Labuan) Java Hokkien (Jakarta, Semarang, Surakarta, etc.) Hong Kong Hokkien (North Point, Causeway Bay, Kowloon Bay) Yangon Hokkien (Yangon Region)[6] Phuket Hokkien (Phuket province)[6] Saigon Hokkien (Chợ Lớn, Ho Chi Minh City)[6]
Writing system	Written Hokkien (Chinese characters) Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Latin letters) Tâi-lô (Latin letters) Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols
Official status
Official language in	Taiwan[7][8][9] (also a statutory language for public transport announcements in Taiwan)[10]
Regulated by	Taiwan Ministry of Education
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nan for Southern Min (hbl is proposed[11])
Glottolog	hokk1242
Distribution of Southern Min languages, with Hokkien in dark green
Polities by number of Hokkien speakers   ≥1,000,000   ≥500,000   ≥100,000   ≥50,000   Significant minority populations
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/ HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/ HOH-kee-en)^[12] is a variety of the Southern Min languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang (Chinese: 泉漳; pinyin: Quánzhāng), from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity.^[6]

In maritime Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia. This applied to a lesser extent to mainland Southeast Asia.^[13] 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. Hokkien Kelantan in northern Malaya of Malaysia and Hokaglish spoken sporadically across the Philippines, especially Metro Manila are also mixed languages with Hokkien as the base lexifier.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).