Singaporean Hokkien

Singaporean Hokkien
新加坡福建話
Sin-ka-pho Hok-kiàn-uē (Tâi-lô)
Sin-ka-pho Hok-kiàn-ōe (Pe̍h-ōe-jī)
Native toSingapore
Native speakers
1.2 million (2017)[1]
Early forms
Chinese characters (Traditional or Simplified)
Latin for romanisation (Tâi-lô & Pe̍h-ōe-jī)
Official status
Official language in
None, lingua franca of the Chinese community in Singapore before the 1980s.
Regulated byNone
Language codes
ISO 639-3nan for Southern Min / Min Nan (hbl for Hokkien Bân-lâm is proposed[5]) which encompasses a variety of Hokkien dialects including "Singaporean Hokkien".[6]
GlottologNone
Linguasphere79-AAA-jek
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Singaporean Hokkien
Traditional Chinese新加坡福建話
Simplified Chinese新加坡福建话
Tâi-lôSin-ka-pho Hok-kiàn-uē
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese新加坡閩南語
Simplified Chinese新加坡闽南语
Tâi-lôSin-ka-pho Bân-lâm-gu /
Sin-ka-pho Bân-lâm-gí
Second alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese新加坡閩南話
Simplified Chinese新加坡闽南话
Tâi-lôSin-ka-pho Bân-lâm-uē

Singaporean Hokkien[b] is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu.[c] It bears similarities with the Amoy[d] spoken in Amoy, now better known as Xiamen, as well as Taiwanese Hokkien which is spoken in Taiwan.[7]

Hokkien is the Min Nan pronunciation for the province of Fujian, and is generally the term used by the Chinese in Southeast Asia to refer to the 'Banlam' dialect.[e] Singaporean Hokkien generally views Amoy as its prestige dialect, and its accent is predominantly based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech, with a greater inclination towards the former.

Like many spoken languages in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced by other languages or dialects spoken in Singapore. For instance, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew, and is sometimes regarded as a combined Hokkien–Teochew speech.[f] In addition, it has many loanwords from Singapore's four official languages of English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil.

Nevertheless, the grammar and tones of Singaporean Hokkien are still largely based on Banlam. When compared to the Taiwanese accent[g] spoken in Tainan and Kaohsiung, the accent and pronunciation of Singaporean Hokkien inclines toward the Quanzhou accent, which is also close to the pronunciation of Taipei and Xiamen, and is less close to that of Tainan, which has a greater inclination towards the Zhangzhou accent.[h]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Ethnologue_tree was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Mei, Tsu-lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30: 86–110, doi:10.2307/2718766, JSTOR 2718766
  3. ^ Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984), Middle Chinese: A study in Historical Phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8
  4. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (2023-07-10). "Glottolog 4.8 - Min". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 2023-10-13. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
  5. ^ "Change Request Documentation: 2021-045". 31 August 2021. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
  6. ^ "Reclassifying ISO 639-3 [nan]" (PDF). GitHub. 31 August 2021. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  7. ^ "Podcast Transcript | Hokkien: How Do You Say "How Are You?"". Learn Dialect Singapore. 11 August 2018. Retrieved 1 June 2020.


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