Minnan hua or Southern Min (閩南話 bân-lâm-ōe) is the Chinese dialect of the Southern part of Fujian province, the area around Xiamen and Quanzhou. A variant is widely spoken in Taiwan where it is referred to as Taiwanese (臺彎話 tâi-oan-ōe). Another variant is also spoken widely in the Philippines where it is referred to as Lan Nang Oe (咱人話 lán-lâng-ōe). In Singapore, Malaysia and Medan, the Minnan dialects excluding Teochew are called Hokkien (福建話 hok-kiàn-ōe), the Minnan pronunciation of 'Fujian'.
Note that this list is based on the Xiamen version of Minnan. The dialects spoken in Taiwan, other parts of mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia, Medan and other Chinese communities have some differences, due to borrowing of words from different languages and sometimes language evolution due to relative isolation. Most notably, Minnan spoken in Taiwan has borrowed some words from Japanese, so "uncle" would be known as "ojisan" in Taiwan instead of 阿伯 "a-pek" (father's elder brother), 阿叔 "a-chek" or 阿舅 "a-kū" (mother's brother) as in Xiamen. The variant spoken in Zhangzhou, Fujian province has some subtle differences from the Xiamen varient but is largely mutually intelligible (eg. kiam nui instead of kiam neng for salted egg). Yet another well known variant is the Teochew dialect spoken around Chaozhou and Shantou in Guangdong, and by large foreign Chinese Teochew communities around the world including Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand and France which is significantly different (eg. chı̍t-kâi-nâng instead of chı̍t-ê-lâng for '一個人') but is still mutually intelligible with the Xiamen variant to a small degree. The variants spoken in Singapore and Malaysia are also known to have extensive borrowing from Malay and to a lesser extent Cantonese and English.
While the Hainanese dialect spoken on the island of Hainan is grouped under Minnan by many linguists, it differs more significantly and is not mutually intelligible with any of the other variants of Minnan.
It can be said to be mutually unintelligible with standard Mandarin and other dialects not only due to the pronounciation differences but also because of the irregular word/character convertion i.e. a non-native Minnan speaker can only understand the dialect to a small extent even when it is presented in written form (e.g. "吃甲尚好驚血壓高,水姆兌人走" : 《陳雷.歡喜就好》) It is also not mutually intelligible with the other branches of the Min dialect family such as Mindong, Minbei and Puxian.
Pronunciation
Like all other Chinese languages and their dialects, Minnan uses Chinese characters but employs its own 'unique' pronunciation. However, it should be noted that similar to Japanese kanji, most characters have two or more pronunciations in Minnan, which means that many characters would be pronounced differently depending on context, even if their Mandarin pronunciation remains the same in both instances.
This is partly due to the fact that, because standard written Chinese is based on Mandarin, many words in Minnan are written with characters of the same meaning in standard written Chinese.
For example, the words ài and beh both roughly mean 'want', so they are usually written with the character 要 (although they are also written with 愛 and 欲 respectively). Consequently, the pronouncation of the character 要 can change between ài, beh and iàu depending on context.
The ordinary word for person, lâng, is usually written with the character 人, which also has the reading jı̂n or lîn. The character 生 is is pronounced seⁿ or siⁿ as a verb used alone, but the word 人生 is pronounced lı̂n-seng.
Also, note how the words m̄ (is not, does not) and bē/bōe (cannot) are all often written with 不, so while 不要 might be read as m̄-ài or m̄-beh, 不能/不可 can be read as bē-sái or bōe-sái.
For refering to oneself, 我 góa is used in more informal context while 阮 gún is more formal and 恁爸 lı́n-pē is very derogatory but used very commonly. (No cognates exist in Mandarin or Cantonese although phrases with the same meaning do.) Similar to Malay, there are two equivalents of the English word "we", with lan-nang including the listener in the group, and goa-nang used to exclude the listener from the group.
Pronunciation varies from region to region (e.g. 你 (you) can be either lı́ and lú). This can make comprehension difficult sometimes even between 'native' speakers from different regions. It should also be kept in mind that most speakers of the dialect often mix Mandarin phrases into their speech due to the influence of Standard Mandarin.
Tones
Like other varieties of Chinese, Minnan is tonal; tones must be correct in order to convey the correct meaning. Tone sandhi is particularly common and non-standardised in Minnan, which makes it a little harder to learn than Mandarin, where tone sandhi is standardised, and Cantonese, where tone sandhi is used sparingly.
The following table shows the values of the different tones in some places, and does not show the pronouncation of the tones or tone sandhi of many areas, but may give an idea of the approximate values.
Tones of Minnan
Number
Name
POJ
Pitch
Description
After tone sandhi
1
yin level
a
55
high
7
2
yin rising
á
51
falling
1
3
yin departing
à
31~21
low falling
2
4
yin entering
ah
32
mid stopped
2 (h final), 8 (otherwise)
5
yang level
â
14~24
rising
3 (Taipei), 7 (Tainan)
6
yang rising
á
51
falling
1
7
yang departing
ā
33
mid
3
8
yang entering
a̍h
4
high stopped
3 (h final), 4 (otherwise)
Consonants
Minnan has many different consonants, even more so than standard Mandarin or Cantonese, and pronouncing them all correctly is a challenge for English speakers. While Mandarin only distinguishes between aspirated and unaspirated (unvoiced) consonants, and English only distinguishes between voiced and unvoiced consonants meaning-wise, Minnan makes a distinction in both cases. This means that aspirated unvoiced (pʰ, tʰ, kʰ), unaspirated unvoiced (p, t, k), and unaspirated voiced (b, d, g) are all separate phonemic consonants in Minnan.
To highlight the distinction, the words for "open" (開) and "close" (關), in some pronuncations (khui and kui respectively) sound almost identical to a native English speaker, only difference being that "open" uses an aspirated initial k while "close" uses an unaspirated initial k! The j sound in English is also used along with the j sound in Mandarin hanyu pinyin. Labial initials such as the m sound are also present. However, unlike in Mandarin, there is no "tongue rolling" (pinyin r) initial consonant.
Initial consonanats of POJ
Letter
IPA
English example
Notes
b
b
ban
voiced pinyin 'b'
p
p
span
pinyin 'b'
ph
pʰ
pan
pinyin 'p'
j
dz/ʑ
fads
voiced pinyin 'z'
ch
ts/tɕ
cats
pinyin 'z' or 'j'
chh
tsʰ/tɕʰ
-
pinyin 'c' or 'q'
s
s/ɕ
sun
pinyin 's' or 'x'
g
g
get
goiced pinyin 'g'
k
k
skin
pinyin 'g'
kh
kʰ
kin
pinyin 'k'
t
t
Stan
pinyin 'd'
th
tʰ
tan
pinyin 't'
h
h
hat
English 'h'
Like Cantonese but unlike Mandarin, Minnan retains all the final consonants (m, n, ŋ, p, t, and k) of Middle Chinese. In POJ, the nasal consonants m, n and ng are pronounced the same as English, but the others are different.
The stop consonants p, t and k are unreleased. This means that the mouth moves into the position of making the consonant, but no burst of air is released.
Furthermore, an h at the end of a syllable in POJ represents a glottal stop (ʔ); this is the sound in the middle of the English word 'uh-oh'.
Vowels
The vowels a, e, i, o, u are pronounced as they are in many languages, such as Spanish. Minnan also has the vowel [ɔ] written as o͘ (with a dot) or oo.
Vowels of POJ
Letter
IPA
English example
Notes
a
a
e
e
whey
i
i
see
o
o
soap
o͘
ɔ
law
also written 'oo'
u
u
goose
Vowels in Minnan can be nasalized, and in POJ this is indicated with a superscript n 'ⁿ' after the vowel. It can also be indicated with a capital n (N) or a double n (nn). IPA notes this with a tilde (~) above the last vowel.
Common diphthongs
There are many dipthongs in Minnan, and there pronouncation from the POJ spelling is generally fairly obvious. However, note that oe is "ui/uei" and oai is "uai".
Dipthongs of POJ
Letter
IPA
English example
Notes
ai
aɪ
my
pinyin 'ai'
au
aʊ
cow
pinyin 'ao'
ia
ɪa
-
iu
iu
-
io
ɪo
-
oa
ua
-
pinyin 'wa'
oe
ui
way
pinyin 'wei'
iau
ɪaʊ
-
piyin 'yao'
oai
uai
why
pinyin 'wai'
Phrase list
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Phrases in this section are not consistently transcribed with Pe̍h-ōe-jī and Wikitravel's romanization guidelines. If you are familiar with the language, please help fix them up!
For some of the following phrases, there is an unconventional romanization shown in parentheses and this does not describe tones, but just tries to be phonetically accurate from an (American) English speaking standpoint. Goal is to have an English speaker's first try be fairly close, without reading a bunch of rules for phonetization nor trying to distinguish between the 7 tones in Taiwanese. Unfortunately, it is difficult to cover all tones this way, especially nasal and breath differences, and thus cannot be completely accurate.
Asterisks precede words that are very hard to phonetize. It would be nice to get some audio on here for these.
Also to note is the sound of "l" used below. Linguists call this sound a "flap": it is similar to the "tt" sound in Standard American pronunciation of "butter". It is also similar to the Japanese "r" and the Spanish "single-r" sounds.
Basics
Hello.
你好。 lı́ hó (Li huh)
Hello (informal)
How are you?
你好無？ lı́ hó bô?
How are you?
食飽無？ chia̍h-pá-bô (jia bah bo) ("have you eaten?")
Not bad
不歹 bōe-phái (buay pai)
Fine, thank you. (informal)
好，多謝 hó，to͘-siā (Hoh, duh shiah.)
Fine, thank you. (formal)
好，感謝 hó，kám-siā. (Hoh, gahm shiah)
Thank you
多謝 to͘-siā
What is your name?
你叫啥物名？ lı́ kiò siáⁿ-mı̍h miâ?
My name is ... .
我的名是... góa ê miâ sı̄...
Nice to meet you.
Please... (before a request)
請... chhiáⁿ...
Please.
拜託 Pài-thok (Bai-toh)
You're welcome
免客氣 bián kheh-khı̀ ("don't be polite")
Yes.
是 sı̄ (Note: Only some questions are answered with this. As with other varieties of Chinese, affirmation is generally done by repeating the verb in the question.)
No.
毋是 m̄-sı̄
Excuse me. (getting attention)
勞駕 lô-kà
Excuse me. (begging pardon)
否勢 phái-sè (pai say)
I'm sorry. (informal)
否勢 phái-sè (pai-say)
I'm sorry. (formal)
失禮。sit lé. (shit-leh)
Goodbye
再見 chài-kiàn (tsai gian).
Goodbye (informal)
I can't speak... [well].
我袂曉講... góa bōe-hiáu kóng...
I don't know how to speak English
我[?]曉講英語 (Wah mbay hyow gong eng-yee)
Do you speak English?
你敢會曉講英語？ lı́ kám-ē-hiáu kóng eng-gı́? (Li gah-ay-hyow gong eng-yee)
Is there someone here who speaks English?
遐敢有人會曉講英語？chia kám-ū lâng ē hiáu kóng ing-gú? (Jiah gam ou lung eh hiao gong eng gyi?)
我甘可用你的電話[?] (Wah gah-ay sai yen * li-ay dyeng-way)
Don't lie to me!
勿假！ mài ké!
Numbers
Numbers in Minnan are basically the same as numbers in other varieties of Chinese.
Please note the rules about when to use the two different words for 2 (nn̄g and jī). Jī is used in the ones, tens and hundreds place, whereas nn̄g is used for multiples of numbers 100 and greater. This is analogous to the use of 兩 and 二 in mandarin.
0
空 khong (kong)
1
一 it / chi̍t (chjit)
2
二 jī (li/ji/di) / 兩 nn̄g (nng)
3
三 saⁿ (sa)
4
四 sì (si)
5
五 ngō (go)
6
六 la̍k (lak)
7
七 chhit (chit)
8
八 pueh / peh (bpui)
9
九 káu (kau)
10
十 cha̍p (tzhap)
11
十一 cha̍p-it (tzhap-it)
12
十二 cha̍p-jī (tzhap-li)
13
十三 cha̍p-saⁿ (tzhap-sa)
14
十四 cha̍p-sì (tzhap-si)
15
十五 cha̍p-gō· (tzhap-go)
16
十六 cha̍p-la̍k (tzhap-lak)
17
十七 cha̍p-chhit (tzhap-chit)
18
十八 cha̍p-peh (tzhap-peh)
19
十九 cha̍p-káu (tzhap-kau)
20
二十 jī-cha̍p (li-tzhap)
21
二十一 jī-cha̍p-it (li-tzhap-it)
22
二十二 jī-cha̍p-jī (li-tzhap-li)
100
一百 chi̍t-pah (chit-pah)
200
兩百 nn̄g-pah (nng-pah)
222
兩百二十二 nn̄g-pah-jī-cha̍p-jī (nng-pah-li-chap-li)
1000
一千 chi̍t-chhien (chit-chien)
2000
兩千 nn̄g-chhien
10,000
一萬 chi̍t-bān
20,000
兩萬 nn̄g-bān
100,000
十萬 cha̍p-bān
1,000,000
一百萬 chi̍t-pah bān
10,000,000
一千萬 chi̍t-chhing bān
100,000,000
一億 chi̍t-ik
1,000,000,000
十億 cha̍p-ik
10,000,000,000
一百億 chi̍t-pah ik
100,000,000,000
一千億 chi̍t-chhing ik
1,000,000,000,000
一兆 chi̍t-tiāu
number _____ (train, bus, etc.)
_____號 hō
half
半 bun
less
少 síu
more
多 dō
Ordinal Numbers
Ordinal numbers in Chinese are expressed by prepending the number with '第', pronounced tē in Minnan.
