Hokkien is a wonderful language. Hokkien and Cantonese preserved many middle Chinese words and grammatical syntaxes which are lost in Mandarin. That's why many Hokkien words sound the same in Japanese On'Yomi readings and Korean.
Because China was then superpower, Japanese & Koreans travelled to China to learn new agricultural science, tech, etc borrowing the Hokkien language vocabulary like puto (grape) is Hokkien but spread to Korea and Japan as well.
@YorgosL1 . contemporary standard Mandarin was mainly based on the Beijing Mandarin（北京官话） and also features other Mandarin（官话） . Which developed since the ming dynasty with features in phonology in the 元 yuan dynasty. Old Mandarin can be considered to be derived since the song dynasty and is also from the middle Chinese.
I grew up in a Hokkien household, a huge extended family then living in Geylang. Hearing spoken Hokkien even just small bites in this video warms my heart and also almost brings a tear to my eyes. I hardly hear these sounds anymore. My own children don't speak the language. Personally, I have lost a lot of Hokkien thru disuse too. Thank you.
Don't blame yourself. It was the era of campaigns and horrible sociocultural persecution policies initiated by PAP like Speak Mandarin Campaign which literally deprived almost 100% of Chinese Singaporeans born after 1970 a chance to discover their own linguistic roots.
@@tangt4860 I am one of the younger generation singaporeans who've lost touch with Hokkien because of those persecution policies, i do feel sad that the government wiped out an entire group of languages in my generation and to this day refuses to do anything significant to revitalise it :(
Interesting. Hokkien sounds like Korean words and pronunciation of many words are exactly IDENTICAL. We Koreans read 學生 as ‘Haksaeng’, 大學 as ‘Daehak’ and 新加坡國立大學 as ‘Sin Ga Pa Guk Rip Dae Hak’, 陛下 as ‘Pyeha’, 執行 as ‘Jiphaeng’, 銀行 as ‘Eunhaeng’. I was totally surprised and the video is really impressive!
There are many similar words: 时间 時間 si gan 시간 (time) 美国 美國 bi guok 미국 (america) 世界 世界 se gai 세계 (world) 真正 真正 jin zhia 진짜 (really) 记者 記者 gi zhia 기자 (reporter) 派出所 派出所 pai cu suo 파출소
It also made Taiwanese feel so familiar with Korean when watching Korean drama. Many Korean name are pronounced exaclty identical to Taiwanese Hokkien name.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but indeed more than happy to see the similarities you’ve pointed out. In all honesty I think there’s huge common similarities in East Asian languages and developments, as the coastal cities of China have huge influence alongside with Korean and Japanese, hence there’s a lot of similarities in written and spoken since ancient days. Even as a Singaporean, I find it easy sometimes to find a common language or term when speaking to a foreigner, maybe in Thailand in (Teochew), or a Taiwanese (Hokkien), and now very glad to know even our Korean friends share similar words with us… cheers bud!
As a Japanese learner I keep finding similarities such as 参加 (sanka) and 感謝 (kansha). Or 警察局 (keisatsu kyoku) that kyoku part really resembles the "kiok". Both 美人 and 新聞 sound almost identical. It's just amazing to find the roots of different languages and see they all converge at some point. Thank you for showing this language to the world.
警察厅/警察局,新聞, 経済/經濟, 地下鉄/地鐵，郵便局/郵局 etc are typical 19 century creation by Japanese whose pioneering the adaptation of western concept into east asian culture aka chinese influence sphere reverse influencing 20 century chinese. The only coincident here of course is the japanese scholar still heavily influence by classic chinese for the character choice and onyomi
@@danuaditya642 right, but I wouldn't conclude that the languages "converge at some point" from there (trivially Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages did converge at some point in the past, but that's a fact adjacent to this reason)
Holy shit, I am so impressed! This video was amazing on SO many levels! The amount of detail, the use of traditional characters, the linguistic terminology, the Middle Chinese pronunciation, the editing, the simple aesthetic style: It all hit the nail on the head for me. This might be the best UA-cam video I've ever watched. And you've got 169 (nice) subscribers. There truly is hope in this world. I look forward to learning a lot from you!
Recently, for the 1st time, I heard the words holy shit. I told my other friend that this fellow is religious. He told me the fellow is a Catholic. Let me assume you are catholic too. No offence if you’re. 😅😂😅
I'm so happy that you referred to Hokkien and Cantonese as their own languages rather than as dialects of Mandarin, since a lot of the Chinese "dialects" aren't really derived from Mandarin at all and since they are not mutually understandable with Mandarin then that means they're languages not dialects
its not hard to get it right, we both malaysian and singaporean chinese have proper chinese education including our ethnic history. Stop thinking only mainlanders and taiwanese knows proper chinese.
@@hc8714 I don’t think this was the point that OP was trying to say. OP was trying to compare that Hokkien/Cantonese vs Mandarin are actually 2 different spoken languages where the only shared component with Mandarin is the written part. This does NOT mean that we do not learn Mandarin in Singapore
@@cutefidgety Mandarin is derived from Middle Chinese while Quanzhou Hokkien is the oldest major offshoot of Ancient Chinese dating back to the year 420AD.
I'm Korean and have been living in Guangdong Guangzhou and Shenzhen for the last 25 years. During this time I've had the opportunity to learn the three main prevalent dialects around this area, namely Cantonese(廣東話), Hakka(客家話) and Teochew(潮州話，similar phonetic system with Hokkien). I also understand the basics of Taiwanese(basically the same with Hokkien) and Shanghainese(上海話) and Vietnamese. It is true that China has greatly influenced Korea, Japan and Vietnam since ancient times in terms of culture and its writing system. Chinese characters were introduced as their respective writing system, though only the highly educated being able to use it. While the meaning of each character was mostly retained until today, the actual pronunciation has been adapted to each of their local phonetic sound system. For instance, the actual pronunciation of Sino Korean vocab is a mixture of various Chinese dialects. Some are pronounced the same in Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Shanghainese or even in Mandarin. Different varieties of each dialect are also included. Some examples are : 新聞 , 三十 (Hakka) 執行 , 感覺 (Hokkien) 雜志 , 數字2 (Cantonese) 海 or 對 (Shanghainese) 模樣 , 通話 (Mandarin) About more than a half of the Korean vocabulary are Sino originated, which means that they can all be written using 漢字. This is also true of Japanese and Vietnamese.
Yeah, I speak both Mandarin, Teochew and Cantonese. I was surprised how similar some Korean vocab's Korean pronunciation is to Teochew and Cantonese, when I firstly heard them in some videos
Thank you for acknowledging Taiwanese as its own entity compared to Hokkien. My view is that if Norwegian and Swedish can be considered two separate languages, then Hokkien and Taiwanese can be too.
I find it odd that Korean would be influenced by southern languages like Cantonese and Hakka. But it makes sense that northern languages would have a strong correlation with Korean.
Thank you for this video! My paternal ancestors were Hokkien but sadly the last speaker in our family, i.e. the grandfather I never met, died in the 1970s. I'm from Indonesia, where my paternal grandmother's family had settled since the 17th century. Indonesia had a Communist Purge in the mid 1960s, which saw a ban in Chinese languages, cultures and identities until 2002. Which is partly why my father's generation does not speak Chinese. That, and also the Javanese bullying culture where neighbour's kids would imitate my Hokkien speaking grandfather and my young dad who just wanted to fit in would be so embarrassed he'd want nothing to do with his Chinese roots. We Chinese Indonesians carry such heavy baggage associated with our identities, and it's just such a great loss. Lately I'm taking an interest in Mandarin--while more for pragmatic reasons than sentimental, it got me wondering whether someday I will learn Hokkien and visit Fujian--even if I have no idea where exactly in Fujian are my ancestors from. This video gives me this rare feeling like I've found a precious puzzle piece about who my ancestors were--while far from the whole picture, still an important piece. So thank you for giving me this gift through this video.
I have been to Xiamen, and a lot of their culture have also gone and diverged much since cultural revolution. If you want to see more of the old Culture, there are still few bastions of Hokkien cultures such as Tainan, Taiwan and Penang, Malaysia. Both Preserved a lot of very old traditions but Penang also retained the old creolised Peranakan Hokkien tongues, with some malay loanwords tracing back to the era of early Batavia. When people say what is the stereotype of Hokkiens, people would say that the husband listens to the mother first, the wife second. Although heavily challenged by neo-confucianism and patriarchy, the matriarchs have very strong role and influence in Hokkien culture.
You must make an effort to learn Hokkien. At a higher level, you will begin to appreciate some of the old Hokkien wise sayings just like proverbs contain so much wit and wisdom in it. Taught two grand nephews recently who speak only English, a few simple words in Hokkien and surprisingly they could pick it up very fast.
I guess you live in java? Since in sumatra and the islands hokkien and teochew is still spoken even by people born in the 90s,I personally can understand what people is speaking in hokkien but when I speak especially mandarin I always miss the notes,even though I have been in contact with hokkien and mandarin since a baby. Here in sumatra our kopitiam or kedai kopi especially chinese run ones still use phrases like : O = no milk beng = ice Pua sio = warm Etc. Basically the language is still alive in sumatra,especially in places with chinese population like batam,tanjung pinang,bagan siapi api and such,even if not as prevalent as in the past,but in some places the language still holds and has entered the general public,such as kopitiam lingo like kopi o and teh obeng
@@anakitiktokwi2939 it's not wrong to say that,malay provinces like riau and riau islands,in addition to the province of north sumatra and jambi have many chinese indonesians who can speak chinese languages. The chinese indonesians in sumatra mainly speak hokkien,while the ones in kalimantan mainly speak khek.
Awesome video! Somebody in comments stated that Hokkien is very similar to Japanese, but what shocked me personally, was that a lot of Hokkien words are analogous to their Korean equivalents (since I know some Korean). "hak seng" - "hak-saeng" mean. student "gun hang" - "eun-haeng" mean. bank "sin bun" - "sin-mun" mean. newspaper "kam sia" - "gam-sa" mean. thanks and also "pang" (house in Hokkien) has obviously the same origin as "bang" (room in Korean), using the same written character.
Impressed by your effort in telling the history in its fullest. I feel more extrapolation of Minyue elements in the language would be justifiable, as Minnan was no Terra Nullius, but great job otherwise. Your post deserves more views and the Hokkien communities will no doubt support your work. Looking forward for part two.
Thank you for watching my video. Yes I agree that Hokkien originally began to form through the intermixing of languages between the northern Han settlers and the original natives in the Minyue region. I will be exploring more of Hokkien's non-sinitic roots/substratum in the next video.
@@user-mx1yr4ce1t there's also 甩 lut in Cantonese, I think that might be the same, might be mistaken though, I don't know anything other than really basic Hokkien.
This was fascinating and one of the best linguistics videos on UA-cam. I am amazed by sinitic languages, the phonological changes and also how we’ve got the sinoxenic pronunciations in Japanese and Korean. PLEASE keep up with these topics. You’ve earned a new faithful subscriber
Nice video ! I'm from Vietnam and witness that Vietnamese and Hokkien has some common, judged from some examples in your video. University is "Đại học" and student is "Học sinh" , the pronunciation is nearly the same as in colloquial Hokkien
Vietnamese sounds resemble Cantonese more than hokkien in these examples you just gave. Cantonese for school is taai hok. Hok and hoc are more similar than hak in hokkien.
the Cantonese word for college and student is closer than hokkien. 大學 = dai hok in canto. Đại học in viet. 學生 hok sang = học sinh. Hak is not close but it is closer than mandarin ‘xue’ but all of these are derive from Middle Chinese but however mandarin does not retain it and sound different
I think Cantonese is closer to Vietnamese than Hokkien is and this could be due to both Vietnamese and Cantonese people being descendants of the Bai Yue/Bách Việt.
Awesome work! As a Hokkien speaker in QuanZhou accent , I’m so excited and appreciated you introduce my montrer language! 🙏The word origins, roots, history, comparisons..are so detailed and informational, and I love the way you presenting, pretty easy to look. Your channel certainly needs more attention, keep going on!!
Awesome video! As a native Hokkien dialect speaker, I am a natural speaker but I never knew a lot of the history and background having to do why our language is the way it is and how these aspects of our language developed over time. I stumbled onto you randomly and hope you continue making these great videos!
Really wonderful breakdown! Still a brief introduction but more than anything else I've ever seen online and a lot more than what I knew. Hokkien is one of the languages I want to learn eventually, so it's nice to see a bit of an overview. Looking forward to the next video!
This is such an informative and interesting video! This type of content is so niche (either that or it is behind a translation barrier). And the graphics and content are really high-quality, really looking forward to seeing the second part! Also it's nice to see an SG youtuber, and talking about languages some more. The Mother Tongue standards of Singaporeans are slowly falling, so it's great to see videos like this can bring more interest to people regarding their language heritage.
What an amazingly made video; I can't get over your attention to detail, and have been left feeling enriched and full of curiosity about everything you described. You have an instant subscribe from me!
Interesting video! My great grandfather was from Amoy, learning about his language makes me feel connected to the family and just a deeper appreciation for the language itself. Can't wait for more videos!
Wow this is such a superb video explaining many aspects of Hokkien in SEA countries; am so glad to see this production as many younger people in the region may not have such basic information of the Hokkien dialect; as a descendant of Quan Zhou parentage, I often find such gaps in the English language-dominated society in Singapore; well done! PS - went through the video in quite some detail and found it to be extremely accurate!
this has by far been the best video related to Hokkien and other chinese dialect i have watched so far. Coming from a Taiwanese speaking family does make this video much more enjoyable and surprising, and i am very glad that i am able to learn all these facts about the language that is spoken by my family and friends every day.
I was just explaining to a group of international friends about Hokkien as a dialect which is somewhat similar to 闽南语. How Ignornant I was on my own chinese heritage, I should just direct them to view this 2-part series. Really awesome content! And really proud it is produced from Singapore. Thank you!
This is really well done, and the linguistics presented here is in line with scholarship both from Taiwan and China, so no need to listen to comments from ignorant keyboard warriors. Anyone calling the knowledge here as disinformation needs to go and read some 李如龍.
Just a nitpick: I noticed he pronounced the -k/-p/-t the same for Hokkien and Middle Chinese (as far as my Scandinavian ears could tell) but that can't possibly be right, can it? They are pronounced by shaping the mouth for the -k/-p/-t stop but making a glottal stop first (as in Cantonese) but was the glottal stop that strong in Middle Chinese? Did it even exist in those cases or were those finals pronounced as standard old boring /k/, /p/, /t/?
Taiwanese here. Great video, and I'm very happy to see all the Hanji are in the traditional form even though simplified is taught in schools in Singapore. There are many interesting Old and Middle Chinese features preserved in the Holo languages, such as the evidence of /t/ -> /ts/ -> /s/ sound change, as exampled by the 墜 tui / 墜 tsui / 隧 sui triplet. There's also evidence of the loss of final consonants following an open or mid vowel sound, such as /ak/ or /ok/, would result in the vowel diphthongizing to /au/ or /ou/, such as 覺 and 國. The tones of Southeast Asian Hokkien is different from the most prevalent Taigi accent in Taiwan, and it stands out especially in the 感謝 example.
One cannot generalize the accent or tones in the region and for that matter in Taiwan! It depends on where the ancestors of a particular region were/came from in Southern China - for eg Penang versus malacca or Singaporean Hokkien accent. For example, in certain southern parts of Taiwan, the accent is closer to either to either quan zhou or Qiang zhou accents too. The phenomenon is similar in SEA countries! Hokkien accent in Philippines is closer to quan zhou, Singapore is similar to Xiamen and Taiwan and many parts of Malaysia are akin to qiang zhou accent- thus, cannot generalize!
@@benyeo7930 I think by Quan zhou and Qiang zhou you mean Tsuân-tsiu and Tsiang-tsiu, and the Pinyin should be Zhangzhou. In Taiwan, only a few isolated regions such as Lo̍k-káng and parts of Yilan kept their accents closer to the original Tsuân-tsiu accent. Most Taigi speakers in the South actually show more Tsiang-tsiu features, and even then, it's not the Old Tsiang-tsiu language, but a modified New Tsiang-tsiu language. Part of it might be because the Amoy language is already a mixture of Tsuân-tsiu and Tsiang-tsiu languages. Although a even bigger part is that the Taigi language simply has evolved since it was brought over to Taiwan.
@@paiwanhan I always thought people in Fujian went straight across and settled in the same spots in Taiwan as on the mainland, maybe that's why there are differences in the north and south of the island
Wow, when comparing to Cantonese, hokkien sounded a lot like Japanese. I know that on'yomi is formed mainly by middle and old Chinese pronunciation so the southern Chinese should be the closest ones, but hokkien seems to win the first place
Hokkien, Cantonese, and Onyomi all lack the fine distinctions between the three affricates (retroflex, dental, palatal) that Middle Chinese had. But just like Onyomi, Hokkien has denasalisation, erosion of finals, and lacks the inner outer flip that makes Cantonese sound so unique.
@@MarcosKunBass It varies among the different Min languages. Some keep all the plosive endings (-p, -t, -k) and even add an extra glottal stop ending. But in many Min languages the nasal endings (-m, -n, -ng) are lost, leaving behind only a nasalized vowel (like 行 in the video). Onyomi likewise doesn't keep the endings (-p, -m, -ng) from Middle Chinese.
Thanks for preserving our dialect heritage. I'm from Singapore too and I'm of Cantonese background. But I've also been very interested in understanding and researching the Hokkien dialect, since I grew up with people speaking it commonly around me in my generation. I must say that, you being a Singaporean, I'm very impressed with your knowledge of the differences in the colloquial and literary readings in Hokkien, which many don't realise . I found out about this a few years ago and that was what intrigued me to learn about this beautiful speech. Sadly the younger generation hardly or never speak this dialect let alone understand the history, the richness and heritage of southern Chinese languages. Many don't even know that Mandarin and most of the northern dialects were developed around the Qing dynasty and was evolved heavily by Manchu and other non-Han tribes influences, hence all the m, p, t, K end stops have faded or merged into ng endings.. Of course, the southern languages were not without their influences from southern natives like the 'baiyue' as they were called. And some of those baiyue were possible ancestors of modern day Thais, Vietnamese, Malays etc. Good work!
Ayy same but I'm a former Penangite! The history is fascinating. Penang Hokkien is more simple than Taiwanese or the southern min proper imo, also has many loanwords from Malay and other languages 😂 now there's a state funded Penang Hokkien dictionary you can check out and use, it's very handy, since it also links english, Malay and 汉字 as well as allows one to input english, Malay, Chinese characters, and use different Hokkien romanisation inputs. Like peh-oe-ji The 百越 are also thought to be the ancestors of the Maori, as well as some Polynesian and Pacific islands peoples!
Bravo!!! Great job! Not only you made such complicated contents look interesting, I salute you for your ability to pronounce those different dialects. Amazing! Cheers from Malaysia 🥰
this video is incredible, I was so surprised to see nothing else on your channel and so few subscribers!! You're off to a fantastic start, can't wait for the next vid!! Keep it up and this channel will get huge
Very interesting! I've been scouring for accessible but detailed history of the Hokkien language and your video was just what I wanted. Keep it up, looking forward to more.
Some small corrections: The 官話白讀 of 學 is xiáo, which is a rare reading. Mandarin has more 文白異讀 than you imply in the video-it's not uncommon-it's just that one or the other might be rare. The literary readings tend to come from Nanjing and the colloquial ones from Beijing. All of the retroflex examples you used correspond to Middle Chinese retroflex/palatal stops, and so were not pronounced as sibilants (like zh/ch) in Middle Chinese either. Middle Chinese had a separate series for retroflex/palatal sibilants which remained as sibilants. The voicing distinction of Middle Chinese is fully preserved in the Wu languages but only with in Hokkien. The voiced stops of Hokkien were formerly prenasalised (like mb-, nd-, ngg-) because they descend from the Middle Chinese sonorant initials (m/n/ng), not the Middle Chinese voiced obstruents (which became tenuis in Hokkien, except with ). So, yes, Hokkien has voiced stops, but they are not the same voiced stops of Middle Chinese. Cantonese, Hakka, Gan, and other southern languages also preserve the -m/p/t/k endings to varying degrees, so I don't think this is a feature that makes Hokkien unique, only different from Mandarin and Wu. Instead, I think what makes Hokkien (and Southern Min) special is that there are also nasalised vowels (-nn) and a glottal stop coda (-h) in addition to these.
What a detailed explanation on the history of languages, so much effort in this video! Really an eye opener, looking forward to more videos from you! Instant subscribe from me. I particularly like the animation😍
In Malaysia, I think a third of Chinese Malaysians are from Hokkien descent. But I've heard that it is slowly dying out in Malaysia and Singapore as more of the Chinese youth here prefer Mandarin (the curiculum in Chinese-oriented schools only use Mandarin).
Singapore government is more relaxed and liberal about Chinese dialects compared to decades ago. Now you hear snippets of them in local media, while from 70s to 90s, these were no no. As the author of this video mentioned, no language remains static. As these dialects get forgotten in their supposedly purer forms, many phrases find their ways into new variants, like the Singlish. I do hope such in-depth studies continue so that we do not lose them forever and still able to trace them in the future.
You forgot to mention that there is a difference between Hokkien spoken in northern part of Malaysia (Penang) & southern part (Johor). Or am I the only one who thinks there is a difference?
@@sue7014 Yes, very different. Penang Hokkien sound more like a sing song dialect. Didn’t quite noticed it until I heard it overseas among Penangnites talking among themselves.
Thank you so much for your effort! As a Hokkian and Mandarin speaker, I'm so impressed by this video. But if I'm not mistaken, I think the nasal consonant "ng" is still preserved in the literary pronunciation of Hokkian, like 我(I) and 五(Five) are both pronounced "ngoo" in literary reading. At least this is how we read these words here in Taiwan. 🙂
I love this video. Cant believe I have only just come by it. I grew up speaking one variation of Hokkien in a small town in Wenzhou bordering Fujian province. I am learning so much from this video.
Fellow Singaporean here, thanks for making this video! I have always been interested in the Minnan languages, in particular Hokkien & Teochew as they're known here in SE Asia, so it's great to see such content (and from Singapore too!). It's close to my heart and I feel a sense of kinship whenever I hear Hokkien/Teochew as my maternal grandmother was from Swatow/Shantou and I grew up hearing her speak Teochew. My paternal grandfather was from Quanzhou, Fujian and my dad speaks almost exclusively in Hokkien to his parents and siblings. I hope to improve my Hokkien to preserve this part of my culture and heritage. Have also noticed the similarities between certain Hokkien and Korean terms which is interesting. Looking forward to part 2 of the video! 加油 :)
I feel a sense of identity and belonging when I hear Hokkien too! I’m definitely one of the lucky teenagers in Singapore that is very exposed to my dialect. I realise none of my friends know Hokkien despite it being their dialect. So I’m gonna cherish my privilege and continue to improve my Hokkien so I can pass it down to the future generations and fully understand aunties gossip LOL!
@@yannylaurel4 same bro all my friends only know hokkien curse words and nothing more. I can communicate fluently in hokkien but sadly only old people speak hokkien. Young people only speak English and barely any mandarin.
some how got this on my recommended and this is an absolutely brilliant video. as some one who is also singaporean Chinese hokkien, I've been quite curious about my ethnic roots and evolution and fluidity of language. thanks for sharing, very well done!
What a wonderful video! I knew the tea/cha thing was because some got their tea from Fujian, whereas others got tea from other parts of China. The Portuguese call tea cha, because they dealt with Canton and Japan, whereas the English got it from Fujian. I did not know that they were the same word, and the t/ch distinction was from Old Chinese versus Middle Chinese. Also the Li Bai poem was very evocative - hearing it in its original pronunciation, no less.
As a native Wu speaker (Shanghainese), I'm very fascinated by Fujianese as they sound so foreign. My grandparents are from Wenzhou and I thought Wenzhounese were foreign, Fujianese is a whole another level.
Fellow Singaporean here and very proud of your work. Pls keep creating content. Looking forward to your next video upload already. Gained a new sub! (:
7:20 hokkien is not alone in this. Sino-korean words preserve the initial p and ph sounds too. In fact, in the entire sinosphere, only these two languages do not have the f sound. That's why the Korean accent is famous for not being able to pronounce f and v sounds in english.
Loved this video, very interesting, fascinating to hear how utterly unlike Mandarin Hokkien is. Also appreciated the depth in which you covered the sound changes; knowing a *little* about sound changes from old and middle Chinese to mandarin, was really interesting to see some of the parallel developments in Hokkien.
Please keep producing such great quality video on the Hokkien dialect as there is a gap on the subject matter that is produced in English; most of what is available is in Mandarin. I am so impressed with the explanation in English!😊🎉❤😊🎉❤
From a fellow Singaporean, thank you for this amazing video about our heritage! Please don't stop making videos! Happy to support by sharing with my friends!
Thanks so much for this video, I am an Aussie living in Sydney, but a long time student of Mandarin, but also found the Hokkien dialect to sound really interesting when listening to NTU (National Taiwan University) Chorus channel when they sing some songs in Hokkien. Now I am more interested knowing Hokkien comes directly from Old Chinese. And the other info on location and variants of the related dialects were also really interesting, as are the comments below drawing our attention to striking similarities with Japanese and Korean language as well.
I'm also from Sydney. I studied Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese at Sydney Uni. At the time, one of the lecturers of Japanese was chasing the holy grail of the origin of the Japanese loan words from Chinese. I couldn't help him because there wasn't much correlation between Mandarin pronunciation and Japanese but this video on Hokkien is an eye opener. So many words seem to match. Which makes sense when it's mentioned where Hokkien originated from and where the Japanese were visiting during the Tang Dynasty.
Your video is so amazing due to the historical information you gave. Can't wait to watch more videos about hokkien. My mom is a hokkien speaker. I hope I can speak hokkien too.
Wow. Thank you. I had no idea Hokkien has such a rich history. Could you also do a video on regional differences eg Singaporean Hokkien pronounces differently compared to Penang Hokkien or mainland Malaysian Hokkien, for example. Thank you 😊
Looking forward to your next video! I've gotten interested in middle chinese pronunciations after listening to them in the video game Age of Empire 4. As a native mandarin speaker, it was eye(ear?) opening to hear the difference between the middle chinese said in the game vs modern mandarin. Its cool to see how other chinese languages diverged or remained the same! I especially liked the part at the end with the classical poem.
咱人話・是我・兮母語。我・嘛野愛別个別个款・兮話。我・野歡喜・因為UA-cam・今仔・予我・看這个video。汝・創啊野好勢！ My native language is Philippine Hokkien. I also love different kinds of languages. I'm very happy since UA-cam showed me this video today. You made it really well!
I've always found hokkien to be the most interesting the Chinese languages. I recognised a lot of the words from Japanese, as a similar pronunciation was there, although I guess that has more to do with Japanese borrowing from middle Chinese, no? Anyhow, really good video, looking forward to part 2 👍
The Japanese preserved the pronunciations in onyomi and in onyomi, the two main origins are borrowed from Kan (Tang dynasty) and Go (Wu state, current Shanghai Zhejiang area). So when you look at a Japanese dictionary which lists the pronunciation- when you see onyomi kan-on, that’s preserved from Tang dynasty. Go-on - that’s preserved from Wu state and some of the go-on words are similar to the current Wu dialect (Shanghainese).
Wow! This was a really detailed and linguisticly informed presentation. I didn't know that TaiYu 台语 is a version of Hokkien. In my experience they usually just refer to it as 台语 or 闽南语。 I've heard Teochew spoken in Thailand and Malaysia and had a Vietnamese friend who spoke Mandarin Cantonese and Teochew. But I don't think I've heard Teochew spoken in Taiwan. I hope to see many more videos from you. I would love to see something about Cantonese compared to Mandarin as those are the only Chinese languages I speak.😀
Thank you very much for the video. I speak hokkien and this video has brought some light to its history and origin to this language that was taught to me from my parents. Appreciate the video very much.
Great video of Hokkien language! Especially at the colloquial and literary part, it was a question that I had on my head when I was younger. And the closing with Jing Ye Si... Lol you reminded me of primary school days. Best regards from a Medan Hokkien speaker
hokkian is the biggest chinese ethnic group in indonesia, I met a lot of chinese indonesian here who speak hokkian, not so much about mandarin. some other (only small number) speak cantonese, teochew and hakka.
Its a very informative video! I am really interested myself in Chinese languages and dialects but have dumbfounded by the scarce information online. It is especially rare to find a proper explanation to why some words are spoken the way they are, since my parents generation spoke them by nature without formal learning. Thanks for this and hope you can make more videos!
Do you know how Lee Kuan Yew oppressed all dialects in Singapore and struck so much fear that even hawkers dread using it for their daily life and transactions and were forced to reply in Mandarin even if the customer initiates the conversation in dialect . No wonder he and Suharto are such good pals. So we actually can feel a bit of what Indonesian Chinese had to go through in terms of cultural genocide.
@@MrLuhuazhao sadly, the people born after the communist takeover mostly do not even know how to behave like humans much less realise who they really are as Han Chinese simply because traditional Confucian values are in conflict with Communist ideology where they encouraged the children to turn on their parents during the Cultural Revolution and even many parents and grandparents act like servants of their own offspring.
@@tangt4860 Everyone has the right to form their opinion, even a wrong one. If you have any thing to say about the language development, I am willing to listen. Otherwise, I will pass. I don’t see how this is related to your Confucius value.
Thanks so much for your professional language sharing, my first language is Hokkien since I was born in most famous Bak Ku teh place, Klang, but after I move to Perak when I was very young, I soon pick up Cantonese, and forgot Hokkien , hardly people speak hokkien in Perak at my childhood time. Superb , will watch this with my son. Thanks so much !
10:05 British had few colony in South east ASia like Malay and Singapore and in those 2 place there are alot of Min people migrated there. hence why today we end up with the word "Tea"
Very Good Video, I am learning Hokkien and read Hokkien in Traditional Chinese but Mandarin in Simplified Chinese hahah. They best video on Hokkien. Great Job!!
Thank you for saying that China has different languages, not dialects. It's annoying when Westerners say Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hokkien are dialects. Then when I ask if Italian and Spanish are dialects, they get defensive.
So many language that are borrowed from hokkien in Indonesian language. "Te" or tea in english is written "Teh" in Indonesian language. "Gua" or I in english are often used in Indonesian to refer to oneself informally.
Hokkien is a wonderful language. Hokkien and Cantonese preserved many middle Chinese words and grammatical syntaxes which are lost in Mandarin. That's why many Hokkien words sound the same in Japanese On'Yomi readings and Korean.
Because China was then superpower, Japanese & Koreans travelled to China to learn new agricultural science, tech, etc borrowing the Hokkien language vocabulary like puto (grape) is Hokkien but spread to Korea and Japan as well.
Hokkien and cantonese are located in the southern part so they are both older than mandarin which was affected by manchu in the north
@YorgosL1 . contemporary standard Mandarin was mainly based on the Beijing Mandarin（北京官话） and also features other Mandarin（官话） . Which developed since the ming dynasty with features in phonology in the 元 yuan dynasty.
Old Mandarin can be considered to be derived since the song dynasty and is also from the middle Chinese.
I grew up in a Hokkien household, a huge extended family then living in Geylang. Hearing spoken Hokkien even just small bites in this video warms my heart and also almost brings a tear to my eyes. I hardly hear these sounds anymore. My own children don't speak the language. Personally, I have lost a lot of Hokkien thru disuse too. Thank you.
Don't blame yourself. It was the era of campaigns and horrible sociocultural persecution policies initiated by PAP like Speak Mandarin Campaign which literally deprived almost 100% of Chinese Singaporeans born after 1970 a chance to discover their own linguistic roots.
you should go to central and southern Taiwan, it is still spoken there today
Singapore heartlands still uses a lot of Hokkien. Penang even more even if it’s different.
@@danielzhang1916 Or just go to Malay Peninsula and Penang.
@@tangt4860 I am one of the younger generation singaporeans who've lost touch with Hokkien because of those persecution policies, i do feel sad that the government wiped out an entire group of languages in my generation and to this day refuses to do anything significant to revitalise it :(
Interesting. Hokkien sounds like Korean words and pronunciation of many words are exactly IDENTICAL. We Koreans read 學生 as ‘Haksaeng’, 大學 as ‘Daehak’ and 新加坡國立大學 as ‘Sin Ga Pa Guk Rip Dae Hak’, 陛下 as ‘Pyeha’, 執行 as ‘Jiphaeng’, 銀行 as ‘Eunhaeng’. I was totally surprised and the video is really impressive!
There are many similar words:
时间 時間 si gan 시간 (time)
美国 美國 bi guok 미국 (america)
世界 世界 se gai 세계 (world)
真正 真正 jin zhia 진짜 (really)
记者 記者 gi zhia 기자 (reporter)
派出所 派出所 pai cu suo 파출소
It also made Taiwanese feel so familiar with Korean when watching Korean drama.
Many Korean name are pronounced exaclty identical to Taiwanese Hokkien name.
Bruh. That is scarily similar.
I wouldn’t be surprised, but indeed more than happy to see the similarities you’ve pointed out.
In all honesty I think there’s huge common similarities in East Asian languages and developments, as the coastal cities of China have huge influence alongside with Korean and Japanese, hence there’s a lot of similarities in written and spoken since ancient days.
Even as a Singaporean, I find it easy sometimes to find a common language or term when speaking to a foreigner, maybe in Thailand in (Teochew), or a Taiwanese (Hokkien), and now very glad to know even our Korean friends share similar words with us… cheers bud!
We have been neighbors for over a thousand years, no wonder!
As a Japanese learner I keep finding similarities such as 参加 (sanka) and 感謝 (kansha). Or 警察局 (keisatsu kyoku) that kyoku part really resembles the "kiok".
Both 美人 and 新聞 sound almost identical.
It's just amazing to find the roots of different languages and see they all converge at some point. Thank you for showing this language to the world.
警察厅/警察局,新聞, 経済/經濟, 地下鉄/地鐵，郵便局/郵局 etc are typical 19 century creation by Japanese whose pioneering the adaptation of western concept into east asian culture aka chinese influence sphere reverse influencing 20 century chinese. The only coincident here of course is the japanese scholar still heavily influence by classic chinese for the character choice and onyomi
it's a bit superficial, wouldn't be interpolatable between the languages, still cool though
they're cognates cuz japanese loaned them from a language that was ancestral to hokkien and some others
@@pengu8734 It has pattern though, so Old and Middle Chinese Sound reconstruction use Japanese source too.
@@danuaditya642 right, but I wouldn't conclude that the languages "converge at some point" from there (trivially Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages did converge at some point in the past, but that's a fact adjacent to this reason)
Thanks for creating this video on the Hokkien language.
Holy shit, I am so impressed! This video was amazing on SO many levels! The amount of detail, the use of traditional characters, the linguistic terminology, the Middle Chinese pronunciation, the editing, the simple aesthetic style: It all hit the nail on the head for me. This might be the best UA-cam video I've ever watched. And you've got 169 (nice) subscribers. There truly is hope in this world.
I look forward to learning a lot from you!
Yes, I'm thankful too that I found this channel. Subscribed. Looking forward to more Chinese/linguistics videos.
Recently, for the 1st time, I heard the words holy shit. I told my other friend that this fellow is religious. He told me the fellow is a Catholic.
Let me assume you are catholic too. No offence if you’re. 😅😂😅
I'm so happy that you referred to Hokkien and Cantonese as their own languages rather than as dialects of Mandarin, since a lot of the Chinese "dialects" aren't really derived from Mandarin at all and since they are not mutually understandable with Mandarin then that means they're languages not dialects
its not hard to get it right, we both malaysian and singaporean chinese have proper chinese education including our ethnic history. Stop thinking only mainlanders and taiwanese knows proper chinese.
@@hc8714 I don’t think this was the point that OP was trying to say. OP was trying to compare that Hokkien/Cantonese vs Mandarin are actually 2 different spoken languages where the only shared component with Mandarin is the written part. This does NOT mean that we do not learn Mandarin in Singapore
@@cutefidgety not the point, rather where she came from as if we got the concept right its a miracle.
@@hc8714 yeah I really didn't get that feeling from reading the comment. I think there's a misunderstanding
@@cutefidgety
Mandarin is derived from Middle Chinese while Quanzhou Hokkien is the oldest major offshoot of Ancient Chinese dating back to the year 420AD.
所々、日本語の音韻変化と共通するものがあって興味深いですね！
12:10あたり〜
・g（福建）↔︎ ng（広東）
（日本語）我＝ga、五＝go
・b（福建）↔︎ m（広東）
（日本語）万＝man、趣味＝shu-mi、
木瓜＝mok-ka、美人＝bi-jin、新聞＝shin-bun
13:00あたり〜
・a（中古）→ o（福建）
（日本語）傷＝shou、刀＝tou、橋＝kyou
でもb（福建）↔︎ m（広東）の音韻対応は、日本語の中でも「揺れ」があるので、複数の読みが定着してます。
（日本語）※一般名詞でないものを含む
・万
一万人＝Ichi-man-nin、万歳＝ban-zai
・木
木魚＝moku-gyo、香木＝kou-boku
・美
美術館＝bi-jutsu-kan、
（渡辺直美＝Watanabe Naomi）
@@sidu9326 @Si Du *m > *b *n>*d *ng>*g のような無鼻音化は唐朝で一部の方言に発生して日本で漢音に入り、ホッケン語では音節に欠如で一切無いです。
暖房 (日"d"anbou, 閩 loán-pâng)
昨日 (日saku"j"itsu, 閩 cho̍h-"j"i̍t / cho̍h-"l"i̍t)
I'm Korean and have been living in Guangdong Guangzhou and Shenzhen for the last 25 years. During this time I've had the opportunity to learn the three main prevalent dialects around this area, namely Cantonese(廣東話), Hakka(客家話) and Teochew(潮州話，similar phonetic system with Hokkien). I also understand the basics of Taiwanese(basically the same with Hokkien) and Shanghainese(上海話) and Vietnamese.
It is true that China has greatly influenced Korea, Japan and Vietnam since ancient times in terms of culture and its writing system. Chinese characters were introduced as their respective writing system, though only the highly educated being able to use it. While the meaning of each character was mostly retained until today, the actual pronunciation has been adapted to each of their local phonetic sound system.
For instance, the actual pronunciation of Sino Korean vocab is a mixture of various Chinese dialects. Some are pronounced the same in Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Shanghainese or even in Mandarin. Different varieties of each dialect are also included.
Some examples are :
新聞 , 三十 (Hakka)
執行 , 感覺 (Hokkien)
雜志 , 數字2 (Cantonese)
海 or 對 (Shanghainese)
模樣 , 通話 (Mandarin)
About more than a half of the Korean vocabulary are Sino originated, which means that they can all be written using 漢字.
This is also true of Japanese and Vietnamese.
Yeah, I speak both Mandarin, Teochew and Cantonese. I was surprised how similar some Korean vocab's Korean pronunciation is to Teochew and Cantonese, when I firstly heard them in some videos
Thank you for acknowledging Taiwanese as its own entity compared to Hokkien. My view is that if Norwegian and Swedish can be considered two separate languages, then Hokkien and Taiwanese can be too.
就算台灣 台語各地也稍有不同 ex.鹿港音，海口音……讀冊，飛……
到底要多不同才算不同？
I find it odd that Korean would be influenced by southern languages like Cantonese and Hakka. But it makes sense that northern languages would have a strong correlation with Korean.
the southern languages were brought over by people from the north, supposedly@@gary_rumain_you_peons
Thank you for this video! My paternal ancestors were Hokkien but sadly the last speaker in our family, i.e. the grandfather I never met, died in the 1970s. I'm from Indonesia, where my paternal grandmother's family had settled since the 17th century. Indonesia had a Communist Purge in the mid 1960s, which saw a ban in Chinese languages, cultures and identities until 2002. Which is partly why my father's generation does not speak Chinese. That, and also the Javanese bullying culture where neighbour's kids would imitate my Hokkien speaking grandfather and my young dad who just wanted to fit in would be so embarrassed he'd want nothing to do with his Chinese roots. We Chinese Indonesians carry such heavy baggage associated with our identities, and it's just such a great loss. Lately I'm taking an interest in Mandarin--while more for pragmatic reasons than sentimental, it got me wondering whether someday I will learn Hokkien and visit Fujian--even if I have no idea where exactly in Fujian are my ancestors from. This video gives me this rare feeling like I've found a precious puzzle piece about who my ancestors were--while far from the whole picture, still an important piece. So thank you for giving me this gift through this video.
I have been to Xiamen, and a lot of their culture have also gone and diverged much since cultural revolution. If you want to see more of the old Culture, there are still few bastions of Hokkien cultures such as Tainan, Taiwan and Penang, Malaysia. Both Preserved a lot of very old traditions but Penang also retained the old creolised Peranakan Hokkien tongues, with some malay loanwords tracing back to the era of early Batavia. When people say what is the stereotype of Hokkiens, people would say that the husband listens to the mother first, the wife second. Although heavily challenged by neo-confucianism and patriarchy, the matriarchs have very strong role and influence in Hokkien culture.
You must make an effort to learn Hokkien. At a higher level, you will begin to appreciate some of the old Hokkien wise sayings just like proverbs contain so much wit and wisdom in it. Taught two grand nephews recently who speak only English, a few simple words in Hokkien and surprisingly they could pick it up very fast.
I guess you live in java?
Since in sumatra and the islands hokkien and teochew is still spoken even by people born in the 90s,I personally can understand what people is speaking in hokkien but when I speak especially mandarin I always miss the notes,even though I have been in contact with hokkien and mandarin since a baby.
Here in sumatra our kopitiam or kedai kopi especially chinese run ones still use phrases like :
O = no milk
beng = ice
Pua sio = warm
Etc.
Basically the language is still alive in sumatra,especially in places with chinese population like batam,tanjung pinang,bagan siapi api and such,even if not as prevalent as in the past,but in some places the language still holds and has entered the general public,such as kopitiam lingo like kopi o and teh obeng
@@aegis3141 is it wrong to say that Chinese languages survived in most of malay majority area in Indonesia??
@@anakitiktokwi2939 it's not wrong to say that,malay provinces like riau and riau islands,in addition to the province of north sumatra and jambi have many chinese indonesians who can speak chinese languages.
The chinese indonesians in sumatra mainly speak hokkien,while the ones in kalimantan mainly speak khek.
Awesome video! Somebody in comments stated that Hokkien is very similar to Japanese, but what shocked me personally, was that a lot of Hokkien words are analogous to their Korean equivalents (since I know some Korean).
"hak seng" - "hak-saeng" mean. student
"gun hang" - "eun-haeng" mean. bank
"sin bun" - "sin-mun" mean. newspaper
"kam sia" - "gam-sa" mean. thanks
and also "pang" (house in Hokkien) has obviously the same origin as "bang" (room in Korean), using the same written character.
Pang is actually also room in Hokkien! Since Tsu is house
I noticed the same thing too....also many words also are closer to Cantonese like "erm ak" "YUM YOK" - music, "erm sik" "YUM SIK" food
@@myholm music in Cantonese is YUM NGOK.
In Singapore, 房 in both Hokkien and Cantonese means room. In China, 房 in Mandarin means house.
Not surprising, Sejong based Hangeul off Chinese scripts and pronunciation which meant there were similarities in the language.
Impressed by your effort in telling the history in its fullest. I feel more extrapolation of Minyue elements in the language would be justifiable, as Minnan was no Terra Nullius, but great job otherwise. Your post deserves more views and the Hokkien communities will no doubt support your work. Looking forward for part two.
Agreed, it would be nice to talk about those words that are not Chinese in origin bah (meat), lut (fall off), etc.
Thank you for watching my video. Yes I agree that Hokkien originally began to form through the intermixing of languages between the northern Han settlers and the original natives in the Minyue region. I will be exploring more of Hokkien's non-sinitic roots/substratum in the next video.
@@user-mx1yr4ce1t there's also 甩 lut in Cantonese, I think that might be the same, might be mistaken though, I don't know anything other than really basic Hokkien.
@@shinybreloom4027 Yes, that's the same root.
@@shinybreloom4027 it's in hakka too i think
This was fascinating and one of the best linguistics videos on UA-cam.
I am amazed by sinitic languages, the phonological changes and also how we’ve got the sinoxenic pronunciations in Japanese and Korean.
PLEASE keep up with these topics. You’ve earned a new faithful subscriber
Nice video ! I'm from Vietnam and witness that Vietnamese and Hokkien has some common, judged from some examples in your video. University is "Đại học" and student is "Học sinh" , the pronunciation is nearly the same as in colloquial Hokkien
Vietnamese sounds resemble Cantonese more than hokkien in these examples you just gave. Cantonese for school is taai hok. Hok and hoc are more similar than hak in hokkien.
the Cantonese word for college and student is closer than hokkien. 大學 = dai hok in canto. Đại học in viet. 學生 hok sang = học sinh. Hak is not close but it is closer than mandarin ‘xue’ but all of these are derive from Middle Chinese but however mandarin does not retain it and sound different
@@quyenluong3705 whoa ! how you know that man. can u speak canto
I think Cantonese is closer to Vietnamese than Hokkien is and this could be due to both Vietnamese and Cantonese people being descendants of the Bai Yue/Bách Việt.
@@MrEueu89 What a bunch of nonsense. Vietnamese are NOT descendants of Bai Yue. Vietnamese and Cantonese are DIFFERENT.
Awesome work! As a Hokkien speaker in QuanZhou accent , I’m so excited and appreciated you introduce my montrer language! 🙏The word origins, roots, history, comparisons..are so detailed and informational, and I love the way you presenting, pretty easy to look.
Your channel certainly needs more attention, keep going on!!
Wow…now those who don’t know how to speak Hokkien can learn from you…thank you for helping to revive and preserve Hokkien👍
I love the poem at the end, and hearing the differences between the readings. What a cool way to demonstrate the points from earlier in the video.
Awesome video! As a native Hokkien dialect speaker, I am a natural speaker but I never knew a lot of the history and background having to do why our language is the way it is and how these aspects of our language developed over time. I stumbled onto you randomly and hope you continue making these great videos!
Really wonderful breakdown! Still a brief introduction but more than anything else I've ever seen online and a lot more than what I knew. Hokkien is one of the languages I want to learn eventually, so it's nice to see a bit of an overview.
Looking forward to the next video!
This is such an informative and interesting video! This type of content is so niche (either that or it is behind a translation barrier). And the graphics and content are really high-quality, really looking forward to seeing the second part! Also it's nice to see an SG youtuber, and talking about languages some more. The Mother Tongue standards of Singaporeans are slowly falling, so it's great to see videos like this can bring more interest to people regarding their language heritage.
What an amazingly made video; I can't get over your attention to detail, and have been left feeling enriched and full of curiosity about everything you described. You have an instant subscribe from me!
Interesting video! My great grandfather was from Amoy, learning about his language makes me feel connected to the family and just a deeper appreciation for the language itself. Can't wait for more videos!
Thank you for the great video! I would even say that this is the most comprehensive English video on the Hokkien language I have came across.
Wow this is such a superb video explaining many aspects of Hokkien in SEA countries; am so glad to see this production as many younger people in the region may not have such basic information of the Hokkien dialect; as a descendant of Quan Zhou parentage, I often find such gaps in the English language-dominated society in Singapore; well done! PS - went through the video in quite some detail and found it to be extremely accurate!
this has by far been the best video related to Hokkien and other chinese dialect i have watched so far. Coming from a Taiwanese speaking family does make this video much more enjoyable and surprising, and i am very glad that i am able to learn all these facts about the language that is spoken by my family and friends every day.
I was just explaining to a group of international friends about Hokkien as a dialect which is somewhat similar to 闽南语. How Ignornant I was on my own chinese heritage, I should just direct them to view this 2-part series. Really awesome content! And really proud it is produced from Singapore. Thank you!
This is really well done, and the linguistics presented here is in line with scholarship both from Taiwan and China, so no need to listen to comments from ignorant keyboard warriors. Anyone calling the knowledge here as disinformation needs to go and read some 李如龍.
Just a nitpick: I noticed he pronounced the -k/-p/-t the same for Hokkien and Middle Chinese (as far as my Scandinavian ears could tell) but that can't possibly be right, can it?
They are pronounced by shaping the mouth for the -k/-p/-t stop but making a glottal stop first (as in Cantonese) but was the glottal stop that strong in Middle Chinese? Did it even exist in those cases or were those finals pronounced as standard old boring /k/, /p/, /t/?
LOL who's calling facts disinformation...?
What a rare jewel of a video!! Thank you, from a long-time (45 yrs) lover and advocate of Hokkien.
Taiwanese here. Great video, and I'm very happy to see all the Hanji are in the traditional form even though simplified is taught in schools in Singapore. There are many interesting Old and Middle Chinese features preserved in the Holo languages, such as the evidence of /t/ -> /ts/ -> /s/ sound change, as exampled by the 墜 tui / 墜 tsui / 隧 sui triplet. There's also evidence of the loss of final consonants following an open or mid vowel sound, such as /ak/ or /ok/, would result in the vowel diphthongizing to /au/ or /ou/, such as 覺 and 國. The tones of Southeast Asian Hokkien is different from the most prevalent Taigi accent in Taiwan, and it stands out especially in the 感謝 example.
不過在台灣的中部海線也能找到你說跟台語很不同的聲調，海線如鹿港 台西 北港 梧棲，聲調都是偏泉的，等地在“感謝”的例子，“感”字 陰上字的變調 也會是升調
One cannot generalize the accent or tones in the region and for that matter in Taiwan! It depends on where the ancestors of a particular region were/came from in Southern China - for eg Penang versus malacca or Singaporean Hokkien accent. For example, in certain southern parts of Taiwan, the accent is closer to either to either quan zhou or Qiang zhou accents too. The phenomenon is similar in SEA countries! Hokkien accent in Philippines is closer to quan zhou, Singapore is similar to Xiamen and Taiwan and many parts of Malaysia are akin to qiang zhou accent- thus, cannot generalize!
@@benyeo7930 I think by Quan zhou and Qiang zhou you mean Tsuân-tsiu and Tsiang-tsiu, and the Pinyin should be Zhangzhou. In Taiwan, only a few isolated regions such as Lo̍k-káng and parts of Yilan kept their accents closer to the original Tsuân-tsiu accent. Most Taigi speakers in the South actually show more Tsiang-tsiu features, and even then, it's not the Old Tsiang-tsiu language, but a modified New Tsiang-tsiu language. Part of it might be because the Amoy language is already a mixture of Tsuân-tsiu and Tsiang-tsiu languages. Although a even bigger part is that the Taigi language simply has evolved since it was brought over to Taiwan.
@@paiwanhan I always thought people in Fujian went straight across and settled in the same spots in Taiwan as on the mainland, maybe that's why there are differences in the north and south of the island
@@danielzhang1916Taiwan PRC
Wow, when comparing to Cantonese, hokkien sounded a lot like Japanese. I know that on'yomi is formed mainly by middle and old Chinese pronunciation so the southern Chinese should be the closest ones, but hokkien seems to win the first place
美人 and 新聞 stood out to me
Hokkien, Cantonese, and Onyomi all lack the fine distinctions between the three affricates (retroflex, dental, palatal) that Middle Chinese had. But just like Onyomi, Hokkien has denasalisation, erosion of finals, and lacks the inner outer flip that makes Cantonese sound so unique.
@@cdshop1301 ah, what's that with erosion btw?
You actually can write the Hokkien pronunciation by Japanese. so fun.
@@MarcosKunBass It varies among the different Min languages. Some keep all the plosive endings (-p, -t, -k) and even add an extra glottal stop ending. But in many Min languages the nasal endings (-m, -n, -ng) are lost, leaving behind only a nasalized vowel (like 行 in the video). Onyomi likewise doesn't keep the endings (-p, -m, -ng) from Middle Chinese.
Thanks so much for this! Really hoping that part two comes along as great as this one!
Thanks for preserving our dialect heritage. I'm from Singapore too and I'm of Cantonese background. But I've also been very interested in understanding and researching the Hokkien dialect, since I grew up with people speaking it commonly around me in my generation. I must say that, you being a Singaporean, I'm very impressed with your knowledge of the differences in the colloquial and literary readings in Hokkien, which many don't realise . I found out about this a few years ago and that was what intrigued me to learn about this beautiful speech. Sadly the younger generation hardly or never speak this dialect let alone understand the history, the richness and heritage of southern Chinese languages. Many don't even know that Mandarin and most of the northern dialects were developed around the Qing dynasty and was evolved heavily by Manchu and other non-Han tribes influences, hence all the m, p, t, K end stops have faded or merged into ng endings.. Of course, the southern languages were not without their influences from southern natives like the 'baiyue' as they were called. And some of those baiyue were possible ancestors of modern day Thais, Vietnamese, Malays etc. Good work!
+1 for the north to south migration, forced or unforced. Also used by linguist to extrapolate how ancient china sounds like.
Ayy same but I'm a former Penangite! The history is fascinating. Penang Hokkien is more simple than Taiwanese or the southern min proper imo, also has many loanwords from Malay and other languages 😂 now there's a state funded Penang Hokkien dictionary you can check out and use, it's very handy, since it also links english, Malay and 汉字 as well as allows one to input english, Malay, Chinese characters, and use different Hokkien romanisation inputs. Like peh-oe-ji
The 百越 are also thought to be the ancestors of the Maori, as well as some Polynesian and Pacific islands peoples!
Bravo!!!
Great job!
Not only you made such complicated contents look interesting, I salute you for your ability to pronounce those different dialects. Amazing! Cheers from Malaysia 🥰
this video is incredible, I was so surprised to see nothing else on your channel and so few subscribers!! You're off to a fantastic start, can't wait for the next vid!! Keep it up and this channel will get huge
Very interesting! I've been scouring for accessible but detailed history of the Hokkien language and your video was just what I wanted. Keep it up, looking forward to more.
Great video! I've been studying Hokkien since this April. I look forward to Part 2!
dang this is high quality for a first video, well done, cant wait to see the future of the channel
Some small corrections:
The 官話白讀 of 學 is xiáo, which is a rare reading. Mandarin has more 文白異讀 than you imply in the video-it's not uncommon-it's just that one or the other might be rare. The literary readings tend to come from Nanjing and the colloquial ones from Beijing.
All of the retroflex examples you used correspond to Middle Chinese retroflex/palatal stops, and so were not pronounced as sibilants (like zh/ch) in Middle Chinese either. Middle Chinese had a separate series for retroflex/palatal sibilants which remained as sibilants.
The voicing distinction of Middle Chinese is fully preserved in the Wu languages but only with in Hokkien. The voiced stops of Hokkien were formerly prenasalised (like mb-, nd-, ngg-) because they descend from the Middle Chinese sonorant initials (m/n/ng), not the Middle Chinese voiced obstruents (which became tenuis in Hokkien, except with ). So, yes, Hokkien has voiced stops, but they are not the same voiced stops of Middle Chinese.
Cantonese, Hakka, Gan, and other southern languages also preserve the -m/p/t/k endings to varying degrees, so I don't think this is a feature that makes Hokkien unique, only different from Mandarin and Wu. Instead, I think what makes Hokkien (and Southern Min) special is that there are also nasalised vowels (-nn) and a glottal stop coda (-h) in addition to these.
Mandarin also drop all NG sound and final M sound that cantonese retain
What a detailed explanation on the history of languages, so much effort in this video! Really an eye opener, looking forward to more videos from you! Instant subscribe from me. I particularly like the animation😍
In Malaysia, I think a third of Chinese Malaysians are from Hokkien descent. But I've heard that it is slowly dying out in Malaysia and Singapore as more of the Chinese youth here prefer Mandarin (the curiculum in Chinese-oriented schools only use Mandarin).
We barely even prefer Mandarin 😅😅 slowly becoming a monolingual society
Singapore government is more relaxed and liberal about Chinese dialects compared to decades ago. Now you hear snippets of them in local media, while from 70s to 90s, these were no no. As the author of this video mentioned, no language remains static. As these dialects get forgotten in their supposedly purer forms, many phrases find their ways into new variants, like the Singlish. I do hope such in-depth studies continue so that we do not lose them forever and still able to trace them in the future.
You forgot to mention that there is a difference between Hokkien spoken in northern part of Malaysia (Penang) & southern part (Johor). Or am I the only one who thinks there is a difference?
@@sue7014 It's just a different dialect.
@@sue7014 Yes, very different. Penang Hokkien sound more like a sing song dialect. Didn’t quite noticed it until I heard it overseas among Penangnites talking among themselves.
This was so interesting to watch! Wow, so much of it sounds similar to the Korean pronunciations of Chinese characters, I was so surprised
Thank you so much for your effort! As a Hokkian and Mandarin speaker, I'm so impressed by this video.
But if I'm not mistaken, I think the nasal consonant "ng" is still preserved in the literary pronunciation of Hokkian, like 我(I) and 五(Five) are both pronounced "ngoo" in literary reading.
At least this is how we read these words here in Taiwan. 🙂
As a vivid K-drama fan, I instally recognise some of the Hokkien words used in Korean, hak-seng, peha.
I love this video. Cant believe I have only just come by it. I grew up speaking one variation of Hokkien in a small town in Wenzhou bordering Fujian province. I am learning so much from this video.
This was really well explained! Looking forward to more!
Fellow Singaporean here, thanks for making this video! I have always been interested in the Minnan languages, in particular Hokkien & Teochew as they're known here in SE Asia, so it's great to see such content (and from Singapore too!). It's close to my heart and I feel a sense of kinship whenever I hear Hokkien/Teochew as my maternal grandmother was from Swatow/Shantou and I grew up hearing her speak Teochew. My paternal grandfather was from Quanzhou, Fujian and my dad speaks almost exclusively in Hokkien to his parents and siblings. I hope to improve my Hokkien to preserve this part of my culture and heritage. Have also noticed the similarities between certain Hokkien and Korean terms which is interesting. Looking forward to part 2 of the video! 加油 :)
I feel a sense of identity and belonging when I hear Hokkien too! I’m definitely one of the lucky teenagers in Singapore that is very exposed to my dialect. I realise none of my friends know Hokkien despite it being their dialect. So I’m gonna cherish my privilege and continue to improve my Hokkien so I can pass it down to the future generations and fully understand aunties gossip LOL!
Chinese then was closer to Hokkien today, and brought to Korea in the 4th century BCE by refugees
@@yannylaurel4 same bro all my friends only know hokkien curse words and nothing more. I can communicate fluently in hokkien but sadly only old people speak hokkien. Young people only speak English and barely any mandarin.
some how got this on my recommended and this is an absolutely brilliant video. as some one who is also singaporean Chinese hokkien, I've been quite curious about my ethnic roots and evolution and fluidity of language. thanks for sharing, very well done!
What a wonderful video! I knew the tea/cha thing was because some got their tea from Fujian, whereas others got tea from other parts of China. The Portuguese call tea cha, because they dealt with Canton and Japan, whereas the English got it from Fujian. I did not know that they were the same word, and the t/ch distinction was from Old Chinese versus Middle Chinese. Also the Li Bai poem was very evocative - hearing it in its original pronunciation, no less.
I believe the English got the word Tea from the Dutch who were in Taiwan much earlier and use the Hokkien pronunciation for Cha.
@@pcstar123 Good to know!
Russian say tchai with the t being silent and other Slavic languages like Serbo-Croatian say chai.
As a native Wu speaker (Shanghainese), I'm very fascinated by Fujianese as they sound so foreign. My grandparents are from Wenzhou and I thought Wenzhounese were foreign, Fujianese is a whole another level.
Fellow Singaporean here and very proud of your work. Pls keep creating content. Looking forward to your next video upload already. Gained a new sub! (:
We really need to reintroduce Hokkien and other Chinese dialects to the younger Chinese to undo the damage Baba LKY and his Peranakan peers did.
Wow...this is such a compelling video, very well researched. I learned so much. I love every minute!
7:20 hokkien is not alone in this. Sino-korean words preserve the initial p and ph sounds too. In fact, in the entire sinosphere, only these two languages do not have the f sound. That's why the Korean accent is famous for not being able to pronounce f and v sounds in english.
I saw a Korean CD store (waaaay back in the day) label FOLK (music) as "PORK"
I'm going to send this to the head of the Chinese Studies department at my university, because this is fabulous.
Loved this video, very interesting, fascinating to hear how utterly unlike Mandarin Hokkien is. Also appreciated the depth in which you covered the sound changes; knowing a *little* about sound changes from old and middle Chinese to mandarin, was really interesting to see some of the parallel developments in Hokkien.
So glad to have UA-cam recommended me this video, so detailed and interesting. Subscribed and look forward to your upcoming videos!
What an awesome job you did! Thank you!
Please keep producing such great quality video on the Hokkien dialect as there is a gap on the subject matter that is produced in English; most of what is available is in Mandarin. I am so impressed with the explanation in English!😊🎉❤😊🎉❤
From a fellow Singaporean, thank you for this amazing video about our heritage! Please don't stop making videos! Happy to support by sharing with my friends!
Wonderful presentation! This was very enlightening and interesting. I hear a lot about Hokkien but very little on it's history.
Really interesting - looking forward to part 2!
Thanks so much for this video, I am an Aussie living in Sydney, but a long time student of Mandarin, but also found the Hokkien dialect to sound really interesting when listening to NTU (National Taiwan University) Chorus channel when they sing some songs in Hokkien. Now I am more interested knowing Hokkien comes directly from Old Chinese. And the other info on location and variants of the related dialects were also really interesting, as are the comments below drawing our attention to striking similarities with Japanese and Korean language as well.
I'm also from Sydney. I studied Chinese (Mandarin) and Japanese at Sydney Uni. At the time, one of the lecturers of Japanese was chasing the holy grail of the origin of the Japanese loan words from Chinese. I couldn't help him because there wasn't much correlation between Mandarin pronunciation and Japanese but this video on Hokkien is an eye opener. So many words seem to match. Which makes sense when it's mentioned where Hokkien originated from and where the Japanese were visiting during the Tang Dynasty.
Looking forward to part 2 👏
You're a phenomenal instructor.
This video is just awesome. Been learning Mandarin for 10 years and now learning 台語 so this background information is very useful
Your video is so amazing due to the historical information you gave. Can't wait to watch more videos about hokkien. My mom is a hokkien speaker. I hope I can speak hokkien too.
Such an informative video. Amazing, waiting for the next one
Thank you for your fantastic work on the language, learned a new thing today..
Wow. Thank you. I had no idea Hokkien has such a rich history. Could you also do a video on regional differences eg Singaporean Hokkien pronounces differently compared to Penang Hokkien or mainland Malaysian Hokkien, for example. Thank you 😊
Looking forward to your next video! I've gotten interested in middle chinese pronunciations after listening to them in the video game Age of Empire 4. As a native mandarin speaker, it was eye(ear?) opening to hear the difference between the middle chinese said in the game vs modern mandarin. Its cool to see how other chinese languages diverged or remained the same! I especially liked the part at the end with the classical poem.
it's "eye opening" and not ear opening XDD
love the Li Bai poem recitation in Hokkien. Classic timeless original.
Wow, super impressive video. Great information packaged so well for linguists/specialists and others alike
great video!!! great job
咱人話・是我・兮母語。我・嘛野愛別个別个款・兮話。我・野歡喜・因為UA-cam・今仔・予我・看這个video。汝・創啊野好勢！
My native language is Philippine Hokkien. I also love different kinds of languages. I'm very happy since UA-cam showed me this video today. You made it really well!
I am from Taiwan. You are clearly the authority on these topics. Amazing!
This is fascinating! Looking forward to part 2. 😄
Very fascinating. Thank you for your video
Reading Tang poems in Hokkien is another whole beautiful experience.
Really fascinating - very well presented. More please on the Southern Min family as a whole!!!
Great video! Love this topic and can’t wait for part two
I've always found hokkien to be the most interesting the Chinese languages. I recognised a lot of the words from Japanese, as a similar pronunciation was there, although I guess that has more to do with Japanese borrowing from middle Chinese, no? Anyhow, really good video, looking forward to part 2 👍
The Japanese preserved the pronunciations in onyomi and in onyomi, the two main origins are borrowed from Kan (Tang dynasty) and Go (Wu state, current Shanghai Zhejiang area). So when you look at a Japanese dictionary which lists the pronunciation- when you see onyomi kan-on, that’s preserved from Tang dynasty. Go-on - that’s preserved from Wu state and some of the go-on words are similar to the current Wu dialect (Shanghainese).
Wow! This was a really detailed and linguisticly informed presentation. I didn't know that TaiYu 台语 is a version of Hokkien. In my experience they usually just refer to it as 台语 or 闽南语。 I've heard Teochew spoken in Thailand and Malaysia and had a Vietnamese friend who spoke Mandarin Cantonese and Teochew. But I don't think I've heard Teochew spoken in Taiwan. I hope to see many more videos from you. I would love to see something about Cantonese compared to Mandarin as those are the only Chinese languages I speak.😀
Teochew didn't send enough migrants to Taiwan and so they assimilated to the Hokkien majority.
TaiYu (Daigi) is literally known as "Hokkien" in English. Taiwanese version of Hokkien, as American is the American version of English.
your friend's family probably moved to Vietnam in the past few generations, they still know how to speak
Thank you very much for the video. I speak hokkien and this video has brought some light to its history and origin to this language that was taught to me from my parents. Appreciate the video very much.
Great video of Hokkien language! Especially at the colloquial and literary part, it was a question that I had on my head when I was younger.
And the closing with Jing Ye Si... Lol you reminded me of primary school days.
Best regards from a Medan Hokkien speaker
hokkian is the biggest chinese ethnic group in indonesia, I met a lot of chinese indonesian here who speak hokkian, not so much about mandarin.
some other (only small number) speak cantonese, teochew and hakka.
Well presented. Keep up the good work.
wow very informative video! great job!! im a hokkien speaker in singapore and never knew that hokkien was so complicated and interesting!
Great video! I'm looking forward to part 2
Wow, Hokkien pronouncation reminds me a lot of Japanese! Especially the world 美人 literally the same
the J used in POJ/TL is actually more like /dz/
in other hokkien dialects, it's pronounced instead with L or D
Its a very informative video! I am really interested myself in Chinese languages and dialects but have dumbfounded by the scarce information online. It is especially rare to find a proper explanation to why some words are spoken the way they are, since my parents generation spoke them by nature without formal learning. Thanks for this and hope you can make more videos!
Do you know how Lee Kuan Yew oppressed all dialects in Singapore and struck so much fear that even hawkers dread using it for their daily life and transactions and were forced to reply in Mandarin even if the customer initiates the conversation in dialect . No wonder he and Suharto are such good pals. So we actually can feel a bit of what Indonesian Chinese had to go through in terms of cultural genocide.
most people, even Chinese in China don’t know the evolvement of language. It is also true for most languages.
@@MrLuhuazhao sadly, the people born after the communist takeover mostly do not even know how to behave like humans much less realise who they really are as Han Chinese simply because traditional Confucian values are in conflict with Communist ideology where they encouraged the children to turn on their parents during the Cultural Revolution and even many parents and grandparents act like servants of their own offspring.
@@tangt4860 Everyone has the right to form their opinion, even a wrong one. If you have any thing to say about the language development, I am willing to listen. Otherwise, I will pass. I don’t see how this is related to your Confucius value.
@@MrLuhuazhao they are facts not opinions.
this is very fascinating! thank you for sharing!
Thanks so much for your professional language sharing, my first language is Hokkien since I was born in most famous Bak Ku teh place, Klang, but after I move to Perak when I was very young, I soon pick up Cantonese, and forgot Hokkien , hardly people speak hokkien in Perak at my childhood time. Superb , will watch this with my son. Thanks so much !
I loved the video. Hokkien is very interesting!
10:05 British had few colony in South east ASia like Malay and Singapore and in those 2 place there are alot of Min people migrated there. hence why today we end up with the word "Tea"
Very Good Video, I am learning Hokkien and read Hokkien in Traditional Chinese but Mandarin in Simplified Chinese hahah. They best video on Hokkien. Great Job!!
excellent program. Hokkien is a complicated dialect to master but has so much interesting history behind the forming of this dialect.
Thank you for saying that China has different languages, not dialects. It's annoying when Westerners say Mandarin, Cantonese, and Hokkien are dialects. Then when I ask if Italian and Spanish are dialects, they get defensive.
And italian and Spanish have more mutual intelligibility than cantonese and hokkien for instance 😅
@@tiramisu7544 Exactly. That's my point.
I'm Chinese and I think those are dialects, not languages.
@@alexeilyubimov7760 Nobody cares if you're Chinese. You clearly don't know the difference between a dialect and a language.
@@alexeilyubimov7760 with that name I doubt you're Chinese nice try white boy
So many language that are borrowed from hokkien in Indonesian language. "Te" or tea in english is written "Teh" in Indonesian language. "Gua" or I in english are often used in Indonesian to refer to oneself informally.
Fun fact: that leaf water beverage we call 'tea' is named such from the Hokkien terms.
Banyak banget malah, mulai dari gua, lu, satuan jumlah uang, sampan, lumpia, popia, bakso, bakmi, sumpit, dan masih bnyk lagi.
Fantastic. Beyond excellent. I learned so much..
Bravo bravo 👏👏👏 what a fantastic video and both enjoyable and illuminating and educating. Keep it up and thank you 💖💖💖
👍💯Hats off to your amazing language ability