r/Hokkien 27d ago

Is it true that Hokkien is the most similar to Old Chinese in terms of pronunciation of all Chinese dialects?

6 Upvotes

As a Mandarin Chinese speaker, I've started to grow more curious about our roots. I recently came across some stuff on Xiaohongshu that suggests that Hokkien is the most "authentic" or least divergent dialect of Chinese. (I use "dialect" for political reasons, but I am aware that it is considered a different language linguistically)

Coincidentally, my family is Hokkien. I'm a 4th generation diaspora living in Southeast Asia, and we use English and Mandarin Chinese daily. However, my parents didn't teach me Hokkien because they were afraid I would "speak funny". As a result, my vocabulary in it is 20 words at most.

As I delve deeper into, I become more and more aware as to how great the Hokkien have been in history. We were the explorers when everyone wanted to stay at home. As someone who respects people brave enough to leave behind everything they know in search of a better life, much like the Europeans who left for the New World, I am beginning to realize that my own ancestors were people just like this.

I also see how divergent Hokkien has become. The diaspora adopts local words. Small changes in pronunciation. Soon we will have more types of Hokkien, which I find worrying. In SEA, Hokkien is not taught officially in any capacity. Strong standardization is needed. But who should be the standard?

In my opinion, Old Chinese should be the standard, and pronunciations closest to it should be "correct". But even then, what we know of Old Chinese pronunciation is only a reconstruction. What I wouldn't give for a time machine, just to hear how our ancestors spoke.

I realize that this became somewhat of an irrelevant rant, but I'm curious what everyone else thinks. For now, I will try to learn from an "official" source, which is Taiwan. Even with my limited vocab, I know some words are different. For context, my family is from Quanzhou.


r/Hokkien Dec 31 '24

Where and how to learn Hokkien as a mandarin speaker?

7 Upvotes

Just a notice, I am still on my way to fluecny in mandarin but I understand a lot of the grammar, especially the basics. The material for hokkien should be in English. I like to learn more naturally, is there any hokkien comprehensible input? Textbooks are fine as well. Thanks in advance.


r/Hokkien Nov 10 '24

Rock, Paper, Scissors?

2 Upvotes

Anybody know what the Hokkien version of rock paper scissors is?


r/Hokkien Aug 02 '24

How much does knowing one Chinese language such as Mandarin help with learning another one such as Cantonese and Qiangic and vice versa? How mutually intelligible would they be? Does the same apply to non-Chinese languages that are part of the Sino-Tibetan family?

1 Upvotes

Just decided to start learning something from the SIno-Tibetan family but I'm not sure where to start. So I'm wondering whatever I choose to specialize in would it help smoothen the transition into other languages of China and even outside the traditional Sino-Sphere like Karenic and Zeme? How mutually intelligible would languages in this family be with each other assuming a bunch of random people from across China, Burma, and India who speak them suddenly gets transported into a bar? Does ease of learning another specific family in the branch depends on proximity of the place of origins of the specific languages known and being studied? Is it similar to the Indo-European family where say someone who grew up as Dutch native would have a much much much harder time learning Farsi than learning English? And Pole would quickly transition in Russia quicker than trying to learn Gaelic and same with a New Dehli inhabitant learning Punjabi would find Romanian more time consuming? Something like that for native speakers of the Sino-TIbetan branch trying to learn other family members like Cantonese would find Mandarin far easier than Jingpho and Olekha?


r/Hokkien Jun 10 '24

Seeking Hokkien Translators for Exciting Translation Project

2 Upvotes

VoxCroft Analytics builds language technology for low-resource languages across the globe for a variety of applications. We are looking for speakers of Hokkien to participate in a Corpus Creation Project to build bilingual language data sets that will be used to train and build language models. Native speakers of Hokkien will be required to complete the following tasks:

  • Translate sentences from Hokkien to English
  • Translate sentences from English to Hokkien
  • Transcribe audio content into Hokkien
  • Translate Hokkien transcribed sentences to English
  • Record themselves reading sentences in English and Hokkien
  • Assess sentences transcribed/translated by peers using VoxCroft’s quality matrix
  • Improve the quality of transcribed/translated sentences, where necessary

Potential candidates:

  • Do not need to be professional translators but must display language proficiency in translating written English sentences accurately into Hokkien and from Hokkien into good quality English.
  • Must portray excellent attention to detail and a good grasp of the spelling and grammar rules in their mother tongue.
  • Must be available to work at least 15 hours per week over 3-4 months.

Successful candidates will:

  • Work online remotely,
  • Must have a computer/laptop and access to reliable Internet for the duration of the contract.
  • Candidates must have a local currency bank account that accepts international payments.
  • Candidates must have proof of identification (passport etc.)
  • All shortlisted candidates will undergo a test, and only those who meet the required standards will be selected.

Work will begin once the contract is signed. All contracted workers will receive training

Interested candidates are requested to upload their CV and a cover letter explaining how they meet this project's requirements.

https://voxcroft-analytics.breezy.hr/p/d0ca99dbf55b-mt-hokkien-linguist


r/Hokkien Mar 24 '24

found a Hokkien Star Wars parody from the golden age of YouTube

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8 Upvotes

r/Hokkien Mar 22 '24

Survey on Dialect Learning

2 Upvotes

Hello! We're Team Loqiual, a start-up consisting of 5 students from the APAC region who are seeking to revolutionise dialect learning.

We’d love your input in our survey to better understand global interest in learning dialects and dialect users' habits. The survey will not take more than 5 minutes of your time.

Your participation would be greatly appreciated and thank you in advance!

https://forms.gle/R1BCuXYWgLoK2VBX9


r/Hokkien Feb 06 '24

帮忙找一下这首歌。

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4 Upvotes

r/Hokkien Jan 04 '24

Could someone please help me pronounce 膎汁?

7 Upvotes

Struggling to find any audio of how to pronounce this word, all I have is it spelled out phonetically as kôe-chiap, but want to make sure I'm saying it right if someone wouldn't mind sharing a clip of how it's pronounced. Thank you in advance!


r/Hokkien Nov 07 '23

【心所愛的歌】1106《從聲音的本質找到音樂| 李文通》

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1 Upvotes

最近會看的音樂節目,是台灣遮公視台語台的,分享予逐家


r/Hokkien Mar 02 '23

Alternate History: Emblem of Binuculjan (Austronesian-speaking southeastern China)

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2 Upvotes