Hakka Chinese

Hakka
客家话
Hak-kâ-va/Hak-kâ-fa
"Kejiahua" in Chinese characters
RegionSouth and southwestern China centered on Guangdong, the New Territories in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Chợ Lớn in Vietnam, and Bangka Belitung Islands and West Kalimantan in Indonesia
EthnicityHakka
Native speakers
44 million (2022)[1]
Early forms
Dialects
Official status
Official language in
Taiwan[a][7]
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-3hak
Glottologhakk1236
Linguasphere79-AAA-g > 79-AAA-ga (+ 79-AAA-gb transition to 79-AAA-h)
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Hakka
Simplified Chinese客家话
Traditional Chinese客家話
Hakkahag5 ga1 fa4
or hag5 ga1 va4
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinKèjiāhuà
Wu
RomanizationKah-ka-ho
Gan
RomanizationKhak-ka-ua
Hakka
Romanizationhag5 ga1 fa4
or hag5 ga1 va4
Pha̍k-fa-sṳHak-kâ-fa
or Hak-kâ-va
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanizationhaak gā wá
Jyutpinghaak3 gaa1 waa2
Southern Min
Hokkien POJKheh-oē (客话)
A Hakka speaker, recorded in Taiwan.

Hakka (Chinese: 客家话; pinyin: Kèjiāhuà; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Hak-kâ-va / Hak-kâ-fa, Chinese: 客家语; pinyin: Kèjiāyǔ; Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Hak-kâ-ngî) forms a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people in parts of Southern China, Taiwan, some diaspora areas of Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around the world.

Due to its primary usage in isolated regions where communication is limited to the local area, Hakka has developed numerous varieties or dialects, spoken in different provinces, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, as well as in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintelligible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan, with a few northern Hakka varieties[which?] even being partially mutually intelligible with southern Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features.[8]

Taiwan designates Hakka as one of its national languages, thus regarding the language as a subject for its study and preservation. Pronunciation differences exist between the Taiwanese Hakka dialects and mainland China's Hakka dialects; even in Taiwan, two major local varieties of Hakka exist.

The Meixian dialect (Moiyen) of northeast Guangdong in mainland China has been taken as the "standard" dialect by the government of mainland China. The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created an official romanization of Moiyen in 1960, one of four languages receiving this status in Guangdong.

The She ethnic group and Hakka people have a history of contact, and Hakka language has entered the She language in large numbers.[9]

  1. ^ Hakka at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Nakanishi 2010.
  3. ^ Coblin 2019, p. 438-440.
  4. ^ Fan, Cheng-hsiang; Kao, Evelyn (2018-12-25). "Draft National Language Development Act Clears Legislative Floor". Focus Taiwan News Channel. Central News Agency. Archived from the original on 2018-12-25.
  5. ^ "Dàzhòng yùnshū gōngjù bòyīn yǔyán píngděng bǎozhàng fǎ" 大眾運輸工具播音語言平等保障法 [Act on Broadcasting Language Equality Protection in Public Transport] (in Chinese) – via Wikisource.
  6. ^ Article 6 of the Standards for Identification of Basic Language Abilities and General Knowledge of the Rights and Duties of Naturalized Citizens Archived 2017-07-25 at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ "Hakka Basic Act". Retrieved 22 May 2019 – via law.moj.gov.tw.
  8. ^ Thurgood, Graham; LaPolla, Randy J., eds. (2003). The Sino-Tibetan Languages. Routledge. ISBN 0-7007-1129-5.
  9. ^ You Wenliang 游文良. 2002. Shezu yuyan 畲族语言. Fuzhou: Fujian People's Press 福建人民出版社. ISBN 7-211-03885-3


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