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97-718: There are many Min speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia . The most widely spoken variety of Min outside of mainland China is Hokkien , a variety of Southern Min which has its origin in southern Fujian. Amoy Hokkien is the prestige dialect of Hokkien in Fujian, while a majority of Taiwanese speak a dialect called Taiwanese Hokkien or simply Taiwanese. The majority of Chinese Singaporeans , Chinese Malaysians , Chinese Filipinos , Chinese Indonesians , Chinese Thais , Chinese Cambodians are of Southern Min-speaking background (particularly Hokkien and/or Teochew ), although

194-410: A 1963 report on a survey of Fujian, Pan Maoding and colleagues argued that the primary split was between inland and coastal groups. The inland varieties are distinguished by consistently having two distinct reflexes of Middle Chinese /l/ . The two groups also have differences in their vocabulary, including their pronoun systems. The coastal dialects are divided into three subgroups: They divided

291-789: A considerable role in the economy of the Philippines and descendants of Sangley compose a considerable part of the Philippine population . Ferdinand Marcos, the former president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos was of Chinese descent, as were many others. Myanmar shares a long border with China so ethnic minorities of both countries have cross-border settlements. These include the Kachin, Shan, Wa, and Ta’ang. In Cambodia , between 1965 and 1993, people with Chinese names were prevented from finding governmental employment, leading to

388-567: A historical district of Manila, has become the world's oldest Chinatown. Under Spanish colonial policy of Christianization , assimilation and intermarriage , their colonial mixed descendants would eventually form the bulk of the middle class which would later rise to the Principalía and illustrado intelligentsia , which carried over and fueled the elite ruling classes of the American period and later independent Philippines. Chinese Filipinos play

485-506: A large number of people changing their names to a local, Cambodian name. Ethnic Chinese were one of the minority groups targeted by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian genocide. Indonesia forced Chinese people to adopt Indonesian names after the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66 . In Vietnam, all Chinese names can be pronounced by Sino-Vietnamese readings . For example, the name of

582-504: A lower ( yáng 阳 / 陽 ) register of words with voiced initials. When voicing was lost in most varieties, the register distinction became phonemic, yielding up to eight tonal categories, with a six-way contrast in unchecked syllables and a two-way contrast in checked syllables. The traditional classification of varieties of Chinese distinguished seven groups according to the reflexes of Middle Chinese voiced initials in various tonal categories. For example, voiced stops are preserved in

679-801: A major role in the establishment of the Malaysian Chinese Association and their meeting hall at Sun Yat Sen Villa . There was evidence that some intended to reclaim mainland China from the CCP by funding the Kuomintang . After their defeat in the Chinese Civil War, parts of the Nationalist army retreated south and crossed the border into Burma as the People's Liberation Army entered Yunnan . The United States supported these Nationalist forces because

776-694: A reference to Tang dynasty China when it was ruling. This term is commonly used by the Cantonese , Hokchew , Hakka and Hokkien as a colloquial reference to the Chinese people and has little relevance to the ancient dynasty. For example, in the early 1850s when Chinese shops opened on Sacramento St. in San Francisco , California, United States, the Chinese emigrants, mainly from the Pearl River Delta west of Canton , called it Tang People Street ( 唐人街 ) and

873-845: A result of anti-Chinese racism on the excuse that Dipa "Amat" Aidit had brought the PKI closer to China. The anti-Chinese legislation was in the Indonesian constitution until 1998. The state of the Chinese Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge regime has been described as "the worst disaster ever to befall any ethnic Chinese community in Southeast Asia." At the beginning of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1975, there were 425,000 ethnic Chinese in Cambodia ; by

970-446: A series of papers from 1973, Jerry Norman sought to reconstruct the initial consonants of Proto-Min by applying the comparative method to pronunciations in modern Min varieties. For this purpose, rather than the traditional approach of soliciting readings of character lists, he focussed on everyday vocabulary and excluded words of literary origin. The inventory of Proto-Min initials differs from that of Middle Chinese (as deduced from

1067-542: A significant number of distinctively Min words that may be traced back to proto-Min. In some cases a semantic shift has occurred in Min or the rest of Chinese: Norman and Mei Tsu-lin have suggested an Austroasiatic origin for some Min words: However, Norman and Mei Tsu-lin's suggestion is rejected by Laurent Sagart (2008), with some linguists arguing that the Austroasiatic predecessor of the modern Vietnamese language originated in

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1164-526: A similar process has not taken place. For Hokkien, competing systems exist. Given that Min combines the Chinese of several different periods and contains some non-Chinese substrate vocabulary, an author literate in Mandarin (or even Classical Chinese) may have trouble finding the appropriate Chinese characters for some Min vocabulary. In the case of Taiwanese , there are also indigenous words borrowed from Formosan languages (particularly for place names), as well as

1261-730: A single phoneme, realized as /n/ before nasalized vowels and as /l/ in other syllables. Two series of nasals can also be distinguished based on their tonal reflexes in Eastern Min and Shao-Jiang. They generally produce a single series of nasal initials in modern varieties except in Southern Min. In those varieties, the Proto-Min initials *nh and *ŋh have become /h/ before high front vowels, *m, *n and *ŋ denasalized to *b, *l and *g respectively before oral vowels, but *mh and other occurrences of *nh and *ŋh often yield nasals in that context. As

1358-549: A small dataset of 159 male labourers from Guangdong who were sent to the Dutch colony of Suriname to illustrate their point. They stated that the Chinese labourers were between 161 to 164 cm in height for males. Their study did not account for factors other than economic conditions and acknowledge the limitations of such a small sample. The Lanfang Republic in West Kalimantan was established by overseas Chinese. In 1909,

1455-475: A special tonal development in Northern Min and Shao–Jiang. Norman called these initials voiceless "softened" stops and affricates. In loans from southern Chinese into proto-Hmong–Mien, softened obstruents are often represented by prenasalized consonants . Norman suggests the Proto-Min initials were also prenasalized, whereas Baxter and Sagart derive them from stops preceded by minor syllables , arguing that

1552-501: A substantial number of loan words from Japanese . The Min ( Hokkien , Teochew , Hainanese , Luichow , Hinghwa , Hokchew , Hokchia , Haklau / Hai Lok Hong ) spoken in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia has borrowed heavily from Malay (or Indonesian for Indonesia) and, to a lesser extent, from Singaporean or Malaysian English and other languages. Meanwhile, the Hokkien spoken in

1649-636: A system of discriminatory laws known as the ' White Australia Policy ' which was enshrined in the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 . The policy was formally abolished in 1973, and in recent years Australians of Chinese background have publicly called for an apology from the Australian Federal Government similar to that given to the 'stolen generations' of indigenous people in 2007 by the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. In South Korea,

1746-654: A variety spoken in the lower Yangtze region during the Han period, which he calls Old Southern Chinese. He argues that this dialect belonged to the group of dialects known as Wu ( 吳 ) or Jiangdong ( 江東 ) in the Western Jin period, when the writer Guo Pu (early 4th century AD) described them as quite distinct from other Chinese varieties. Some of the distinctive Jiangdong words mentioned by Guo Pu appear to be preserved in modern Min varieties, including Proto-Min *gi 'leech' and *lhɑn 'young fowl'. This language entered Fujian after

1843-595: A voicing distinction comes from early loans into Vietnamese and the Mienic and Tai languages . Norman later abandoned the *ń initial, treating the dz-/z- initials in some Southern Min varieties as arising from *n followed by a high front vowel *i or *y. Norman suggests that Old Southern Chinese voiceless sonorants derive from sonorants preceded by voiceless consonants. William Baxter and Laurent Sagart have incorporated this proposal into their reconstruction of Old Chinese. A different set of voiceless resonant initials

1940-516: Is called Kienning Colloquial Romanized (Gṳ̿ing-nǎing Lô̤-mǎ-cī ), for Hainanese it is called Bǽh-oe-tu (BOT). These systems were developed by British , Irish , Danish , and American Protestant Christian missionaries over the course of the 19th century. In 2006, Tâi-lô ( Tâi-uân Lô-má-jī Phing-im Hong-àn ) which was derived from Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) was officially promoted by Taiwan 's Ministry of Education (MOE). Some publications use mixed writing, with mostly Chinese characters but using

2037-571: Is often used by the Government of the People's Republic of China to refer to people of Chinese ethnicities who live outside the PRC, regardless of citizenship (they can become citizens of the country outside China by naturalization). Overseas Chinese who are ethnic Han Chinese , such as Cantonese , Hokchew , Hokkien , Hakka or Teochew refer to themselves as 唐人 (Tángrén). Literally, it means Tang people ,

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2134-801: Is paired with a transitive verb differing only in aspiration of the voiced stop, suggesting that the contrast reflects an early morphological process. Early loans from southern Chinese into Proto-Hmong–Mien have prenasalized stops corresponding to both aspirated and softened voiced stops in Proto-Min. Baxter and Sagart derive aspirated voiced stops from tightly bound nasal preinitials in Old Chinese, and softened voiced stops from voiced stops preceded by minor syllables. Inland Min varieties are characterized by having two distinct reflexes of Middle Chinese /l/ , which Norman labels as Proto-Min *l and *lh. The two have merged in coastal varieties. In modern Southern Min varieties such as Hokkien , /l/ and /n/ comprise

2231-538: Is proposed in most recent reconstructions of Old Chinese , with aspirate or fricative reflexes in Middle Chinese. For example, Old Chinese *n̥ and *l̥ have the same reflexes as *tʰ , yielding Middle Chinese th and Proto-Min *th in non-palatal environments and Middle Chinese sy and Proto-Min *tšh in palatal environments. Fricatives in upper and lower registers are assumed to derive from voiceless and voiced fricatives respectively, broadly corresponding to

2328-514: Is that adapting Chinese characters to write Min requires a substantial effort to choose characters for a significant portion of the vocabulary. Other approaches to writing Min rely on romanization or phonetic systems such as Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols or historically during Japanese rule over Taiwan , Taiwanese kana was also used for Taiwanese Hokkien in some Taiwanese-Japanese dictionaries made during that time. Since 1987, Taiwanese Hangul also exists for Taiwanese Hokkien. Some Min speakers use

2425-446: The Qieyun (601 AD), Middle Chinese initial stops and affricate consonants showed a three-way contrast between voiceless unaspirated , voiceless aspirated and voiced consonants. There were four tones, with the fourth, the "entering tone", a checked tone comprising syllables ending in stops ( -p , -t or -k ). This syllable structure was also found in neighbouring languages of

2522-446: The Qieyun rhyme book and its successors) in several ways: The most controversial have been the "softened" stops and affricates, so named because they have lateral or fricative reflexes in some Northern Min varieties centred on Jianyang. These initials also have distinct tonal reflexes in the Northern Min and Shaojiang groups, but have merged with unaspirated stops and affricates in coastal varieties. Other scholars have suggested that

2619-611: The Bandung declaration explicitly stated that overseas Chinese owed primary loyalty to their home nation. From the mid-20th century onward, emigration has been directed primarily to Western countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil, The United Kingdom, New Zealand, Argentina and the nations of Western Europe; as well as to Peru, Panama, and to a lesser extent to Mexico. Many of these emigrants who entered Western countries were themselves overseas Chinese, particularly from

2716-507: The Latin alphabet to represent words that cannot easily be represented by Chinese characters. In Taiwan, a mix of Chinese characters and Latin letters written in Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) or Tâi-lô has recently been practised. In Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, some also occasionally write Hokkien and/or Teochew using Latin letters via ad-hoc means using the writer's knowledge of

2813-468: The Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area – Proto-Hmong–Mien , Proto-Tai and early Vietnamese – and is largely preserved by early loans between the languages. Towards the end of the first millennium AD, all of these languages experienced a tone split conditioned by initial consonants. Each tone split into an upper ( yīn 阴 / 陰 ) register consisting of words with voiceless initials and

2910-536: The PRC or ROC (Taiwan) . The government of China realized that the overseas Chinese could be an asset, a source of foreign investment and a bridge to overseas knowledge; thus, it began to recognize the use of the term Huaqiao. Ching-Sue Kuik renders huáqiáo in English as "the Chinese sojourner " and writes that the term is "used to disseminate, reinforce, and perpetuate a monolithic and essentialist Chinese identity" by both

3007-620: The Sangley , from Fujian and Guangdong were already migrating to the islands as early as 9th century, where many have largely intermarried with both native Filipinos and Spanish Filipinos ( Tornatrás ). Early presence of Chinatowns in overseas communities start to appear in Spanish colonial Philippines around 16th century in the form of Parians in Manila , where Chinese merchants were allowed to reside and flourish as commercial centers, thus Binondo ,

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3104-746: The South China Sea and in the Indian Ocean . In the mid-1800s, outbound migration from China increased as a result of the European colonial powers opening up treaty ports . The British colonization of Hong Kong further created the opportunity for Chinese labor to be exported to plantations and mines. During the era of European colonialism, many overseas Chinese were coolie laborers. Chinese capitalists overseas often functioned as economic and political intermediaries between colonial rulers and colonial populations. The area of Taishan, Guangdong Province

3201-536: The South China Sea . Most subsequent migration from north to south China passed through the valleys of the Xiang and Gan rivers to the west, so that Min varieties have experienced less northern influence than other southern groups. As a result, whereas most varieties of Chinese can be treated as derived from Middle Chinese —the language described by rhyme dictionaries such as the Qieyun (601 AD)—Min varieties contain traces of older distinctions. Linguists estimate that

3298-504: The Sui – Tang dynasties. The Min languages are believed to have a significant linguistic substrate from the languages of the inhabitants of the region before its sinicization . The Min homeland of Fujian was opened to Han Chinese settlement by the defeat of the Minyue state by the armies of Emperor Wu of Han in 110 BC. The area features rugged mountainous terrain, with short rivers that flow into

3395-750: The Wu and Old Xiang groups, have merged with aspirated or unaspirated stops depending on the tone in Mandarin, and have uniformly become aspirated stops in Gan and Hakka . The distinguishing characteristic of Min varieties is that voiced stops yield both aspirated and unaspirated stops in all tonal categories. Further, the distribution is consistent across Min varieties, suggesting a common ancestor in which two types of voiced stop were distinguished. Min must have diverged before two changes in other Chinese varieties (including Middle Chinese) that are not reflected in Min: However,

3492-594: The bamboo network , has a prominent role in the region's private sectors. In Europe, North America and Oceania, occupations are diverse and impossible to generalize; ranging from catering to significant ranks in medicine , the arts and academia . Overseas Chinese often send remittances back home to family members to help better them financially and socioeconomically. China ranks second after India of top remittance-receiving countries in 2018 with over US$ 67 billion sent. Overseas Chinese communities vary widely as to their degree of assimilation , their interactions with

3589-538: The gold mining and railway construction. Widespread famine in Guangdong impelled many Cantonese to work in these countries to improve the living conditions of their relatives. From 1853 until the end of the 19th century, about 18,000 Chinese were brought as indentured workers to the British West Indies , mainly to British Guiana (now Guyana ), Trinidad and Jamaica . Their descendants today are found among

3686-469: The 1950s to the 1980s, a period during which the PRC placed severe restrictions on the movement of its citizens. Due to the political dynamics of the Cold War , there was relatively little migration from the People's Republic of China to southeast Asia from the 1950s until the mid-1970s. In 1984, Britain agreed to transfer the sovereignty of Hong Kong to the PRC; this triggered another wave of migration to

3783-470: The Church Romanization ( simplified Chinese : 教会罗马字 ; traditional Chinese : 教會羅馬字 ; pinyin : Jiàohuì Luómǎzì ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī : Kàu-hoē Lô-má-jī ). For Hokkien the romanization is called Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ), for Fuzhounese it is called Foochow Romanized ( Bàng-uâ-cê , BUC), for Putian dialect it is called Hinghwa Romanized ( Hing-hua̍ Báⁿ-uā-ci̍ ), for Jian'ou dialect it

3880-942: The Hainan dialects have complex tone sandhi systems. Although they have far fewer speakers, the inland varieties show much greater variation than the coastal ones. Pan and colleagues divided the inland varieties into two groups: The Language Atlas of China (1987) included a further group: Although coastal varieties can be derived from a proto-language with four series of stops or affricates at each point of articulation (e.g. /t/ , /tʰ/ , /d/ , and /dʱ/ ), inland varieties contain traces of two further series, which Norman termed "softened stops" due to their reflexes in some varieties. Inland varieties use pronouns and negatives cognate with those in Hakka and Yue . Inland varieties have little or no tone sandhi. Most Min vocabulary corresponds directly to cognates in other Chinese varieties, but there are also

3977-581: The Hoa population at some 823,000 individuals and ranked 6th in terms of its population size. 70% of the Hoa live in cities and towns, mostly in Ho Chi Minh city while the rests live in the southern provinces. On the other hand, in Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei , the ethnic Chinese have maintained a distinct communal identity. In East Timor , a large fraction of Chinese are of Hakka descent . In Western countries,

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4074-610: The Korean Justice Ministry recording a lower crime rate for Chinese in the country compared to native South Koreans in 2010. Proto-Min Proto-Min (pMǐn) is a comparative reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Min group of Chinese languages . Min varieties developed in the relative isolation of the Chinese province of Fujian and eastern Guangdong , and have since spread to Taiwan , Southeast Asia , and other parts of

4171-451: The PRC and the ROC. The modern informal internet term haigui ( 海归 ; 海歸 ) refers to returned overseas Chinese and guīqiáo qiáojuàn ( 归侨侨眷 ; 歸僑僑眷 ) to their returning relatives. Huáyì ( 华裔 ; 華裔 ) refers to people of Chinese descent or ancestry residing outside of China, regardless of citizenship. Another often-used term is 海外華人 ; Hǎiwài Huárén or simply 華人 ; Huárén . It

4268-614: The PRC does not distinguish between Han and ethnic minority populations for official policy purposes. For example, members of the Tibetan people may travel to China on passes granted to certain people of Chinese descent. Various estimates of the Chinese emigrant minority population include 3.1 million (1993), 3.4 million (2004), 5.7 million (2001, 2010), or approximately one tenth of all Chinese emigrants (2006, 2011). Cross-border ethnic groups ( 跨境民族 ; kuàjìng mínzú ) are not considered Chinese emigrant minorities unless they left China after

4365-703: The People's Republic of China has built increasingly stronger ties with African nations. In 2014, author Howard French estimated that over one million Chinese have moved in the past 20 years to Africa. More recent Chinese presences have developed in Europe, where they number well over 1 million, and in Russia, they number over 200,000, concentrated in the Russian Far East . Russia's main Pacific port and naval base of Vladivostok , once closed to foreigners and belonged to China until

4462-455: The Philippine and Indonesian private economies. The book World on Fire , describing the Chinese as a "market- dominant minority ", notes that "Chinese market dominance and intense resentment amongst the indigenous majority is characteristic of virtually every country in Southeast Asia except Thailand and Singapore". This asymmetrical economic position has incited anti-Chinese sentiment among

4559-508: The Philippines has also borrowed a few terms from Spanish , Tagalog ( Filipino ), and English over the recent centuries. In Kelantan Peranakan Hokkien , spoken in Kelantan state of Malaysia to Pattani province of Thailand , a mix of Southern Thai and Kelantan Malay is also used with the local Kelantan Hokkien of Peranakans and Chinese Malaysians in Northern Malaya . The result

4656-472: The Philippines. Overseas Chinese Overseas Chinese people are people of Chinese origin who reside outside Greater China ( mainland China , Hong Kong , Macau , and Taiwan ). As of 2011, there were over 40.3 million overseas Chinese. Overall, China has a low percent of population living overseas . Huáqiáo ( simplified Chinese : 华侨 ; traditional Chinese : 華僑 ) refers to people of Chinese citizenship residing outside of either

4753-612: The Qing dynasty established the first Nationality Law of China. It granted Chinese citizenship to anyone born to a Chinese parent. It permitted dual citizenship . In the first half of the 20th Century, war and revolution accelerated the pace of migration out of China. The Kuomintang and the Communist Party competed for political support from overseas Chinese. Under the Republicans economic growth froze and many migrated outside

4850-581: The Republic of China, mostly through the coastal regions via the ports of Fujian , Guangdong , Hainan and Shanghai . These migrations are considered to be among the largest in China's history. Many nationals of the Republic of China fled and settled down overseas mainly between the years 1911–1949 before the Nationalist government led by Kuomintang lost the mainland to Communist revolutionaries and relocated. Most of

4947-506: The United Kingdom (mainly England), Australia, Canada, US, South America, Europe and other parts of the world. The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre further accelerated the migration. The wave calmed after Hong Kong's transfer of sovereignty in 1997. In addition, many citizens of Hong Kong hold citizenships or have current visas in other countries so if the need arises, they can leave Hong Kong at short notice. In recent years,

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5044-507: The United States hoped they would harass the People's Republic of China from the southwest, thereby diverting Chinese resources from the Korean War . The Burmese government protested and international pressure increased. Beginning in 1953, several rounds of withdrawals of the Nationalist forces and their families were carried out. In 1960, joint military action by China and Burma expelled

5141-743: The United States. Although discriminatory laws have been repealed or are no longer enforced today, both countries had at one time introduced statutes that barred Chinese from entering the country, for example the United States Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (repealed 1943) or the Canadian Chinese Immigration Act, 1923 (repealed 1947). In both the United States and Canada, further acts were required to fully remove immigration restrictions (namely United States' Immigration and Nationality Acts of 1952 and 1965 , in addition to Canada's) In Australia, Chinese were targeted by

5238-556: The area was opened to Chinese settlement by the defeat of the Minyue state by the armies of Emperor Wu of Han in 110 BC. Norman argues that Hakka and Yue have resulted from overlays of this language by successive waves of influence from northern China. When Chinese soldiers and settlers moved south from their homeland in the North China Plain , they came into contact with speakers of Tai–Kadai , Hmong–Mien and Austroasiatic languages . Early loans from Chinese into these languages date from around Han times and thus contain evidence of

5335-487: The categories of Middle Chinese back onto the rhyming patterns of the Classic of Poetry and the shared phonetic components of Chinese characters . Thus Old Chinese is usually reconstructed with the same three-way manner distinction in obstruent initials found in Middle Chinese. However this does not preclude additional manner distinctions that merged in Middle Chinese, because rhyme gives no information about initials and sharing of phonetic components indicates initials with

5432-564: The controversial argument that the 13 May Incident was a pre-meditated attempt by sections of the ruling Malay elite to incite racial hostility in preparation for a coup. In 2006, rioters damaged shops owned by Chinese- Tongans in Nukuʻalofa . Chinese migrants were evacuated from the riot-torn Solomon Islands . Ethnic politics can be found to motivate both sides of the debate. In Malaysia, many " Bumiputra " ("native sons") Malays oppose equal or meritocratic treatment towards Chinese and Indians , fearing they would dominate too many aspects of

5529-436: The country. The question of to what extent ethnic Malays, Chinese, or others are "native" to Malaysia is a sensitive political one. It is currently a taboo for Chinese politicians to raise the issue of Bumiputra protections in parliament, as this would be deemed ethnic incitement. Many of the overseas Chinese emigrants who worked on railways in North America in the 19th century suffered from racial discrimination in Canada and

5626-459: The current populations of these countries, but also among the migrant communities with Anglo-Caribbean origins residing mainly in the United Kingdom , the United States and Canada . Some overseas Chinese were sold to South America during the Punti–Hakka Clan Wars (1855–1867) in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong. Research conducted in 2008 by German researchers who wanted to show the correlation between economic development and height, used

5723-468: The end of 1979 there were just 200,000. It is commonly held that a major point of friction is the apparent tendency of overseas Chinese to segregate themselves into a subculture. For example, the anti-Chinese Kuala Lumpur racial riots of 13 May 1969 and Jakarta riots of May 1998 were believed to have been motivated by these racially biased perceptions. This analysis has been questioned by some historians, notably Dr. Kua Kia Soong , who has put forward

5820-493: The establishment of an independent state on China's border. Some ethnic groups who have historic connections with China, such as the Hmong , may not or may identify themselves as Chinese. The Chinese people have a long history of migrating overseas, as far back as the 10th century. One of the migrations dates back to the Ming dynasty when Zheng He (1371–1435) became the envoy of Ming. He sent people – many of them Cantonese and Hokkien  – to explore and trade in

5917-416: The farthest extent of any non-Mandarin variety, to the extent that pure Cantonese vernacular can be unambiguously written using Chinese characters. Contrary to popular belief, a vernacular written in this fashion is not in general comprehensible to a Mandarin speaker, due to significant changes in grammar and vocabulary and the necessary use of a large number of non-Mandarin characters. For most Min varieties,

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6014-531: The initials *mh, *nh, etc. follow the same tonal development as voiced aspirated initials throughout Min, Norman suggests that they were characterized by breathy voice . In Hakka dialects, nasals appear in both lower and upper register tones, suggesting a protolanguage with both voiced and voiceless nasals. Moreover, the occurrence of these initials corresponds to the plain and aspirated nasals of Proto-Min. Norman suggests that they derive from voiced and voiceless nasals in Old Southern Chinese. Further evidence for

6111-593: The inland dialects into two subgroups: Several varieties in the far west of Fujian include features of Min and the neighbouring Gan and Hakka groups, making them difficult to classify. In the Shaojiang dialects, spoken in the northwestern Fujian counties of Shaowu and Jiangle , the reflexes of Middle Chinese voiced stops are uniformly aspirated, as in Gan and Hakka, leading some workers to assign them to one of these groups. Pan et al. described them as intermediate between Min and Hakka. However, Norman showed that their tonal development could only be explained in terms of

6208-574: The intervocalic environment caused the stops to weaken to fricatives in some dialects. In most varieties of Chinese that have lost the voicing of Middle Chinese initials, the aspiration of the resulting initials is conditioned by tone, though the relationship varies between dialect groups. In Min varieties however, both aspirated and unaspirated voiceless initials are found in lower register tones. These initials must therefore be distinguished in Proto-Min as aspirated and unaspirated voiced consonants. In Shao–Jiang these initials are uniformly aspirated, but

6305-454: The late 19th century, as of 2010 bristles with Chinese markets, restaurants and trade houses. A growing Chinese community in Germany consists of around 76,000 people as of 2010 . An estimated 15,000 to 30,000 Chinese live in Austria. Chinese emigrants are estimated to control US$ 2 trillion in liquid assets and have considerable amounts of wealth to stimulate economic power in China . The Chinese business community of Southeast Asia, known as

6402-467: The local mainstream orthography they grew up being literate in, such as Singaporean or Malaysian English orthography (descended from British English ), Malay orthography / Indonesian orthography , Mandarin Pinyin for those in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, then Philippine English orthography (descended from American English ), Filipino orthography , Mandarin Pinyin , and sometimes Spanish orthography (for older writings), for those in

6499-446: The middle Yangtze has been largely abandoned in most circles and left unsupported by the majority of Austroasiatic specialists. Rather, recent movements of analyzing archeological evidence, posit an Austronesian layer, rather than an Austroasiatic one. Min languages by number of native speakers (as of 2004) Min is usually described as one of seven or ten groups of varieties of Chinese but has greater dialectal diversity than any of

6596-526: The mountainous region in Central Laos and Vietnam, rather than in the region north of the Red River delta . In other cases, the origin of the Min word is obscure. Such words include: When using Chinese characters to write a non-Mandarin form, a common practice is to use characters that correspond etymologically to the words being represented, and for words with no evident etymology, to either invent new characters or borrow characters for their sound or meaning. Written Cantonese has carried this process out to

6693-473: The nationalist and neutral refugees fled mainland China to North America while others fled to Southeast Asia ( Singapore , Brunei , Thailand , Malaysia , Indonesia and Philippines ) as well as Taiwan (Republic of China). Those who fled during 1912–1949 and settled down in Singapore and Malaysia automatically gained citizenship in 1957 and 1963 as these countries gained independence. Kuomintang members who settled in Malaysia and Singapore played

6790-484: The oldest layers of Min dialects diverged from the rest of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty . However, significant waves of migration from the North China Plain occurred: Jerry Norman identifies four main layers in the vocabulary of modern Min varieties: Laurent Sagart (2008) disagrees with Norman and Mei Tsu-lin's analysis of an Austroasiatic substratum in Min. The hypothesis proposed by Jerry Norman and Mei Tsu-lin arguing for an Austroasiatic homeland along

6887-705: The open vowels *o, *a and *ɑ were longer, with weaker following consonants. Proto-Min also had a single word with a syllabic nasal, the usual negator *m (cognate with Middle Chinese mjɨjH 未 'not have'). Most inland varieties have reduced the nasal codas to a single category. Coastal varieties went through a series of changes that each affected part of the area, and interacted with nasal initials: In most inland varieties stop codas have disappeared, but are marked with separate tonal categories. In coastal varieties, stop codas underwent changes corresponding to those affecting nasal codas: Most Min vocabulary corresponds directly to cognates in other Chinese varieties, but

6984-411: The other groups. The varieties used in neighbouring counties, and in the mountains of western Fujian even in adjacent villages, are often mutually unintelligible. Early classifications, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yuan Jiahua in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups. However, in a 1963 report on a survey of Fujian, Pan Maoding and colleagues argued that the primary split

7081-559: The overseas Chinese generally use romanised versions of their Chinese names, and the use of local first names is also common. Overseas Chinese have often experienced hostility and discrimination . In countries with small ethnic Chinese minorities, the economic disparity can be remarkable. For example, in 1998, ethnic Chinese made up just 1% of the population of the Philippines and 4% of the population in Indonesia , but have wide influence in

7178-474: The palatalization of dental stop initials, which had occurred in some dialects by the Eastern Han period, is common to Middle Chinese and Min. Baxter and Sagart suggest that the later part of the Proto-Min period may have overlapped with Early Middle Chinese . Pointing to features of Min varieties that are also found in Hakka and Yue varieties, Jerry Norman suggests that the three groups are descended from

7275-457: The patterns observed in northwest Fujian can be explained as a mixture of forms from neighbouring Wu, Gan and Hakka varieties, though this does not explain the regularity of the correspondences. In addition, the forms of many of the words in the proposed donor varieties do not match the Min reflexes, and some of the words occur only in Min. Since the pioneering reconstruction of Bernhard Karlgren , Old Chinese has been reconstructed by projecting

7372-529: The poorer majorities. Sometimes the anti-Chinese attitudes turn violent, such as the 13 May Incident in Malaysia in 1969 and the Jakarta riots of May 1998 in Indonesia, in which more than 2,000 people died, mostly rioters burned to death in a shopping mall. During the Indonesian killings of 1965–66 , in which more than 500,000 people died, ethnic Chinese Hakkas were killed and their properties looted and burned as

7469-501: The previous paramount leader Hú Jǐntāo ( 胡錦濤 ) would be spelled as "Hồ Cẩm Đào" in Vietnamese. There are also great similarities between Vietnamese and Chinese traditions such as the use Lunar New Year, philosophy such as Confucianism , Taoism and ancestor worship; leads to some Hoa people adopt easily to Vietnamese culture, however many Hoa still prefer to maintain Chinese cultural background. The official census from 2009 accounted

7566-520: The province of Fujian , and the adjacent eastern part of Guangdong . The area features rugged mountainous terrain, with short rivers that flow into the South China Sea . After the area was first settled by Chinese during the Han dynasty , most subsequent migration from north to south China passed through the valleys of the Xiang and Gan rivers to the west. Min varieties have thus developed in relative isolation. As described in rhyme dictionaries such as

7663-430: The relatively low social and economic statuses of ethnic Korean-Chinese have played a role in local hostility towards them. Such hatred had been formed since their early settlement years, where many Chinese–Koreans hailing from rural areas were accused of misbehaviour such as spitting on streets and littering . More recently, they have also been targets of hate speech for their association with violent crime, despite

7760-673: The remaining Nationalist forces from Burma, although some went on to settle in the Burma–Thailand borderlands . During the 1950s and 1960s, the ROC tended to seek the support of overseas Chinese communities through branches of the Kuomintang based on Sun Yat-sen 's use of expatriate Chinese communities to raise money for his revolution. During this period, the People's Republic of China tended to view overseas Chinese with suspicion as possible capitalist infiltrators and tended to value relationships with Southeast Asian nations as more important than gaining support of overseas Chinese, and in

7857-454: The rise of Mandarin has led to a decline in the use of Min Chinese. Communities speaking Eastern Min , Pu-Xian Min , Haklau Min , Leizhou Min , and Hainanese can also be found in parts of the Chinese diaspora, such as in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Many Min languages have retained notable features of the Old Chinese language , and there is linguistic evidence that not all Min varieties are directly descended from Middle Chinese of

7954-786: The same place of articulation but not necessarily the same manner. Several scholars have attempted to incorporate Proto-Min data into their reconstructions of Old Chinese. The most systematic attempt to date is the reconstruction of Baxter and Sagart , who derive the additional initials from a number of initial consonant clusters and minor syllables . All modern Min varieties have a two-way contrast between unaspirated and aspirated voiceless stops and affricates. Where these initials occur with upper register tones, they are projected back into Proto-Min, and correspond to unaspirated and aspirated voiceless initials in Middle Chinese. However, some Middle Chinese voiceless unaspirated initials correspond to fricatives or laterals in Northern Min, and also have

8051-456: The same distinction is reflected in the tonal development. As with the voiceless initials, there is a third group of formerly voiced initials with fricative or lateral reflexes in some Northern Min varieties, which Norman called "softened" voiced initials. In Eastern Min varieties, voiced unaspirated affricates typically yielded plain /s/ . There are several cases where an adjective or intransitive verb beginning with an unaspirated voiced stop

8148-459: The same tonal reflexes as the dental examples in the above table. Voiceless fricatives have the same tonal reflexes as voiceless aspirated and unaspirated stops. Voiced fricatives are more varied: The zero initial has the same tonal development as plain sonorants. Norman reconstructs Proto-Min finals as consisting of: The possible combinations were: The close vowels *i, *u, *y, *e and *ə were short, with stronger following consonants, whereas

8245-406: The same two classes of voiced initial assumed for Min dialects. He suggested that they were inland Min dialects that had been subject to heavy Gan or Hakka influence. Norman's student David Prager Branner argued that the varieties of Longyan and the township of Wan'an, in the southwestern part of the province, were coastal Min varieties, but outside of the three subgroups identified by Pan. In

8342-417: The settlement became known as Tang People Town ( 唐人埠 ) or Chinatown. The term shǎoshù mínzú ( 少数民族 ; 少數民族 ) is added to the various terms for the overseas Chinese to indicate those who would be considered ethnic minorities in China . The terms shǎoshù mínzú huáqiáo huárén and shǎoshù mínzú hǎiwài qiáobāo ( 少数民族海外侨胞 ; 少數民族海外僑胞 ) are all in usage. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of

8439-463: The sounds of Chinese as spoken in the south at that time. Norman identifies four main layers in the vocabulary of modern Min varieties: Since the latter two layers can largely be derived from the Qieyun , Norman sought to focus on the earlier layers. Early classifications, such as those of Li Fang-Kuei in 1937 and Yuan Jiahua in 1960, divided Min into Northern and Southern subgroups. However, in

8536-451: The surrounding communities (see Chinatown ), and their relationship with China. Thailand has the largest overseas Chinese community and is also the most successful case of assimilation , with many claiming Thai identity . For over 400 years, descendants of Thai Chinese have largely intermarried and/or assimilated with their compatriots. The present royal house of Thailand, the Chakri dynasty ,

8633-487: The syllables ending in a stop ( /p/ , /t/ or /k/ ). As with Middle Chinese and other languages of the Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area, each of these classes split into upper and lower registers, depending on whether the original initial was voiceless or voiced. When voicing was lost, the register distinction became phonemic, yielding tone classes conventionally numbered 1 to 8, with tones 1 and 2 naming

8730-437: The three-way contrast in Middle Chinese and modern Wu varieties and the two-way contrast in most modern Chinese varieties. A two-way contrast in sonorants is also reconstructed, compared with the single series of Middle Chinese and all modern varieties. Evidence from early loans into other languages suggests that the additional contrasts may reflect consonant clusters or minor syllables . The Min homeland consists of most of

8827-523: The upper and lower registers of Proto-Min class A*, and so on. All 8 classes are retained by the Chaozhou dialect, but some have merged in other varieties. Some northern varieties, including the Jianyang dialect, have an additional tone class (tone 9), reflecting a partial merger of tone classes that cannot be predicted from Middle Chinese forms. Stop and affricate initials at other points of articulation produce

8924-546: The vast majority of speakers, and have spread from their homeland in Fujian and eastern Guangdong to the islands of Taiwan and Hainan , to other coastal areas of southern China, and to Southeast Asia. Pan and colleagues divided them into three groups: The Language Atlas of China (1987) distinguished two further groups, which had previously been included in Southern Min: Coastal varieties feature some uniquely Min vocabulary, including pronouns and negatives. All but

9021-508: The voiceless and voiced fricatives of Middle Chinese. Zero initials show three distinct patterns of tonal development, reconstructed as initials *ɦ, *ʔ and a Proto-Min zero initial. The latter occurs only before the high front vowels *i and *y. In Central Min, *s and *x merged as /ʃ/ before high front vowels. Proto-Min had four tone classes, corresponding to the four tones of Middle Chinese : syllables with vocalic or nasal endings belonged to class *A, *B or *C, whereas class *D consisted of

9118-492: The world. They contain reflexes of distinctions not found in Middle Chinese or most other modern varieties, and thus provide additional data for the reconstruction of Old Chinese . Jerry Norman reconstructed the sound system of Proto-Min from popular vocabulary in a range of Min varieties, including new data on varieties from inland Fujian. The system has a six-way manner contrast in stops and affricates , compared with

9215-477: Was between inland and coastal groups. A key discriminator between the two groups is a group of words that have a lateral initial /l/ in coastal varieties, and a voiceless fricative /s/ or /ʃ/ in inland varieties, contrasting with another group having /l/ in both areas. Norman reconstructs these initials in Proto-Min as voiceless and voiced laterals that merged in coastal varieties. The coastal varieties have

9312-461: Was founded by King Rama I who himself was partly of Chinese ancestry. His predecessor, King Taksin of the Thonburi Kingdom , was the son of a Chinese immigrant from Guangdong Province and was born with a Chinese name. His mother, Lady Nok-iang (Thai: นกเอี้ยง), was Thai (and was later awarded the noble title of Somdet Krom Phra Phithak Thephamat). In the Philippines, the Chinese, known as

9409-650: Was the source for many of economic migrants. In the provinces of Fujian and Guangdong in China, there was a surge in emigration as a result of the poverty and village ruin. San Francisco and California was an early American destination in the mid-1800s because of the California Gold Rush. Many settled in San Francisco forming one of the earliest Chinatowns. For the countries in North America and Australia saw great numbers of Chinese gold diggers finding gold in

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