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Southern Min language

Southern Min
Min Nan
閩南語 / 闽南语 Bân-lâm-gú
農場相褒歌.jpg
Koa-a books, Min Nan written in Chinese characters
Native to China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and other areas of Southern Min and Hoklo settlement
Region Southern Fujian province; the Chaozhou-Shantou (Chaoshan) area and Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong province; extreme south of Zhejiang province; much of Hainan province (if Hainanese or Qiongwen is included); and most of Taiwan.
Native speakers
47 million (2007)
Sino-Tibetan
Dialects
Chinese characters; Latin
Official status
Official language in
None; one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in Taiwan
Regulated by None (The Republic of China Ministry of Education and some NGOs are influential in Taiwan)
Language codes
ISO 639-3
Glottolog minn1241
Linguasphere 79-AAA-j
Min dialect map.svg
  Southern Min
Banlamgu.svg
Subgroups of Southern Min
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese 闽南语
Traditional Chinese 閩南語
Literal meaning "Language of Southern Min [Fujian]"
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Southern Min, or Minnan, is a branch of Min Chinese spoken in certain parts of China including southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and southern Zhejiang, and in Taiwan. The Min Nan dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

In common parlance, Southern Min usually refers to Hokkien, including Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien; both are combinations of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speeches. The Southern Min dialect group also includes Teochew, though Teochew has limited mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Hainanese is not mutually intellgible with other Southern Min and is often considered a separate branch of Min. Southern Min is not mutually intelligible with Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, any other Min branch, Hakka, Cantonese, Shanghainese or Mandarin.


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