Concept
Hakka Chinese
Overview
Hakka is 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 even being partially mutually intelligible with southern Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features.
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; the Shanke dialect is either closely related to or heavily influenced by Hakka, if not both.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
_John Hoskyns_ Vice P. R. S. _July_ 17_th._, 1686. [Illustration: _The Roman Abacus out of Marcus Velserus_ _The Chinese Abacus from the Chinese Dictionary containing nine places or degrees_ 一二三四五六七八九 I 一 yĕ̇ II 二 th́ III 三 san̄ IV 四 sú V 五 v̀ VI 六 lŏ̇ VII 七 ziĕ̇ VIII 八 pă̇ IX 九 kièn X 十 xĕ̇ XI 十 xĕ̇ 一 yĕ̇ X 十 xĕ̇ II 二 lh́ X 十 xĕ̇ III 三 san̄ X 十 xĕ̇ V 五 v̀ XX 廾 lh́xĕ̇ XX 二 lh́ 十 xĕ̇ XXX 卅 san̄xĕ̇ XXX 三 san̄ 十 xĕ̇…
Royal Society, Miscellanea Curiosa, Vol. 3
Close in meaning to Hakka Chinese; the term itself is not named.
I don't know yet what that something is, but probably an inferior tea. The tea we drank is that famous jasmine tea from Hangchow. It costs something like fifteen dollars a pound here. It is very good, with a peculiar spicy flavor, almost musky and smoky, from the jasmine combined with the tea flavor, which is strong. It is a delicious brown tea, but I do not like to drink it so well as I like the best green tea.
John Dewey, Letters from China and Japan
States what Hakka Chinese is.
The far greater part of those who had occasion to speak it, had acquired it at so very early a period of their lives, so insensibly and by such slow degrees, that they were scarce ever sensible of the difficulty. But when two nations came to be mixed with one another, either by conquest or migration, the case would be very different. Each nation, in order to make itself intelligible to those with whom it was under…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
Close in meaning to Hakka Chinese; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Hong Kong
- Indonesia
- National language
- Shaanxi
- Mandarin Chinese
- Phoneme
- Taiwan
- Singapore
- Southeast Asia
- Malaysia
- Guangxi
- China
- Latin script
- Dialect
- Shenzhen
- Chinese characters
Place in the tradition
Part of Language.