| Hakka | |
|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese: | 客家話 |
| Simplified Chinese: | 客家话 |
| Hakka 客家話 / 客家话 |
||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | People's Republic of China, Malaysia, Taiwan (Republic of China), Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Mauritius, Suriname, and other countries where Hakka Chinese migrants have settled. Talk People's Republic of China) PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA ARTICLE GUIDELINES For the biogeographical region see Malesia Malaysia (məˈleɪʒə or /məˈleɪziə/ is a country that consists of thirteen states and Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia. REPUBLIC OF CHINA ARTICLE GUIDELINES Singapore The Philippines ( Filipino: Pilipinas, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines (fil ''Republika ng Pilipinas'' RP The Republic of Indonesia ( (Republik Indonesia is a Country in Southeast Asia. Mauritius (pronounced məˈrɪʃəs L’île Maurice /il mɔ'ʁis/ Mauritian Creole: Maurice) officially the Republic of Mauritius, République Suriname ( Dutch: Suriname; Sranan Tongo: Sranan) officially the Republic of Suriname (traditionally spelled Surinam by | |
| Region: | in China: Eastern Guangdong province; adjoining regions of Fujian and Jiangxi provinces | |
| Total speakers: | 34 million | |
| Ranking: | 32 | |
| Language family: | Sino-Tibetan Chinese Hakka |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language in: | none (legislative bills have been proposed for it to be one of the 'national languages' in the Republic of China); one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the ROC [1]; ROC government sponsors Hakka language television station to preserve language | |
| Regulated by: | The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created an official romanisation of Meixian Hakka dialect in 1960, one of four languages receiving this status in Guangdong. China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National Guangdong ( EFEO: Kouangtong; Pinyin Guǎngdōng; Postal map spelling: Kwangtung) is a province on the This article is about the People's Republic of China province ( Postal map spelling: Kiangsi is a southern province of the People's Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use List of language familiesA language family is a group of Languages related by descent from a common ancestor called the Proto-language of that family The Sino-Tibetan languages form a Language family composed of at least the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of For other uses see Bill. A bill is a proposed new law introduced within a Legislature that has not been ratified, adopted REPUBLIC OF CHINA ARTICLE GUIDELINES This is a list of bodies that regulate Standard languages Natural languages Auxiliary languages Interlingua The auxiliary language Guangdong ( EFEO: Kouangtong; Pinyin Guǎngdōng; Postal map spelling: Kwangtung) is a province on the It is called Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an. Guangdong Romanization refers to the four romanization schemes published by the Guangdong Provincial Education Department in 1960 for transliterating the Standard Cantonese | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | zh (Chinese) | |
| ISO 639-2: | chi (B) | zho (T) |
| ISO 639-3: | hak | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ISO 639-1 is the first part of the ISO 639 international-standard language-code family ISO 639-2 is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 639 -3 (ISO 639-32007 is an international standard for Language codes The standard describes three‐letter codes for identifying languages In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's | ||
Hakka (also: Kejia) (客家話/客家话, Hak-kâ-fa in Hakka, Kèjiāhuà in Mandarin) is a spoken variation of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group and descendants in diaspora throughout East and Southeast Asia and around the world. Spoken Chinese ( comprises many regional variants the largest of which are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, and Min. The Hakkas ( Hakka language: Hak-kâ; Mandarin Chinese: Kèjiā) are a subgroup of the Han Chinese people who live predominantly The term Diaspora (in Greek, διασπορά &ndash " a scattering or sowing of seeds " refers any population sharing common ethnic
The Hakka language has numerous variants or dialects, spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou provinces, including Hainan island and Taiwan. A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος dialektos) is a variety of a Language that is characteristic of a particular group of Guangdong ( EFEO: Kouangtong; Pinyin Guǎngdōng; Postal map spelling: Kwangtung) is a province on the This article is about the People's Republic of China province ( Postal map spelling: Kiangsi is a southern province of the People's Republic of China, spanning from the banks of the Yangtze River Guangxi (or Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region;) is a Zhuang autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. ( Postal map spelling: Szechwan and Szechuan) is a province in western China with its capital in Chengdu. ( is a province of China, located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River and south of Lake Dongting (hence the name Hunan, meaning ( also spelled Kweichow) is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the southwestern part of the country Hainan ( POJ: Hai-lam Pinyin:, Jyutping: hoi2 naam4 literal meaning "South of the Sea" is the smallest province of the People's Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia. Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, Cantonese, Minnan and most of the significant spoken variants of the Chinese language. In Linguistics, mutual intelligibility is recognized as a relationship between Languages in which speakers of different but related languages can readily understand The Southern Min language or Min Nan ( POJ: Bân-lâm-gú or "Southern Fujian" language refers to a family of Chinese languages Dialects
There is a pronunciation difference between Taiwanese Hakka dialect and Guangdong Hakka dialect. Amongst the dialects of Hakka, the Moi-yen/Moi-yan (梅縣, Pinyin: Méixìan) dialect of northeast Guangdong has typically been viewed as a prime example of the Hakka language, forming a sort of standard dialect. Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use
The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created an official romanisation of Meixian Hakka dialect in 1960, one of four languages receiving this status in Guangdong. Guangdong ( EFEO: Kouangtong; Pinyin Guǎngdōng; Postal map spelling: Kwangtung) is a province on the In Linguistics, romanization (or latinization, also spelled romanisation or latinisation) is the representation of a Word or
See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for more on the dispute whether Hakka and other Chinese linguistic groups should be properly considered languages or dialects.
Contents |
Etymology
The name of the Hakka people who are the predominant original native speakers of the language literally means "guest families" or "guest people": Hak 客 (Mandarin: kè) means "guest", and ka 家 (Mandarin: jīa) means "family". Amongst themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa (-va) 客家話, Hak-fa (-va), 客話, Tu-gong-dung-fa (-va) 土廣東話, literally, "Native Guangdong language," and Ngai-fa (-va) 𠊎話, "My/our language".
History
Early history
The Hakka people have their origins in several episodes of migration from northern China into southern China during periods of war and civil unrest. The Hakkas ( Hakka language: Hak-kâ; Mandarin Chinese: Kèjiā) are a subgroup of the Han Chinese people who live predominantly China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National China ( Wade-Giles ( Mandarin) Chung¹kuo² is a cultural region, an ancient Civilization, and depending on perspective a National The forebearers of the Hakka came from present-day Henan and Shaanxi provinces, and brought with them features of Chinese languages spoken in those areas during that time. Henan ( is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the central part of the country ( Postal map spelling: Shensi) is a north-central province of the People's Republic of China, and includes portions of the Loess (Since then the speech in those regions has evolved into dialects of modern Mandarin. ) The presence of many archaic features occur in modern Hakka, including final consonants -p -t -k, as are found in other modern southern Chinese languages, but these have been lost in Mandarin.
Due to the migration of its speakers, the Hakka language may have been influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary are found in Hakka, Min and Cantonese Chinese languages.
Some people consider Hakka to have mixed with other languages, such as the language of the She people, throughout its development. The She (畲 people are an Ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.
Linguistic development
A regular pattern of sound change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese languages, of the derivation of lexemes from earlier forms of Chinese. For its use in the context of Computer Science see Lexical analysis. Some examples:
- The lexeme represented by the characters 武 (war, martial arts) or 屋 (room, house), pronounced mvio and uk in Middle Chinese is vu and vuk in Hakka respectively (Mandarin: wu). Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Standard Mandarin, also known as Standard Spoken Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan
- Lexemes corresponding with characters 人 and 日, among others, are pronounced with a ng consonant in Hakka (人:ngin, 日:ngit), and have a corresponding reading in Mandarin as an initial r- consonant.
- The consonant initial of the lexeme corresponding with the character 話 (word, speech; Mandarin hua) is pronounced f or v in Hakka (v does not properly exist as a distinct unit in many Chinese languages).
- The initial consonant of 學 hɔk usually corresponds with a h [h] approximant in Cantonese and a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative (x [ɕ]) or velar fricative (h [x]) in Mandarin.
Phonology
Moiyen dialect initials
There are no voiced plosives ([b d ɡ]) in Hakka, but it exhibits two sets of voiceless stops, an unaspirated set ([p t k]), and the other aspirated ([pʰ tʰ kʰ]).
| Labial | Dental | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | /m/ m | /n/ n | /ɲ/ ng(i) | /ŋ/ ng | ||
| Plosive | plain | /p/ b | /t/ d | k g | (ʔ) | |
| aspirated | pʰ p | tʰ t | kʰ k | |||
| Affricate | plain | /ts/ z/j(i) | ||||
| aspirated | /tsʰ/ c /q(i) | |||||
| Fricative | /f/ f | /s/ s/x(i) | /h/ h | |||
| Approximant | /ʋ/ v | /l/ l | (j) y | |||
When the initials [ts tsʰ s] and [ŋ] are followed by a palatised medial, they become [tɕ tɕʰ ɕ] and [ɲ] respectively. Labials are consonants articulated either with both lips ( bilabial articulation or with the lower lip and the upper teeth ( labiodental articulation In Linguistics, a dental consonant or dental is a Consonant that is articulated with the tongue against the upper teeth such as /t/ /d/ /n/ and Palatal consonants are Consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the Hard palate (the middle part of the roof of the mouth Glottal consonants are Consonants articulated with the Glottis. A nasal consonant (also called nasal stop or nasal continuant) is produced with a lowered velum in the mouth allowing air to escape freely through the A stop, plosive, or occlusive is a Consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the Vocal tract. Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Affricate Consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as or) but release as a fricative (such as or or occasionally into Description Voiceless consonants are produced with the Vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Approximants are speech sounds ( Phonemes) that could be regarded as intermediate between Vowels and typical Consonants In the articulation of approximants
Moiyen rimes
Moiyen Hakka has six vowels, [i ɿ ɛ a ə ɔ u], that are romanised as i, i, ê, a, e, o and u, respectively. The palatisation medial ([j]) is represented by i and the labialisation medial ([w]) is represented as u.
Moreover, Hakka rimes exhibits the final consonants found in Middle Chinese, namely [m, n, ŋ, p, t, k] which are romanised as m, n, ng, b, d, and g respectively in the official Moiyen romanisation. In the study of Phonology in Linguistics, the rime or rhyme of a Syllable consists of a nucleus and an optional coda
| vowel | medial + vowel | -i | -u | -m | -n | -ŋ | -p | -t | -k | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syllabics | m | ŋ | ||||||||
| a | ai | au | am | an | aŋ | ap | at | ak | ||
| ia | iai | iau | iam | ian | iaŋ | iap | iat | iak | ||
| ua | uai | uan | uaŋ | uat | uak | |||||
| ɛ | ɛu | ɛm | ɛn | ɛp | ɛt | |||||
| iɛ | iɛn | iɛt | ||||||||
| uɛ | uɛn | uɛt | ||||||||
| i | iu | im | in | ip | it | |||||
| ɔ | ɔi | ɔn | ɔŋ | ɔt | ɔk | |||||
| iɔ | iɔn | iɔŋ | iɔk | |||||||
| uɔ | uɔn | uɔŋ | uɔk | |||||||
| u | ui | un | uŋ | ut | uk | |||||
| iui | iun | iuŋ | iut | iuk | ||||||
| ɿ | əm | ən | əp | ət |
Moiyen tones
The Middle Chinese fully voiced initial characters have become aspirated voiceless initial characters in Hakka. Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern The four Middle Chinese tones Ping, Shang, Qu, Ru have developed in the Moiyen dialect to exhibit a yin-yang splitting in the Ping tone, and a yin-yang splitting in the Ru tone, giving it six tones.
| Tone number | Tone name | Tone letters | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | yin ping (陰平) | ˦ (44) | high |
| 2 | yang ping (陽平) | ˩ (11) | low |
| 3 | shang (上) | ˧˩ (31) | low falling |
| 4 | qu (去) | ˥˧ (53) | high falling |
| 5 | yin ru (陰入) | ˩ʔ (1) | low checked |
| 6 | yang ru (陽入) | ˥ʔ (5) | high checked |
These so called yin-yang tonal splittings developed mainly as a consequence of the type of initial a Chinese character had during the Middle Chinese stage in the development of Chinese languages, with voiceless initial characters [p- t- k-] tending to become of the yin type, and the voiced initial characters [b- d- g-] developing into the yang type. In Chinese and Vietnamese, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use A tone contour is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern In modern Moiyen Hakka however, part of the Yin Ping tone characters have sonorant initials [m n ŋ l] originally from the Middle Chinese Shang tone characters and fully voiced Middle Chinese Qu tone characters, so the voiced/voiceless distinction should be taken only as a rule of thumb.
Hakka tone contours differs more as one moves away from Moiyen. For example the Yin Ping contour is ˧ (33) in Changting (长汀) and ˨˦ (24) in Sixian (四县), Taiwan. Changting County ( Simplified: 长汀 Traditional: 長汀 Pinyin: Chángtīng Xiàn also known as Tingzhou or Tingchow (汀州 Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia.
Tone sandhi in Moiyen Hakka
For Moiyen Hakka, the yin ping and qu tone characters exhibit sandhi when the following character has a lower pitch. Sandhi ( Sanskrit saṃdhi sa संधि "joining" is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at Morpheme The pitch of the yin ping tone changes from ˦ (44) to ˧˥ (35) when sandhi occurs. Similarly, the qu tone changes from ˥˧ (53) to ˦ (55) under sandhi. These are shown in red in the following table.
| + ˦ Yin Ping | + ˩ Yang Ping | + ˧˩ Shang | + ˥˧ Qu | + ˩ʔ Yin Ru | + ˥ʔ YangRu | + Neutral | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ˦ Yin Ping + | ˦. ˦ | ˧˥. ˩ | ˧˥. ˧˩ | ˧˥. ˥˧ | ˧˥. ˩ʔ | ˦. ˥ʔ | ˧˥. ˧ |
| ˥˧ Qu + | ˥˧. ˦ | ˥. ˩ | ˥. ˧˩ | ˥. ˥˧ | ˥. ˩ʔ | ˥˧. ˥ʔ | ˥. ˧ |
The neutral tone occurs in some postfixes used in Hakka. It has a mid pitch.
Other dialects of Hakka
The Hakka language has as many regional dialects as there are counties with Hakka speakers in the majority. Surrounding Meixian are the counties of Pingyuan 平遠, Dabu 大埔, Jiaoling 蕉嶺, Xingning 興寧, Wuhua 五華, and Fengshun 豐順. Dabu County ( Chinese: 大埔县 Pinyin: Dàbù Xiàn is a district of Meizhou, Guangdong of China Jiaoling County ( is a northeastern County of Guangdong province Xingning is also the era name for the Emperor Ai of the Jin dynasty Fengshun ( Chinese: 豐順 is a county in Guangdong, China. Fengshun is part of Meizhou (Chinese 梅州 Prefecture Each is said to have its own special phonological points of interest. For instance, the Xingning does not have rimes ending in [-m] or [-p]. These have merged into [-n] and [-t] ending rimes, respectively. Further away from Meixian, the Hong Kong dialect lacks the [-u-] medial, so whereas Meixian dialect pronounces the character 光 as [kwɔŋ44], Hong Kong Hakka dialect pronounces it as [kɔŋ33], which is similar to the Hakka spoken in neighbouring Shenzhen. Hong Kong ( officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a territory located on China 's south coast on the Pearl River Delta, and borders
As much as endings and vowels are important, the tones also vary across the dialects of Hakka. The majority of Hakka dialects have six tones, as typified by Meixian dialect above. However, there are dialects which have lost all of their Ru Sheng tones, and the characters originally of this tone class are distributed across the non-Ru tones. In Chinese and Vietnamese, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use Such a dialect is Changting 長汀 which is situated in the Western Fujian province. Changting County ( Simplified: 长汀 Traditional: 長汀 Pinyin: Chángtīng Xiàn also known as Tingzhou or Tingchow (汀州 Moreover, there is evidence of the retention of an earlier Hakka tone system in the dialects of Haifeng 海 豐 and Lufeng 陸 豐 situated on coastal south eastern Guangdong province. Guangdong ( EFEO: Kouangtong; Pinyin Guǎngdōng; Postal map spelling: Kwangtung) is a province on the They contain a yin-yang splitting in the Qu tone, giving rise to seven tones in all (with yin-yang registers in Ping and Ru tones and a Shang tone).
The Hoi-liuk (Hailu 海陸) Hakka dialect speakers found on Taiwan originated from this region. Taiwan ( Taiwanese: Tâi-oân/Tāi-oân (historically 大灣/台員/大員/台圓/大圓/台窩灣 is an Island in East Asia. This particular dialect contains postalveloar consonants ([ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], etc. Postalveolar consonants are Consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the Alveolar ridge, placing them a bit further back in the ), usually not found in other Chinese languages. Taiwan's other main population of Hakka speakers, the Sixian (Hakka: Siyen 四縣) speakers come from Jiaying 嘉應 and surrounding Jiaoling, Pingyuan, Xingning, and Wuhua dialects. Jiaying county later changed its name to Meixian.
Vocabulary
Like other southern Chinese languages, Hakka retains single syllable words from earlier stages of Chinese because it can differentiate a large number of working syllables by tone and rime. This reduces the need for compounding or making words of more than one syllable. However, it is also similar to other Chinese languages in having words which are made from more than one syllable.
Examples of Single Syllable Words
人 [ŋin11] person (Mandarin rén)
碗 [ʋɔn33] bowl (Mand. wǎn)
狗 [kɛu33] dog (Mand. gǒu)
牛 [ŋiu11] cow (Mand. niú)
屋 [ʋuk3] house (Mand. wū)
嘴 [tsɔi53] mouth (Mand. zuǐ)
涯 [ŋai11] me/I (Mand. 我wǒ)
Example of Multiple-Syllable Words
日頭 [ŋit3 thɛu11] sun
月光 [ŋiɛt53 kwɔŋ33] moon
屋下/屋家 [ʋuk3 kha33] home
電話 [thiɛn54 ʋa53] telephone
學堂 [hɔk53 thɔŋ11] school
Hakka prefers the verb [kɔŋ31] 講 when referring to speaking rather than the Mandarin shuo 說 ( Hakka [sɔt3] ).
Hakka uses [sit5] 食, like Cantonese (sik) for the verb "to eat" and 飲("ngim") "to drink", unlike Mandarin which prefers chi 吃 as "to eat" and he 喝 as “to drink".
Writing systems
Various dialects of Hakka have been written in a number of Latin orthographies, largely for religious purposes, since at least the mid-19th century.
Currently the single largest work in Hakka is the New Testament and Psalms (1993, 1138 pp. Psalms ( Hebrew: Tehilim, תהילים, or "praises" is a book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) included , see [2]), although that is expected to be surpassed soon by the publication of the Old Testament. In Western Christianity, the Old Testament refers to the books that form the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. These works render Hakka in both romanization and Han characters (including ones unique to Hakka) and are based on the dialects of Taiwanese Hakka speakers. The work of Biblical translation is being performed by missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. The Presbyterian Church in Canada is the name of a Protestant Christian church, of Presbyterian and reformed Theology
The popular Le Petit Prince has also been translated into Hakka (2000, indirectly from English), specifically the Miaoli dialect of Taiwan (itself a variant of the Sixian dialect). The Little Prince ( Le Petit Prince) published in 1943 is French Aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry 's most famous Novella Miaoli County is a county in western Taiwan. Miaoli is officially administered as a county of Taiwan. This also was dual-script, albeit using the Tongyong Pinyin scheme. Tongyong pinyin ( was the official Romanization of Mandarin Chinese in the Republic of China (commonly known as Taiwan) between 2002 and 2008
References
- Branner, David Prager (2000). Problems in Comparative Chinese Dialectology — the Classification of Miin and Hakka, Trends in Linguistics series, no. 123. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 31-101-5831-0.
External links
- Hakka text-to-speech
- Hakka People Online
- Classification of Hakka Dialects
- Meixian/Moiyen Romanisation Scheme
- Aspects of Meixian/Moiyen Dialect of Hakka Phonology
- Information about Hakka
- Video with basic hakka sentences as used by the East Timorese Chinese
- Chinese to Hakka Character Converter
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