Chinese min

The mǐn (Traditional Chinese 閩語; Simplified Chinese 闽语; pinyin, mǐnyǔ) is one of the major Sinitic languages by number of speakers.

Mǐn Chinese is often referred to as a "dialect" from Chinese, but really the set of mǐn varieties constitutes an independent branch of the Sinitic family, which in fact is not even a descendant of Middle Chinese unlike the rest of the Sinitic varieties.

History

The region of origin of the mǐn languages, Fújiàn province and northeastern Guăndōng province, were historically peripheral regions of the Chinese empire; the absence of major rivers and the mountainous terrain kept the region relatively isolated. For this reason it is not surprising that Sinitic languages developed independently of the rest in that region.

The name mǐn corresponds to the name of an ancient kingdom located in present-day Fujian province. For this reason, the character 闽/閩 is used today as an abbreviation for the name of this province (on car license plates, for example). An alternative name for the dialect, in Latin script, is Hokkien (properly southern mǐn), which corresponds to the transcription of the name Fujian according to the mǐn pronunciation. The name Hokkien is widely used in Singapore, where southern mǐn is the most widespread Chinese dialect.

Classification

The mǐn dialect varieties are a branch of the Sinitic language family. Unlike the rest of the Chinese dialect groups that appear to be descendants of Old Chinese, Proto-Mǐn would be a sister language to Old Chinese, not a direct descendant of it.

Although Chinese authors prefer to speak of dialects (方言, fāngyán) when referring to the spoken Sinitic varieties, the mutual intelligibility between them is practically nil, which is why many linguists consider the " Chinese" a family of languages, and not a single language.

Mǐn is the fourth, in this broad sense, most spoken dialect of Chinese after Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese. It has about 60 million speakers, mainly in Fujian province and Taiwan. The form of southern mǐn spoken in Taiwan is sometimes called Taiwanese, although it differs only slightly from the southern mǐn spoken in the Xiamen area of southern Fujian.

Mǐn is also the most widely spoken Chinese dialect among Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore and Malaysia. Also, due to emigration from Fujian, it is the most widespread dialect on the island of Hainan.

Internal sorting

Regarding the varieties specifically mǐn there are important differences. Traditionally it has been considered that there are two dialectal blocks that are practically mutually unintelligible:

• The mgiln nán (SCREENING) mgilnán and, "southern word").
• The mgiln běi (fixed signal /,) m/25070/nběi y"North language"

Northern mǐn is sometimes subdivided into four varieties: northern mǐn (strict), eastern mǐn, central mǐn, and Puxian dialect.

Other authors, such as Pan Maoding (1963), however, consider the primary division to be between eastern mǐn and western mǐn. This reclassification was based on linguistic surveys of Fujian province. Various isoglosses favor the Eastern and Western distinction (the different treatment of proto-min nasals and the two varieties of proto-min /l/).

Varieties

Map with the dialects of the mLES.

Extension of the territory controlled by the Han dynasty towards 190 d. C. As the penetration in the linguistic domain of the min Chinese is very small.

Linguistic description

The isolation of the mǐn region caused the mǐn varieties to develop their own characteristics not shared with the rest of the Sinitic languages. The mǐn varieties retained a significant number of archaisms, some not found in other Sinitic languages, at the same time that they developed a whole set of innovations that further set them apart from other Sinitic languages. Although the difficult communications of the territory not only isolated the region from the rest of China's historical territories but also led to great internal diversity.

Phonology

The mǐn varieties retain certain archaisms and retain some features of Proto-Sinitic that have been lost in other varieties of Chinese. For example, only in the varieties mǐn do they have both aspirated and unaspirated stops in front of low tones (yáng tones) showing regular correspondences with the rest of the varieties of the group. For this reason, the Mǐn languages are important for reconstructing the phonology of Proto-Sinitic.

Mǐn varieties also show correspondences in nasals suggesting that certain initial nasals showed missing differences in other Sinitic languages, which are consistently reflected in cognates between Mǐn languages. Similarly, proto-mǐn had differences between *l and *lh. For all these reasons the mǐn varieties are important for the precise knowledge of historical developments within the Sinitic family.

Grammar

Personal and deictic pronouns differ between the different mǐn varieties, and the following table summarizes the forms for different varieties:

Lexical comparison

The differences between the Mǐn languages and the other Sinitic varieties can be adequately illustrated by comparing Middle Chinese phonological forms with their corresponding pronounced forms in Mǐn languages:

It can be seen that Middle Chinese /d/ has three different regular correspondences in mǐn that cannot be explained by conditional evolution. This shows that in fact, in Middle Chinese and in the rest of the varieties, three independent phonemes /*d₁, *d₂, *d_{3/ in /d/. For that reason Chinese mǐn is important for reconstructing Proto-Sinitic. That shows the comparative value of the Chinese mǐn and the archaism of these varieties.}

Shaòwŭ and Jiānglè varieties reflect the earlier difference between alveolar/dental de showing different tonal developments, as seen in the second part of the cognate table. The third part of the table also shows the archaism of the Shaòwŭ and Jiānglè dialects also retaining distinctions in the nasals that have been lost in Middle Chinese. These differences would go back to Proto-Min and presumably need to be reconstructed for Proto-Sinitic.

Finally the Min dialects have dentals in Middle Chinese cognates with retroflexes (in other Chinese variants Middle Chinese retroflexes have evolved into affricates: Middle Chinese ʈjuk > Peking zhú, Ch.M. ʈjwän > P. zhuăn and Ch.M. ɖjwo > P. zhù)

Comparative numerals

The numerals in different varieties of min Chinese are:

GLOSA	Min bei				Min nan				PROTO- MIN
	Jian'ou	Fuzhou (Mindong)	Yong'an (Minzhong)	Puxian	Hokkien	Youxi	Shun- Chang	P.-MIN- NAN
'1'	tsi42	suɔ4	i13	o4	tsit53	ie24	i11	*tsit8	*tsit42
'2'	niŋ¬42	the242	Русский35	n.11	l33	ne42	Русский53	*nõ4	*42
'3'	sa41	sa44	sõ52	ɒ margin533	sã55	sã33	s̃55	♪1	*sa44
'4'	Yeah.33	s213	Yeah.35	i41	Yeah.21	sje51	Yeah.35	♪ yeah ♪5	♪ yeah ♪35
'5'	Русский42	Русский242	Русский21	Русский11	gɔ33	Русский42	Русский31	*4	*42
'6'	ly42	løy4	ly54	the4	lak53	luo33	ly5	♪ lkk8	♪ ljok5
'7'	tshi24	tshŭ23	tshi13	tshi21	tshit21	tshje24	tshi11	*tshi7	*tshit24
'8'	pai21	pai23	pa13	pe11	pue21	piss24	pa11	* poi7	*pai23
'9'	kiu24	kau31	kjau21	kau453	kau53	kau55	kiu31	♪kau3	*kjau31
'10'	Yeah.54	sŭ4	ɿ54	e24	tsap53	sa33	Đi5	*tsap8	♪53