The Fascinating Hokkien Language (Part 2)

Other non-Sinitic words in Hokkien would be word for mango (suai-ann) which sounds very similar to Vietnamese xoai and Khmer svay. Also the words for male and female (zha bor and ta po) are most likely non-Chinese in origin.

Are you sure 佢 didn't come from Tang Dynasty's 渠? 渠 is also found in the Japanese dictionary as third person pronoun.

伊may have a more ancient root as in Old ancient Han 「所謂伊人，在水一方」

Did enjoy your videos and would like to watch more.

But a quick question: You pronounced b like p, and your 3rd tone is too close to the 6th one. Are these features of sg accent or your own accent? These are nowhere to be found in Taiwan so would like to see if they are sg styles.

Btw, we use 媠 for the word suí , which represents the meaning and the sound at the same time.

I am hokien and I find your video fascinating ❤

Video jin swee

Teochew?

Really glad you took the care to stress how Hokkien is a separate language in the Chinese language family in these videos. Probably due in part to not having learnt otherwise, and also partly due to systematic governmental persecution and suppression in the past, many Singaporeans have no concept that Hokkien (along with Teochew, Hakka, Canto etc) is anything other than a "dialect" of the "main Chinese language". But when you really think about it, they are vastly more different than what would be considered "separate languages" in other parts of the world, like Danish/Swedish/Norwegian or Spanish/Galician/Portuguese.

As a Singaporean I had to study Mandarin Chinese in school, and also learned Danish on my own (obviously not to as high a standard). But still, I can understand Swedish relatively clearly, yet I cannot understand more than 15-25% of a full Hokkien conversation, even despite being "ethnically 1/2 Hokkien" myself. If that gulf in intelligibility alone doesn't speak to how divergent Mandarin and Hokkien are, then idk what does!

if u think hokkien is a dialect, then Singaporean hokkien will be a dialect of a dialect of a dialect.

The equivalent of character 的 in "Classical Chinese" 文言文 has been 之 。的 was not the only character used in early form of 白话文 for possessive purpose，other characters such as 底 has also been used while the language was evolving.

You are an amazing linguist.

Very impressed by the detailed research and accurate presentation.

As someone who grew up speaking hokkien, then Mandarin and later on learnt English, Japanese and dabbled in malay, Indonesia languages, it truly has been fascinating to find similarities in many phrases and words. You've helped me understand so much of what I've been confused by and delighted to know that your channel exists. Subscribed.

有关福建的一个重要的历史史实，在史记里有记载，在汉武帝时，闽越土著作乱，汉武帝兵分三路长途跋涉去围剿成功，当时还是太远了，汉武帝觉得当时的闽越土著太“悍”， 怕他们留在原地暂时服了以后还会继续生事，就把他们绝大部分都强制转移分散到江淮一带，闽越当地土著基本绝迹才让汉武帝放心。而闽越土著在江淮这么久了两千年了基本已经和当地混血看不出来了，不过江淮偶尔还可以看到极少极少的“返祖”长相的人，就是那个眉骨高眼窝深皮肤厚实颜色深。福建现在还真是绝大部分从中原来的，而且不是李资政以前说的什么“福建农民”好像比较落后愚昧似的，而是祖先大部分是世家大族或旁支迁移过来的。从基因角度来说，当时那些应该算是中原精华。中国古代精英大部分出于河南、山东西南部、湖北安徽江苏三地的北部、山西东南部就是中原那一圈。在古代没有世家资源加持，还真不容易长途跋涉到闽地那么远的蛇类最多的地方（小时候田里随便就是眼镜蛇，政府和民众共同出力抓的厉害，90年代后基本绝迹，最近因为国家保护动物再加有人故意“放生”现在又来了）。在中国现在，大概福建是家谱族谱保存最多最长久的省份，50年代解放初期各家族谱都已经被国家要求保存在当地公安局里了。北方反而保存的不多。江浙为什么人才辈出，也是因为历史上有两拨中国主要世家大族和科举精英迁移汇聚，一个是南宋末年随皇帝逃难，一个是明末随皇帝逃难，集中在南京金陵苏州苏南以及杭州及周边。然后有较少部分继续迁移到温州福州或江西（比如辛弃疾这么的文武全才到江西）。

thanks for such an informative video!

Wonder if you would kindly do one in Hainanese

Indonesian here 🇮🇩. Ka tsuah sound similar to Malay/Indonesian "Kecoak". I wondered whether this Baiyue had relationship with Austronesian languages.

I was surprised that Bah (in Indonesian Hokkien -- Bak) had non-sinitic roots. No wonder they sound different than Cantonese "Juk", Teeochew "Nyuk'.

Thank you for the video.

As a Filipino Chinese that uses Hokkien my whole life. Thank you for this! It’s truly a beautiful and dying language so it’s good to learn more about it 🥲

As a cantonese speaker I don’t understand mandarin speakers yet cantonese is just a “dialect” 🤷‍♂️ Yet Swedish and Norwegian speakers can understand each other but they’re separate languages. So I find the definitions highly political than truly based on their own guidelines.

You have compiled such a brilliant discovery of Hokkien language. As an Hokkien, your discovery has initiated a new interest in me to learn Hokkien again. I am proud to be a Hokkien speaker. Thank you for your amazing findings.

I understand why China wants to classify all the different Chinese languages as dialects much like Italy classify its own languages within Italy dialects. For simple unification reasons. And it's a good strategy because it makes everyone gravitates towards the main standard mandarin; otherwise there will be a situation like India where there are hundreds of languages not accepting one another. However, as a vast and super populous country with extensive ancient history, it's only natural that there are different Chinese languages much like there are different Latin languages, different Slavic languages, different Germanic languages, different Arabic languages, etc. As long as allegiance are the same, I don't see a reason why different Chinese languages, which are very similar to each other to coexist.

I speak Fuzhouese, Cantonese, and Mandarin. Although Fuzhouese, an Eastern Min language, is only roughly 10-15% mutually intelligible with Hokkien, a Southern Min language, I find the two share a lot more vocabularies than they do with Cantonese. My guess is that both Min languages are from Old Chinese while Cantonese evolved from Middle Chinese. I do not speak Hokkien, but Your analysis of the languages is fascinating to watch

Make more please

Politically speaking, Hokkien is a dialect but linguistically speaking, Hokkien is definitely a language.
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" - some guy whose name I forgot.

Lovely! You were very diplomatic highlighting that those are actually different languages. My couple cents would be that the Romance languages are still significantly closer among themselves that the Sinitic ones.

I was always frightened by the Sandhi Rules in Hokkien, but after your video I realized it's not that terrible, right? It's pretty consistent and uniform. And one can get used to those patterns like to a melody

Upload Hokkien and cantonese video !

Thank you for this video, being a person learning mandarin.I found a great of similarity in many pronunciations of mandarin,Cantonese and hokkien

Very interesting video . Please introduce more . Like very much

The best example of this dialect/language confusion that i can give to English speakers is Scots. If you haven't heard of it, look up a video example. It's kind of intelligible, and I can understand most of it if the Scots-speaker talks slowly, but several words are unfamiliar or sound out of place/outdated.

wait till you come to malaysia where the language have been soo bastardised by mixing soo many local malay words you hardly recognise it anymore.

He is very hungry in Hokkien can also speak like :

I cin iau. Similar to mandarin.

China is a united states of East Asia.

i once saw a tiktok of a Chinese girl who said that Chinese languages are dialects and that it’s only westerners who call them languages and she refused to say she speaks Mandarin – she always says “I speak Chinese”, and gets offended when people say “Mandarin” 💀💀💀 I had to turn off tiktok after that…

As Zhangzhou Hokkien speaker, we can understand Teochew. Teochew is very close to Zhangzhou Hokkien spoke by people living in ZhaoAn, which neighbours to Chaoshan region. We have stronger identity to people whoever living in Fujian, Chaoshan region, Zhejiang, Hainan, and oversea Chinese who speak southern hokkien.

The truth is that whether it’s a language or dialect is political.

Fantastic compilation!

Fascinating.

Please make more Chinese language history videos like this. I love learning this stuff, it's so interesting. Thank you for taking time to make these videos!

我學習韓語和閩語。這兩個語言的漢字讀音十分相似。真趣味。但很遺憾韓國從國文裡把漢字廢除掉了

China is not the only country that calls regional languages as dialects. It is also in Phillippines, Italy and Japan.

I grew up in Port Dickson & Melaka in 1970s. Most Chinese spoke Hokkien back then until mid 1980s. Then there's too much focus on Mandarin that put Hokkien on steep decline.

中文書寫正文與口語是不同 的與之也接近 但兮本身也是副音助音 可有可無

Great vid 👍👍👍

Outstanding presentation 😊😊😊😊

As a Cantonese speaker, I appreciate this. We should do our best to preserve our language. Nothing against mandarin.
By the way, we use the characters 曱甴 for cockroach, but pronunciation is similar to Hokkien.

I enjoyed watching this, particularly your conversation with your mom. A lot to reflect on there.

Yes, Hokkien is a language

Hi all! I apologize for the low volume on this video. It sounded fine when I played the video on my desktop earlier but after uploading the video, the volume became really low. There isn't an option to raise the volume on an already uploaded video so I would have to trouble you guys to manually increase the volume on your end. It took me a long time to create this video so I really hope this doesn't impact your viewing too much! Sorry for the inconvenience 🙁