Hokkien

About Hokkien

Hokkien is a form of Southern Min Chinese that began in southern Fujian province in China. It is spoken today in Fujian and Taiwan and by Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. In Taiwan it is often simply called Taiwanese and is one of the national languages. Many guides here give the Taiwanese form. Hokkien, Mandarin and Cantonese are all called Chinese (see Chinese), but a Mandarin speaker does not understand Hokkien without learning it.

Hokkien has seven tones, and tones shift as words run together in a sentence, so a word can sound different on its own and inside a phrase. There is no everyday standard spelling. It can be written in Chinese characters, and in Latin letters with Pe̍h-ōe-jī or the Taiwanese Tâi-lô system, so the same word may be spelled several ways.

FamilySino-Tibetan, Chinese (Southern Min)
Where spokenFujian (China), Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia
ScriptChinese characters, Pe̍h-ōe-jī and Tâi-lô in Latin letters
Tonesseven, which change in connected speech
Codenan (ISO 639-3, Min Nan)

Classification: Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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