Hainanese is considered to be a dialect of the Minnan group. While listening to them, I can find some words sound like Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese.

Below are some examples of Hainanese language:

son : kia (sound like Hokkien)

two : nor (sound like Teochew)

meat : yoke (sound like Cantonese)

Is Hainanese language a combination of the 3 dialect groups?

It should be closest to Chiuchou (Teochew). The island was inhabited by Austronesians before being open for settlement. Even though it is closer to Cantonese speaking zones, most of the migrants who went there in large numbers were Chiuchous.

I think the large number should be Hokkien. When I went to Hainan Island in 2003, the locals told me that their ancestors were fishermen from Fujian. When they were speaking, I could hear that more than 50% of their language consists of Hokkien dialect. I was wondering how come the Hokkien dialect changed to Hainanese when Hokkien people migrated to Hainan? Why Teochew and Cantonese dialect can also be found in Hainanese?

Because they are directly above Hainan. Hainan is fairly accessible from the Mainland, it's not like Taiwan.

Also, Teochew were from Fujian too.

what does 歐巴桑 mean? Is this a dialect use? I heard it means something like uncle. What dialect is that?

That's not related.
Even in Leizhou and Longdu one can also find Min Nan dialects. Perhaps 'Min Nan' once dominated 'Guangdong' before 'Cantonese' 'came'.



It's Japanese loanword 'Obasan'. Means something like aunt.
For 'uncle' I think it's 'Ojisan', transcribed 歐吉桑.

It could be possible.

Fukien dialect is closer to Old Chinese. There were many waves of migrations into Guangdong by different groups. The Cantonese brought a language more closer to Middle Chinese.

Please read

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=6493

It is "neng" not "nor" for teochew and 漳洲 hokkien.
Are you sure it is "nor" in hainanese ? "Nor" is usually spoken by the 泉洲 hokkien.

Yuk is definitely cantonese, since hainan island is close to guangdong province, it is influenced by cantonese. But most of the words are still hokkien.

Number 2 as 'no' may or may not be a Teochew marker.

We know Chinese have at least 2 words for '2', one is related to Mandarin er4 while the other are related to liang3.

'default' 2 in counting is Ji/Di, as in it ji(di) sa~ si
As for 'no', Hokkien never say Jipek for 200 but nopeq instead.
As for the usage of 'neng', I think it's the same as the usage of liang3.

Obviously you are not changzhou hokkien.

ji and neng (zhangzhou hokkien)
ji and nor (chuan chiu hokkien)

Read

http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/taiwanese/lessons/l7.php (nng is the same as neng)

Ever been to penang, malaysia ? The people there say "nor" not "neng" . The southern malaysian including singaporean say "neng".



When people are isolated from the original place, the language will undergo slight changes and that is why dialects emerge. In this case, the basic language is still hokkien. Teochew is a dialect of hokkien , see my link.

The only problem is that Min dialects are very much unintelligible with each other (I mean like Minbei is unintelligible with Minnan which is unintelligible with a lot of other Min dialects like Teochew). It's not just a slight change.

It could be the geography, or it could be different influences from different indigenous peoples.

Diversity is quite a natural process (less contact with 'brothers'). 'Indigenous' people would have the effect of adding new category of words (i.e. heavy loanwords). Hai Nan, along with TioChiu, is said to be part of Min Nan (not other Min) but actually I've never heard Hai Nam.

I heard people use nng nng chia 两辆车, it ji sa si 一二三四, and nopeq 两百. Perhaps actually nng and no are actually related but everyone mix them together. But I've never notice any person use ji nng chia or no nng chia, or nng peq.

In Singapore, "nor" is Teochew and "neng" is for Hokkien.
The difference between Teochew and Hainanese for "two" is
"nor2" for Teochew and "nor3" for Hainanese.



Teochew and Hokkien(Minnan) are intelligible. If you can speak Teochew, you can also understand or even speak Hokkien.

There is also a separate Sinitic language called Danzhou I think. This was the true indigenous Chinese language before the intrusion of Minnan Hainanese. It might have influences from that.


Yeah, one of those linguists determined that there are actually 5 separate Min languages. The Minnan language is just one with partially intelligible "dialects" under it like Xiamen, Chaozhou, Hainan...

I don't know why people always think that there is only ONE type of hokkien. The majority of "hokkien" spoken in singapore is zhangzhou dialect. So it should be called zhangzhou hokkien.

Hokkien is NOT minnan but means min language. and teochew is actually a minnan dialect.

"Nor" is also for penang hokkien which is closer to chuanzhou hokkien.

That's right! The locals told me that even within the island, people from Wenchang and Qionghai could not understand the language spoken by Danzhou people. That's very strange. I wonder what dialect group does Danzhou language belong to?

Danzhou? Never heard of it. Does relate to Dan Hu?
Indeed there is a considerable difference in Hainanese with other Min Nan, e.g. the use of 't' where 's' is expected in others. e.g.3=ta~

Danzhou City is in the northwest of Hainan Province. People living there are Han-Chinese but their language is different from other Hainanese language. Please see below:

http://www.hainan.gov.cn/style1/map/index.php

Isn't that the same as cantonese and vietnamese ? The vietnamese use "t" initial while the cantonese use "s" initial ?

^It's the same as Cantonese with new Sino-Vietnamese, the loanwords. Sino-Vietnamese often change Mid Chinese 'Ch' into 'Th'. I don't know if this correspondence is also found in Hokkien-Hainan comparison.

I’ve just found out that the main language spoken in much of Danzhou is Linggao, not Hainanese.
The people of Lingao regard themselves as Han Chinese. However, the language they speak is not a Chinese dialect but a heavily Sinicised language related to Zhuang.

http://www.cjvlang.com/Hainan/hainantravelnw.html

This Lingao?
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=onb
so those seemingly Cantonese-influece in Hainanese are really from Cantonese.
But seemingly Danzhou dialect('Jun') is different language from this.

http://www.zompist.com/asia.htm#tai
seemingly they do change s into t, 1 to 4 is 'ot twang tam ti'

I am a hainanese and it is great to know so much of it from here...

thanks...

i am also hainanese and can confirm the exmaples Lin Duanwen gave.


Below are some examples of Hainanese language:

son : kia (sound like Hokkien)

two : nor (sound like Teochew)

meat : yoke (sound like Cantonese)

obviously u are not teochew, zhangzhou hokkien, hainanese or even xiamen hokkien!
2 is indeed 'nor' for zhangzhou hokkien, teochew, and hainanese

the difference between zhangzhou and teochew being that zhangzhou says 'nor e' for mandarin 'liang ge' and teochew says 'nor kai'

stick to cantonese, for your own sake

some basic sound change rules for hokkien or teochew speakers trying to understand hainanese:

1. p > ?b (it is voiced, like english 'b' and not mandarin 'b') : eg. peng (rice) > bui (obviously like zhangzhou pui)

2. s > t : eg. suaN (mountain) > tua (nasalization of vowels lost)

3. b > v : bue? (tail) > ve

4. t > ?d (it is voiced, again, like english 'd' and not mandarin 'd') : eg. tua(big) > dua

5. p > f : p'iN (nose) > fi

6. t' > h : t'au (head) > hau

7. ts > s ?

8. n > h ?

note: the ? in 1 and 4 are glottal stops .. (this time i m too lazy to type in the whole code, will add in later) also, i found that 1, 2, and 4 to be very constant, i.e. occuring over large range of words. 5, 6 and 7 i have not checked over a wider range yet, 3 seem correspond to only to words that are 'b' across the minnan languages, words that are 'm' in some of the minnan dialects, like 'mak' eye, retain the nasal 'm'. no. 8 is the most uncertain for me...it may be wrong

The examples 大 and 飯 above both started with voiced initial in ancient Chinese... Any other example?
And 尾 ~ ve : this one's initial corresponds to Mandarin w... How about other kinds of "M-" words?

btw, somehow, the changes above look like Vietnamese.

(please refer to my updated last post)
dear qrasy,

i agree it is very tempting to compare hainanese to middle chinese after the examples i gave but look at the following:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
sickness, (bing4 in hanyu pinyin)

middle chinese: b' zhangzhou minnan: peN hainan: ?be

eight, (ba1 in hanyu pinyin)

middle chinese: p zhangzhou minnan pwe? hainan ?bwe?

nose, (bi2 in hanyu pinyin)

middle chinese: b' hokkien in general p'iN hainan fi

----------------------------------------------------------------------

big (da4 in hanyu pinyin)

middle chinese: d' hokkien in general tua hainan: ?dua

east (dong1 in hanyu pinyin)

middle chinese: t teochew tang hainan: ?dang

head (tou2 in hanyu pinyin)

middle chinese: d' hokkien general t'au hainan: hau
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(usual terminology again, ? is glottal stop, N is nasalised vowel)

from the above, i would say it is more possible that the sounds in hainan is more a reflex of minnan than retention of voiced initials from middle chinese. i m not sure that the that theory can be disprovened though...







can you explain which part of the sound changes look like vietnamese, i only know about the s>t part where words with 's' regularly turn to 'th' in vietnamese.... are there others? actually, burmese had this sound change too. 3 (thouN) is said to come from an original 's' , so is walk 'thwa' , originally 'swa'... it is said the neighbouring tibeto-burman languages still retain the 's'. (th in burmese is a little like the unaspirated english 'th')

the t' > h seem to parallel toisan imho

The sound s regularly turns into t instead of th in Vietnamese.
If it turns out to be 'th', then there is reason to suspect that it's some sort of "sh".
水 thủy 傷 thương, but 小 tiểu 星 tanh.

In Guangyun there were 3 series of similar consonant (similar to s) all of which merge into single one in modern Hakka but still 2 in Mandarin.
Minnan is immune to some general changes from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese, and that is the explanation if those 3 consonants are not distinguished in Minnan.
And Minnan might also be the major influence toward the merger of those 3 initial consonant in most (if not all) Hakka and modern Guangfu Cantonese [well, 手 has different initial from 三 四 and 細 in Toishanese and most of the time Hong Kong old spelling has consistent sh-s and ch-ts distinction].

The correspondence of two of them to Vietnamese is what I referred as above.
The third kind of 's' is split to sh and s in Mandarin but are still consistent in Vietnamese, which is denoted by s (which is actually read more like "sh" in Quoc Ngu)
色 sắc 所 sở. ('s' in Mandarin)
雙 song 沙 sa ('sh' in Mandarin)

We can have dental-alveolar, postalveolar, alveolo-palatal and retroflex... Depends on how people would like to reconstruct the Middle Chinese.

But the type of 's' that change to 't' is most likely the 'normal s' as Mon-Khmer words in Vietnamese also have this change.

The other changes are p->b and t->d which also appear in Vietnamese.
半 bán 巴 ba
低 đê 等 đẳng (this đ is not fricative)

Is this 'th' a fricative or aspirated stop?
I have seen, I think somewhere in Wikipedia, that there are some transcription "s" which is actually [θ].

Yes, this is not found in Vietnamese...

Btw, how can people know whether there are aspirated voiced stops in Middle Chinese? When it's voiced, I see no difference of aspirated or not...
The devoicing of some Wu dialects I see do not show aspiration.

i thought some hakka dialects (like dapu) had 2 sets of sibilants? or are they not divided according to the qieyun tables?



so, are there any mon-khmer origin words in vietnamese that had this s > t change?



which brings me to 1 question, why was 'đ' used to denote 'd' sound, and 'd' became the 'z' or 'y' sound in vietnamese?




it is a fricative, although the way i hear some burmese pronounce them, i can bearly discern them from a normal t. and, i have to correct an earlier statement, it seem that the aspirated 'th' (as in english 'though') exists too, though i have not heard of that myself, my teacher pronounced 3 rather unaspirated (it is supposed to be aspirated)



actually, i am just using the reconstructions done by karlgren as an example, which i understand is a bit outdated, i had wanted to put parenthesis in to show the uncertainty over this part. i am actually neutral over this. what is your own views

I'm not sure if some Hakka dialect distinguish 2 kinds of them.
But my father was speculating that the sh-s distinction came from non-Chinese, so that means in Dabu there is no such distinction.

And I'm not sure when Middle Chinese started to distinguish those 3 sets of fricatives.
But if they are explainable by rhyme, then there should be some example that Fanqie shows a "different" consonant... and if I remember correctly I have found it for p vs "f" and m vs "mv" (I put "" because they are apparently later innovations) in 唐韻.

If I recall correctly, there is such an example:
Khmer sok vs Vietnamese tóc

In early "Quoc Ngu" version, there is something like "deạoc".
I think that it is because the bias toward the central accent, if I recall correctly it is something like [dz].

A wild speculation : maybe the 2 sounds were thought to be distinguished by the rhyme (like ga vs ge) while it was not... So đ was invented later, and some special vowels were also invented later...
I have to see the older document again (forgot where) in order to find out whether this can be true...

If it's unclearly distinguished from [t], then it might be an affricate [tθ]

"Th" in "though" is a voiced fricative to me
Aspirated t is just like t in time. Any unaspirated stop is an allophone of the same phoneme if there is a s- preceding.


Well, there's nothing that can confirm that there are or are no aspiration for the stops.
But how would that explain unaspirated devoicing?
Anyway, when they are not distinguished, we can use any, like in English dictionary providing IPA, even the aspirated p is written /p/. (which is called "phonemic transcription", but real phonetic one will use [] and real value)