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Hainanese is a variety of Min Chinese spoken in the island of Hainan and regional overseas Chinese communities.

In the classification by Yuan Jiahua, it was added to the Southern Min group by him despite being mutually unintelligible with Southern Min varieties such as Hokkien and Teochew. In the classification of Li Rong, used by the Language Atlas of China, it was treated as a separate Min subgroup. Hou Jingyi combined it with Leizhou Min, spoken on the Leizhou Peninsula, in a Qiong–Lei group. "Hainanese" is also used for the language of the Li people living in Hainan, but generally refers to Min varieties spoken in Hainan.

Phonology

The phonologies of the different varieties of Hainanese are highly divergent, with the Wenchang dialect being the prestige dialect, and often used as a reference.

Consonants

Below is a table for the consonants of Hainanese across the dialects of Wenchang, Haikou and the dialect of Banqiao Town, in Dongfang.<br/>||

|-

! rowspan=3|Affricate

!

| || |||| style="background-color:AliceBlue"|<br/> tsia || ||

|-

!

| || || style="background-color:MintCream"||| || ||

|-

!

| || ||style="background-color:MintCream"|<br/>|| style="background-color:AliceBlue"|<br/> jit || ||

|-

! rowspan=2| Fricative

!

| style="background-color:AliceBlue"|<br/> fi|| style="background-color:MintCream"|<br/> || <br/> sei|||| <br/>|| <br/> hai

|-

!

| <br/> vun|| || style="background-color:Seashell"| <br/> zok || || || style="background-color:AliceBlue"|

|-

! colspan=2| Nasal

| <br/> mak|| colspan=2|<br/> niam || || <br/> ngak||

|-

! colspan=2| Approximant

| style="background-color:AliceBlue"|<br/> wat|| colspan=2| <br/> lao || style="background-color:AliceBlue"|<br/> yok|| ||

|}

Many of the most widely spoken varieties of Hainanese notably have a series of implosive consonants, and , which were acquired through contact with surrounding languages, probably Hlai. However, more conservative varieties of Hainanese such as Banqiao remain closer to Leizhou Peninsula Min and other varieties, lack them.

See also

  • Hainanese people

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hainanese articles.
  • Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hainanese -om and -op.
  • includes a description of the phonology of the Ding'an dialect.
  • describes Wenchang dialect.
  • Learn hainanese