Three varieties, three stories
Beyond Mandarin and Cantonese, Chinese includes many other regional languages, some spoken by tens of millions of people. This article looks at three well-known ones: Shanghainese, Hokkien and Hakka. They belong to different major groups, are tied to different places, and illustrate different relationships between language, locality and migration.
As the overview of Chinese dialects explains, calling them “dialects” is common, though the differences from Mandarin are large enough that many linguists treat them as distinct languages. Here they are called regional languages. Speaker numbers and boundaries are hard to state precisely, so this article avoids exact figures.
Shanghainese
Shanghainese is the speech of Shanghai and belongs to the Wu group, which is spoken across a region including parts of Zhejiang and southern Jiangsu. Wu varieties are often described as soft or flowing by listeners, and the group is known for features such as voiced consonants, which are less common in Mandarin. Wu speech also differs from Mandarin in its tones and in its vocabulary.
Shanghai grew into a large commercial city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, drawing people from the surrounding Wu-speaking area and from farther away. Its local speech became a mix of regional influences, and it came to be associated with the city’s urban character, including its popular culture of the early twentieth century.
Today, much of Shanghai’s population uses Standard Mandarin in public life, and many younger residents grow up with Mandarin as a dominant language. There has been public discussion about the future of the local speech, and efforts to record, teach and perform in it. Views differ about how best to preserve it. Neighboring Wu areas, such as the region around Suzhou, have their own related but distinct speech, and the local cultural world of the Jiangnan water towns and the Suzhou gardens is part of that setting.
Hokkien
Hokkien belongs to the Min group and is associated with southern Fujian province. The name Hokkien comes from a Hokkien pronunciation of the province’s name. It is closely related to Taiwanese, the form of Hokkien widely spoken in Taiwan, and to Teochew and related varieties, though how closely these are grouped depends on the linguist.
Hokkien is notable for how far it traveled. Over centuries, people from coastal Fujian moved to Taiwan and across the sea to Southeast Asia, carrying their speech with them. As a result Hokkien is heard in communities in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, among others, where it has mixed with local languages and contributed words to them. Some of this belongs to the broader story of Southeast Asian influence.
Min varieties are known for preserving features that other varieties lost, and for a particularly large number of differences from Mandarin. Hokkien has a rich set of tones, and in its tone system a syllable’s tone often changes depending on the syllable that follows, a pattern known as tone sandhi. It also has both a literary and a colloquial layer of pronunciation, meaning that the same character may be read two ways depending on whether it appears in a formal or everyday word.
In Taiwan, Hokkien has long been a major home language and has a place in popular song, drama and puppetry. Attitudes to its use in education and media have shifted over time, and the topic remains a matter of public discussion.
Hakka
Hakka is spoken in scattered communities across southern China, including parts of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi, and in Taiwan and in overseas communities. The name Hakka means “guest families” in Chinese, and the term is usually explained by the community’s tradition of earlier migration from northern China to the south over many centuries. Historians discuss the details and timing, and some caution is needed, since local histories are complex.
Unlike Shanghainese or Hokkien, Hakka is not tied to a single city or province. Hakka speakers often lived in upland and hilly areas, in communities that were distinct from the surrounding population. In parts of Fujian and Guangdong, the distinctive large round or square earthen dwellings seen in some Hakka areas are well known, as are community traditions such as clan halls and genealogies, which are taken up in the discussion of clan genealogies.
Linguistically, Hakka shares features with other southern varieties. Like Cantonese, it keeps final stop consonants, and it has a set of tones that differs from Mandarin’s. Because Hakka communities spread widely, the language also varies from place to place.
Hakka people have been prominent in overseas migration, and Hakka speakers are found in many parts of the world. As with other emigrant languages, the settlement abroad often brought a shift toward the local language over generations.
What the three have in common
Despite being different, Shanghainese, Hokkien and Hakka show several shared themes.
- Local identity. Each speech variety is a marker of belonging to a place or community, expressed in family talk, folk songs, local opera, proverbs and humor.
- Migration. Movement of people shaped all three, whether to a booming city, across the sea, or through generations of resettlement. The patterns of emigration are discussed in the articles on Western diaspora and Australian migration.
- Shared writing. All three are generally written using the standard written language, so a reader from any of these backgrounds can read the same newspaper.
- Pressure and revival. In each case, the spread of Standard Mandarin in education and media has affected daily use, particularly among younger people, and there are community efforts to keep the local languages alive.
A note on terms
The labels in this article are broad. “Hokkien” covers a range of local forms, and the same is true of Hakka. Speakers themselves may use different names. Treat the three varieties as entry points into a much larger and more varied picture, not as a complete list. Other Wu, Min, Xiang and Gan varieties each have their own character, and the distinct cultural regions of China often line up closely with them.