[Ian_Lee]

Does anyone know how to speak Hainanese?

Hainanese actually are widely scattered all around SE Asia. In total there are 3 million overseas Hainanese.

But they are seldom talked about because:

(1) Unlike their Cantonese, Hakka, Chaozhouese and Fujianese brethen, the Hainese does not form a majority in the Chinese communities in those host countries. Their voices seem less vocal than the above groups which have larger clan associations;

(2) Unlike the other three groups which are traders, wholesalers, retailers and professionals, the Hainanese work on the lowest ladder, i.e. cooks, miners,..etc in those societies. Since they have less economic clout, of course their influences are less.

But Hainanese are quite famous. The Soong sisters were Hainanese (But I recall they only spoke Shanghaiese and Mandarin). And they got the famous cuisine "Hainan Chicken with Rice" originated in Singapore and they also invented the cocktail "Singapore Sling".

One of my SE Asian Chinese friend told me that Hainanese like to reside in highland and they form the majority among all Chinese in Laos.

But Hainanese are island people. How come they like to live in highland?

[bhchao]

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But Hainanese are quite famous. The Soong sisters were Hainanese (But I recall they only spoke Shanghaiese and Mandarin).

Although they were Hainanese, 宋靄齡 and 宋慶齡 were born in Shanghai. 宋美齡 was born in Hainan like her father Charlie Soong.

Ching-ling also spoke Cantonese, besides Shanghainese and Mandarin. I'm not sure whether the other two sisters spoke Cantonese as well.

[Gary Soup]

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But Hainanese are quite famous. The Soong sisters were Hainanese (But I recall they only spoke Shanghaiese and Mandarin)

The sisters (as well as papa Charlie and brother Ziwen) also spoke English quite well, due to their being educated in the US.

[wiz_oz]

I would be pleased if somebody could confirm or otherwise that the Hainanese were the dominant clan involved in the coffee-shop trade in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.

They are definitely very clannish. Their clan association are called Keng Chew (I have no idea why or what it means. Their clan association are quite wealthy. Some will even provide scholarship and other assistance to Hainanese children.

[wenjing*girl]

I used to live in Hainan for awhile.... I could understand 海南话and speak some... it's kinda useless to know now, but I miss hearing it.... I think it sounds good.

[Ian_Lee]

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I would be pleased if somebody could confirm or otherwise that the Hainanese were the dominant clan involved in the coffee-shop trade in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.

That is a very likely possibility because among all regions in China, only Hainan is located at such low latitude that coffee can be planted there.

[xng]

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Does anyone know how to speak Hainanese?

Hainanese actually are widely scattered all around SE Asia. In total there are 3 million overseas Hainanese.

Hainanese is actually a dialect of the hokkien (minnan) language. So those hokkien speakers can understand hainanese with minimal effort and vice versa. Same with teochew dialect. All these dialects should be grouped under hokkien language as all their ancestors came from hokkien (fujien) province in china.

[Ah-Bin]

Hainanese isn't that similar to Amoy (Xiamen) hokkien though. Although it many of the ancestors of present day speakers came from Fujian, I would say it has influences from Taishanese and the Loi language native to Hainan as well. Then there are some features of pronunciation that are like Vietnamese, for instance:

三 = tam - Amoy sann (nasalised)
新 = tin - Amoy sin

They drop their initial "t" like Taishanese and their final "n" like Wu dialects:

天 = hi - Amoy tinn
聽 = hia - Amoy thiann

They also have an "f" sound, which, I believe, is not found in any other Hokkien dialect.

They don't say bah for meat (肉), either, but hiok, which is related to Cantonese yuk, Mdn. rou4 etc.

So I think Hainanese is a mixture of many more things than just Hokkien

[xng]

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三 = tam - Amoy sann (nasalised)
新 = tin - Amoy sin

They drop their initial "t" like Taishanese and their final "n" like Wu dialects:

天 = hi - Amoy tinn
聽 = hia - Amoy thiann

They also have an "f" sound, which, I believe, is not found in any other Hokkien dialect.

They don't say bah for meat (肉), either, but hiok, which is related to Cantonese yuk, Mdn. rou4 etc.

Correction ! Most minnan dialects speak

三 - Sa
新 - Sin

天 - Ti
聽 - Tia

So the main difference is that the T initials in most minnan dialects becomes H. And the S initials becomes T. But basically it is very similar to most minnan dialects.

Just because you use hiok to represent meat doesn't mean it is a different language. Eg. in malaysia, the hokkien sometimes use malay word to mix but it is still minnan.

[ala]

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Correction ! Most minnan dialects speak

三 - Sa
新 - Sin

天 - Ti
聽 - Tia

And most Wu dialects say:

三 - sae (as in English "say")
新 - sin or shin (as in English "seen" or "sheen"), Suzhou uses "sin", Shanghai and Ningbo use "shin"

天 - ti
聽 - tin

[Ah-Bin]

Sorry I should have explained.

Actually, that double nn is just a way of romanising the nasalised vowel. Sometimes they write a tilde (~) above it.
So sa 沙 and sann (sa~) 三

are written differently in many Hokkien dictionaries, otherwise they use a small n. If you only speak Hokkien and haven't learnt how to transcribe it phonetically, I suppose that the nasalised vowel is hard to hear, but it is there.

Compare chhia 車 and chhiann 請 (although the tone is different).

[ala]

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I suppose that the nasalised vowel is hard to hear, but it is there.
Compare chhia 車 and chhiann 請 (although the tone is different).

Yeah, the nasal vowels in Wu dialects (the other Chinese dialect that has nasal vowels) exist for characters like 上 [zD~] / [zO~]、侬 [no~] (for some Wu dialects)、生 [sa~]. For characters like 三 [sE]、田 [di], the nasal used to exist (as [sae~] and [diE~]), but over time has been dropped. Just like in French, nasal vowels tend to disappear with modernization.

[xng]

Whenever I hear or speak hokkien in malaysia/singapore, I don't notice the nasalised vowel at all ! Maybe it has disappeared too. So the "small n" is not that important to distinguish a dialect from another dialect of the same language ie. hokkien. because it is so faint compared to cantonese.

I am sure hainanese use these words which are unique to hokkien dialects only.
"lang" for man
"do lok" for where


One of the min bei dialect that I know of pronounce
三 - "So" instead of "Sa"

[Ah-Bin]

I have never heard it, but it seems that Singapore Hokkien and Taiwanese Hokkien are quite different. You can't really speak of phonological change in terms of "Modernisation" though, only in terms of change from one feature to another. There is nothing inherently modern about dropping a nasalisation, any more than there is anything modern about dropping initial "t" in Hainanese.

also
"where" (Mdn. 在哪裡) in Taiwanese is "di der wee" (in Douglas Romanization "ti to ui")

"lang" is not the only word that is typical of Hokkien, there's

kia(nn) "son, child" The character is 囝 and
tsuu (chu) "house" which is written 厝 I bet they wouldn't write it like that if they knew the real meaning of the character = "a place to put a coffin"

[ala]

Ah-Bin said:

You can't really speak of phonological change in terms of "Modernisation" though, only in terms of change from one feature to another. There is nothing inherently modern about dropping a nasalisation, any more than there is anything modern about dropping initial "t" in Hainanese.

You misunderstood me. By "modernization" I meant the social and historical developments of modernity: urbanization (vast migrations and mixing of populations), radio/television communication (which besides pronunciation brings other consequences such as faster speech), public education and the promotion of a national standard language. In Wu dialects, the nasal vowel either disappears becoming just a pure vowel (like in Japanese) or it develops a velar ending (ng) from Standard Mandarin influence.

ala]Just like in French, nasal vowels tend to disappear [B][U]with[/U] modernization[/B said:

.

[xng]

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I"lang" is not the only word that is typical of Hokkien, there's

kia(nn) "son, child" The character is 囝 and
tsuu (chu) "house" which is written 厝 "

If you listen to hainanese and teochiu dialects, you will notice they have all these common features. Mainly because they are minnan dialects. Their ancestors came from there.

Another sound that is common to hainan, teochiu etc is "pak" for hit. "ja bo" for woman and "da bo" for man.

So I don't know why people separate out these groups with the other hokkien dialects. Hokkien province itself has many dialects such as quanchou, zhangchou etc.