Teochew dialect

The Teochew language^[1] is typically classified by Chinese linguists as part of the Southern Min Chinese language family. It is spoken in the Chaoshan (潮汕) region of eastern Guangdong and by the Teochew diaspora in various regions around the world.{| class="infobox" style="width: 22em; text-align: left; font-size: 88%; line-height: 1.5em" ! colspan=3 style="text-align: center; font-size: 125%; font-weight: bold; color: black; background-color: tomato" | Teochew |- ! colspan=3 style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold; color: black; background-color: tomato" | 潮州話 |-

! Spoken in | | China, Vietnam, India Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Australia, United States of America, Canada, France and other countries where Teochew migrants have settled.

|- ! Region | colspan=2 | in China: eastern Guangdong province including Chaozhou, Shantou, Jieyang, Chaoyang, Puning, Chao'an, Raoping, Huilai, and Shanwei, and the southmost Fujian county of Zhao'an. |-

Chinese
- Min
  - Min Nan
    - Teochew

|- |- |colspan="3" class="boilerplate metadata" style="line-height:10pt; padding:0.5em;"| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. |} The Teochew language preserves many Ancient Chinese archaic pronunciations and vocabulary that have been lost in some of the other modern dialects of Chinese. As such, many linguists consider Teochew one of the most conservative Chinese dialects.

Classification

Teochew is a member of the Southern Min or Min Nan dialect group, which in turn constitutes one of the seven major dialect groups of the Sinitic language family. As with other varieties of Chinese, linguists have not yet agreed on whether Teochew should be treated as a language or a dialect. However, apart from the political perspective of this, from a purely linguistic point of view, Teochew (or the Southern Min Language at large) should be a language in its own right since it is mutually unintelligible with other "dialect groups" of China. Nevertheless, Teochew is mutually intelligible with some other Southern Min Languages, notably the dialects of Zhangzhou (漳州) and Quanzhou (泉州) probably because of their proximity. Even within the Teochew varieties, there is substantial variation in phonology between different regions of Chaoshan and between different Teochew communities overseas.

The Chaozhou language in China, in terms of their closeness, can be roughly divided into 3 sub-groups:

1) Chaozhou sub-group, including Chaozhou (潮州), Shantou (汕頭/汕头), Jieyang (揭陽/揭阳), Chenghai (澄海), Nan'ao County (南澳) and Raoping (饒平/饶平),

2) Chaopu sub-group, including Chaoyang (潮陽/潮阳), Puning (普寧/普宁), Huilai (惠來/惠来), and

3) Hailufeng (海陸豐/海陆丰) sub-group, including Shanwei (汕尾), Lufeng (陸豐/陆丰) and Haifeng (海豐/海丰)

History and geography

Modern Teochew evolved from the more archaic Southern Min Language. Between the 9th and the 15th century, a group of Min people migrated south from Fujian to the coastal region of eastern Guangdong now known as Chaoshan (潮汕). This migration was most likely due in part to over-population in Fujian (福建).

Due to geographical isolation from Fujian, Teochew evolved into a separate dialect.

As mentioned above, the Chaoshan region where Chaozhou is spoken includes the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou, which are jointly the source of the name, as well as Jieyang, Chaoyang, Puning, Chao'an, Raoping, Huilai, Chenghai, Nanao, Lufeng, Haifeng, Shanwei and Huidong (惠东). Parts of the Hakka-speaking region, like Jiexi (揭西), Dabu (大埔) and Fengshun (豐順/丰顺) are also Chaozhou-speaking.

The administrative region now known as Chaoshan in China was one of the major sources of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia during the 18th–20th centuries, forming one of the larger dialect groups among the Overseas Chinese. In particular, the Teochew people settled in significant numbers in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos where they form the largest Chinese dialect group. They constitute a significant minority in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (especially in Riau, North Sumatra, South Sumatra, and West Kalimantan, in Pontianak and Ketapang). Teochew speakers also live in Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America, France, Germany, and England, a result of both direct emigration from Chaoshan to these nations and secondary emigration from Southeast Asia.

However, as the world globalises, the language is losing popularity among its ancestral speakers. In Singapore, due to common culture, and influences from the media and government, Singaporean Chinese youths whose ancestral language is Teochew are either converting to English, Standard Mandarin or Hokkien (with which it shares a certain degree of mutual intelligibility). Teochew remains the ancestral language of many Chinese people in Singapore - Teochew people are the second largest Chinese group in Singapore, after the Hokkien - although Mandarin is gradually supplanting Teochew as their mother tongue, especially among the younger generations. In Thailand, particularly in Bangkok, Teochew is still spoken among older ethnic Chinese Thai-citizen, however the younger generation ethnic Chinese Thai-citizen tends to learn Mandarin as a third language after Thai and English. Teochew was never popular in Japan and South Korea among the Chinese communities since most of the ethnic Chinese of Teochew ancestry who migrated to these countries are secondary immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Most of them are second generation Hong Konger and Taiwanese who speak Cantonese and Mandarin as well as Korean and Japanese, leaving Teochew to be spoken mostly by elders.

Languages in contact

This refers to Chaozhou, which is the variety of Teochew spoken in the People's Republic of China.

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