Amoinese

I met Miss Lim Chern Chern at Hong Kong. Stephen Noton, my friend, introduced three of his Global Sources colleagues to me. Chern Chern was one of them, a pretty chinese looking lady. Yes, she is chinese, and also amoinese.

Her monther’s family immigrated from xiamen to Singapore. Chern can still speak Minnan dialect ( xiamen local language ). Her name, like most of my acquaintances in Singapore of Philipines, was named be the pronounciation of Minnan dialect.

If not, her name should look and sound like Lin Zhen Zhen in Mandarin.

Chern Chern asked me a very challenging question. Why they called the language Hokkien.

Hokkien, according to the pronounciation, means Fujian. Fujian stands for the whole province. Fujian’s dialects diverse from city to city, even town to town.

Yes, I would like to regard naming the Minnan Dialect as Hokkien as sort of bueatiful mistake. Just like the English name for Xiamen, Amoy.

From north to south, dialects of Fujian can be divided into 3 different main group. Fuzhou dialect, Putian (Puxian) dialect and Minnan Dialect. And the west part of Fujian, Hakka dialect. So there are four main dialect groups in Fujian province, they differ from each other, and sure they cant understand each other.

Minnan, “Min” is the shortened form for Fujian, “nan” means south. Minnan dialect is the dominant dialect in the south of Fujian province, groups by three cities and their near-by territories. There are Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Xiamen. Minnan dialect is also the dominant dialect in Taiwan island. But they decided to replace the name Minnan Dialect with Taiwan Dialect after KMT lost their power.

Yes, once again, Hokkien is the dominant dialect only in south of Fujian province, not for all. Hokkien language’s root is Minnan Dialect.

Sure, the most and earliest immigrants from Fujian province to southeast of Asia came from south of Fujian.