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Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language pp 77–93Cite as

The Fate of Hokkien in Its Homeland

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the changing functional status of Hokkien in southern Fujian , the homeland of the language. Under the promotion of Putonghua , its status has been demoted from vernacular language prior to the 20th century to ethnic language throughout most of the second half of this century. Around the same period when the National Language Movement entered a new phase close to the turn of the 21st century, Xiamen experienced an exponential growth ascribed to migration from other parts of China . These two factors combined have led to a dramatic decline in the use of Hokkien in the public domain in contemporary Xiamen, marking a change from Putonghua-first to Putonghua-only in this city. To a lesser extent, this trend of change is also observed in Quanzhou and Zhangzhou . In other words, Hokkien is facing endangerment even in its homeland. Using the Youngest Child Model , Xiamen as the newest city in southern Fujian is predicted to be the one that will first complete the change to become a Putonghua-speaking city and this trend of language shift will affect the other cities unless a significant event reverses the current direction of development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This long-lasting discrimination continued well into the first half of the 20th century. For example, Table 4.2 in the previous chapter shows a great gender difference among children going to school in Taiwan .

  2. 2.

    Like other Chinese topolects such as Cantonese (cf. Snow 2010), it is possible to write Southern Min with characters . However, the language lacks a writing tradition, as no teaching of written Southern Min has ever been attempted in school in the long history of the language until the launch of language revitalization in Taiwan in recent times. Precisely due to the lack of writing tradition, the choice of written form for Southern Min has been an unresolved issue there, as pointed out in Sect. 4.4.

  3. 3.

    The Mandarin language, boasting the largest number of speakers in China , comprises at least ten dialectal groups such as Southwestern Mandarin, Zhongyuan Mandarin and Jiang-Huai Mandarin (Wurm et al. 1988). The Peking /Beijing variety is one of the smaller groups of Mandarin dialects . A 1984 survey reported that only 54 % of the populace in the Mandarin-speaking area could speak Putonghua , although 91 % understood it (Chen 1999, p. 27).

  4. 4.

    Code-switching is also a common feature of family scenes in movies such as Singapore Dreaming. At the dinner time, three languages, including Hokkien , are used simultaneously.

  5. 5.

    In their sample of 284 respondents in urban Quanzhou , Lin and Xu (2009) report that 37 % of the respondents are monolingual in Putonghua .

  6. 6.

    This assumption is basically true for Xiamen , taking the island as the urban area. It requires modification for the other two cities, however.

  7. 7.

    Signboards of such bilingualism are found even in mountainous areas as remote as Ninglang Yi Autonomous County in northwestern Yunnan .

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  1. Pokfulam, Hong Kong

    Picus Sizhi Ding

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Ding, P.S. (2016). The Fate of Hokkien in Its Homeland. In: Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language. SpringerBriefs in Linguistics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-594-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-594-5_5

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