Hainanese is a variety of Min Chinese spoken in the island of Hainan and regional overseas Chinese communities.

In the classification by Yuan Jiahua, it was added to the Southern Min group by him despite being mutually unintelligible with Southern Min varieties such as Hokkien and Teochew. In the classification of Li Rong, used by the Language Atlas of China, it was treated as a separate Min subgroup. Hou Jingyi combined it with Leizhou Min, spoken on the Leizhou Peninsula, in a Qiong–Lei group. "Hainanese" is also used for the language of the Li people living in Hainan, but generally refers to Min varieties spoken in Hainan.

Phonology

The phonologies of the different varieties of Hainanese are highly divergent, with the Wenchang dialect being the prestige dialect, and often used as a reference.

Consonants

Below is a table for the consonants of Hainanese across the dialects of Wenchang, Haikou and the dialect of Banqiao Town, in Dongfang. For more information on a specific variety, please consult the relevant article.

Many of the most widely spoken varieties of Hainanese notably have a series of implosive consonants, and , which were acquired through contact with surrounding languages, probably Hlai. However, more conservative varieties of Hainanese such as Banqiao remain closer to Leizhou Peninsula Min and other varieties, lack them.

The consonant system of Hainanese corresponds well with that of Leizhou Peninsula Min, but it has had some restructuring. In particular:

• Etymological plain stops have undergone implosivization (*p > , *t > ) in the more innovative varieties such as Wenchang and Haikou.

• Etymological aspirated stops have spirantized (*pʰ > , *tʰ > , *tsʰ > , *kʰ > ) in more innovative varieties.

• The lenition of an historic *b into in Banqiao and Haikou, though not in Wenchang.

• Former *s has hardened into a stop (*s > ), although in the more conservative Banqiao dialect some instances have only undergone fortition to (*s > ), and others have remained .

• Former *h has become in Wenchang.

Additionally, is an allophone of .

These changes also make Hainanese fairly close to Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary.

Vowels

Hainanese has seven phonemic vowels.

Tones

Tone chart of the Hainan dialect

Romanization

Hainanese Pinyin

Hainanese Pinyin () is a phonetic system announced by the Education Administration Department of Guangdong Province in September 1960. It marks tones with numbers.

Initials

Finals

Grammar

Hainanese is known for having post-verbal locative prepositional phrases, as opposed to having such phrases in the pre-verbal position, as is common in most other varieties of Chinese. For example:

This has been attributed to contact with the Kra–Dai languages of Hainan, such as Hlai and Be.

See also

• Hainanese people

Notes

References

Further reading

• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hainanese articles.

• Miyake, Marc. 2008. Hainanese -om and -op.

• includes a description of the phonology of the Ding'an dialect.

• describes Wenchang dialect.

External links

• Learn hainanese