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Hakka Chinese

primary branch of Chinese originating in Southern China

AI overview

Hakka Chinese is a major Chinese language variety that developed in Southern China and is spoken by millions of people in the region and in diaspora communities worldwide. It matters because it represents an important part of Chinese linguistic and cultural diversity, with its own distinct grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation that differ from other major Chinese varieties like Mandarin and Cantonese.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Article

A Hakka speaker, recorded in Taiwan Hakka is a language group of varieties of Chinese spoken natively by the Hakka people in parts of Southern China, Taiwan, some diaspora areas of Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around the world.

Due to its primary usage in isolated regions where communication is limited to the local area, Hakka has developed numerous varieties or dialects, spoken in different provinces, such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Guizhou, as well as in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Yue, Wu, Min, Mandarin or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintelligible varieties. It is most closely related to Gan and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan, with a few northern Hakka varieties even being partially mutually intelligible with southern Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared areal features.