Singaporean Hokkien is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect of Hokkien is known as Singaporean Minnan. It bears similarities with the Amoy dialect in Xiamen and Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwan.
Hokkien is the Southern Min pronunciation for the province of Fujian, and is generally the term used by the Chinese in Southeast Asia to refer to the Quanzhang dialects. Singaporean Hokkien heavily views the Amoy dialect as its prestige, and its accent is predominantly based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech, with a greater inclination towards the former instead of the latter.
Nevertheless, the grammar and tones of Singaporean Hokkien are still largely based on standard Hokkien. When compared to the prestige Taiwanese accent spoken in Tainan and Kaohsiung, the accent and pronunciation of Singaporean Hokkien inclines towards Quanzhou, which is also close to the pronunciation of Taipei and Xiamen, and is less close to that of Tainan, which has a greater inclination towards Zhangzhou.
Like many spoken languages in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced by other languages spoken in Singapore. For instance, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew, and is sometimes regarded by non-Singaporean speakers as a combined Hokkien–Teochew speech. In addition, it incorporates many loanwords from Singapore's four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. Because of its historical prevalence in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien has also exerted significant influence on the Singaporean variant of Mandarin.
History From the 19th until the early half of the 20th century, there was a large influx of Chinese migrants from southern China into Singapore. This led to Chinese constituting almost 75% of Singapore's population. Of these Chinese, many originated from the regions of Amoy/Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou in Fujian province. They brought Southern Min to Singapore, which was then propagated throughout the Malayan region. As there was no formal Chinese name for Southern Min in the early 20th century, these migrants began to use their place of origin as the name of their speech, and thus called the variety "Hokkien", referring to Fujian province.
During the 19th century, many traditional private Chinese schools in Singapore (referred to as ) generally used Hokkien to teach Chinese classics and Classical Chinese. However, by the early 20th century, Mandarin began to replace Hokkien as the medium of instruction in Chinese schools after the founding of many Mandarin-medium schools.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many political speeches in Singapore were in Hokkien, in order to reach out to the Chinese community in Singapore. There was also a thriving Hokkien cultural scene that included Hokkien story-telling, opera, and media in Singapore.
After 1979, the Singapore government began to push for the use of Mandarin in Singapore, spearheaded by the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Following this, the Singapore government also began to employ a more stringent censorship, or ban, of Hokkien media in the Singaporean Chinese media. Consequently, all Hokkien-language media in Singapore had to be dubbed in Mandarin before being allowed to stream on national TV.
In addition, the 1980s saw Chinese-medium education replaced by that in English, causing English to emerge as the most widely used language in Singapore. The emergence of the English language, coupled with heavy promotion of Mandarin, generally led Hokkien to decline in Singapore after 1979.
Current status Today, the lingua franca of the Chinese community in Singapore is Mandarin. Although Hokkien is still widely spoken in Singapore today, it is not as widespread as before and is mostly restricted to the older generations. The most common places to hear Hokkien spoken in Singapore are at the country's hawker centres or kopi tiams.
Speaking ability varies amongst the different age groups of the Hokkien Singaporeans. The elderly are generally able to communicate effectively in Hokkien. On the other hand, the middle and younger generations, while generally proficient, have generally lost the ability to communicate as fluently. However, when it comes to using profanities, majority of the younger generation, even among non-Chinese Singaporeans, listed Hokkien as the first out of all languages and Chinese varieties. With the Speak Mandarin Campaign from the government, the Hokkien speaking population has been on a gradual decline.
Revival There is, however, groups of Hokkien Singaporeans working to help preserve, spread and revive the use of Singaporean Hokkien in the country.
The ease of access to online Hokkien entertainment media and pop music from the internet has helped to connect to the language and culture. Many Singaporeans are increasingly using online and social media platforms to learn, discuss, meet, and interact with each other in Hokkien.
Phonology Note: In this article, the Tâi-lô romanization system is used.
Consonants +Initials Bilabial Alveolar Alveolo-palatal Velar Glottal plain sibilant Nasal m 名 (miâ) n 耐 (nāi) ng 硬 (ngē) Plosive plain p 邊 (pian) t 地 (tē) ts 曾 (tsan) tsi 祝 (tsiok) k 求 (kiû) 音 (im) aspirated ph 波 (pho) th 他 (thann) tsh 出 (tshut) tshi 手 (tshiú) kh 去 (khì) voiced b 文 (bûn) d 日 (di̍t) j *熱 (jua̍h) ji *入 (ji̍p) g 牛 (gû) Fricative s 衫 (sann) si 心 (sim) h 喜 (hí) Approximant l 柳 (liú) w 我 (wá)
+Finals Bilabial Alveolar Velar Glottal Nasal consonant -m 心 (sim) -n 今 (kin) -ng 興 (heng) Stop consonant -p 急 (kip) -t 越 (ua̍t) -k 速 (sok) -h 物 (mih)+Syllabic consonant Bilabial Velar Nasal m 毋 (m̄) ng 酸 (sng)
Vowels +Monophthongs Front Central Back Closei 伊 (i)inn 圓 (înn)ir 豬 (tir)u 有 (ū)unn 羊 (iûnn)Close-Mide 會(ē)enn 嬰 (enn) o 蠔 (ô)Mider 鍋 (er)Open-Midoo 烏 (oo)onn 嗚 (onn)Opena 亞 (a)ann 餡 (ānn) +Diphthongs & TriphthongsDiphthongTriphthongai [ai]愛 (ài)ia [ia]椰 (iâ)io [io]腰 (io)ua [ua]娃 (ua)ui [ui]為 (uī)iau [iau]枵 (iau)au [au]後 (āu)ia [iɛ]燕 (iàn)iu [iu]油 (iû)ue [ue]話 (uē)uai [uai] 歪 (uai)
Tones +Singaporean Hokkien tonesTonesUpper/Dark Lower/Light No.NameTLe.g.Pitch ContourNo.NameTLe.g.Pitch ContourOriginalSandhiedOriginalSandhiedLevel 1陰平im-piânn詩si[˦˦] (44)[˨˨] (22)5陽平iông-piânn時sî[˨˦] (24)[˨˩] (21) Rising 2上聲sióng-siann死sí[˦˨] (42)[˨˦] (24)－Departing 3陰去im-khì四sì[˨˩] (21)[˦˨] (42)7陽去iông-khì是sī[˨˨] (22)[˨˩] (21)Entering 4陰入im-ji̍p薛sih[ʔ˧˨] (32)[ʔ˦˨] (42)8陽入iông-ji̍p蝕si̍h[ʔ˦˧] (43)[ʔ˨˩] (21)[ʔ˦] (4)[ʔ˦] (4)NoteEntering tones (4 & 8) only occur in closed syllables where ◌ represents either -p, -t, -k, or -h.
Variation Regional accents and tones When Singaporeans speak Hokkien, they do so with various accents and tones largely from Tong'an, Anxi, Nan'an, Kinmen as well as Yongchun, Jinjiang, Longhai City and Southern Zhangzhou accents. In practice, it is common for Singaporeans to mix English conjunctions such as "and" into a Hokkien sentence. Some would include honn (乎) (an exclamatory remark in Jinjiang / Nan'an), in addition to the widely used Hokkien exclamatory particles la () or loo ().
No distinction between literary and vernacular readings In saying years or numbers, Singaporean Hokkien normally does not differentiate between literary () or vernacular () readings of Chinese characters. In Taiwan or Amoy, a distinction is usually made. For instance, the year 1980 would be said with a literary pronunciation (); but in Singapore, no differentiation is made and is pronounced as otherwise vernacular .
As another instance, Taiwanese would speak telephone numbers using literary readings, whereas Singaporeans would use vernacular ones instead. For example, the telephone number 98444678 will be pronounced in Taiwan as , where in Singaporean Hokkien it would be pronounced as .
Influence from Southern Zhangzhou and Teochew Phonology Vowel shift from ing to eng In Singaporean Hokkien, as compared to Quanzhou (whose accent Hokkien usually inclines toward), Zhangzhou, Amoy or Taiwanese, which pronounce the vowel —there is a vowel change from ( or ) to ( or ). This change is similar to pronunciation in regions south of Zhangzhou—Dongshan, Yunxiao, Zhangpu, Pinghe, Zhao'an counties (southern Zhangzhou accent)—and in Teochew and Cantonese.
Below is a table illustrating the difference:
HanziSingaporean HokkienAmoy HokkienEnglishto liveclearbrightcoldbravepolitical
Pronunciation of 'I' In Amoy Hokkien pronunciation, (lit. 'I/me') is pronounced as ; but in Singapore, it is pronounced as , which is alleged by some to have been influenced by the Teochew pronunciation although other varieties like Putianese and some regional Hokkien dialects including most Taiwanese Hokkien dialects also pronounce it as .
Grammar There are some differences between the sentence structure used by Singaporean Hokkien and by Amoy/Taiwanese Hokkien.
For instance, when asking a question "do you want to...?", Singaporean Hokkien typically uses the sentence structure (), whereas Taiwan uses (). The word () is commonly used in Singaporean Hokkien to mean "want to", but in Amoy Hokkien and Taiwan Hokkien, the word () (which means "want" in Hokkien) is used instead. () in Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien it typically means "love to" or "need to".
Also, unlike Taiwanese Hokkien—which typically uses the word () (meaning "whether or not") when asking a question, which is more formal or polite—Singaporean Hokkien does not use the word (). Instead, it simply adds the word () at the end of the sentence to indicate that it is a question (similar to Mandarin's () or adds a Cantonese intonation () at the end. Adding the word () at the end of a sentence is also used in Taiwanese Hokkien, when one is asking a question in an informal way.
+ Differences in sentence structureSingaporean HokkienAmoyEnglishDo you want to eat?Did you have enough sleep?
Numerals
The following list shows the colloquial readings of the numerals used to count objects.
Hanzi Tâi-lô Value Notes, 0 is an informal way to represent zeroalso ()1 also pronounced also () when used in phone numbers etc.2 also ()345678910
Most ordinal numbers are formed by adding () in front of a cardinal number. In some cases, the literary reading of the number must then be used. For example, = , = .
Differences from other Hokkien varieties
There are minor differences between Singaporean Hokkien and Amoy or Taiwanese in terms of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. Amoy and Taiwanese bear close resemblance, and are usually considered the prestige dialect of Hokkien, differing only in terms of vocabulary.
Unique vocabulary
Although Singaporean Hokkien is similar to Amoy or Taiwanese, there exist certain unique Singaporean Hokkien words, which are different from those two aforementioned dialects.
Singaporean HokkienAmoy HokkienDefinitionmuseumzoocompletely not understand (lit. catch no balls)act smart (overdo it; Singapore especially for women)pretty ladysuperb (originated from Na Tuk Kong)
Same meaning, different words
Singaporean HokkienDefinitionAmoy/Taiwanese HokkienNotesàiWantbeh愛 ài in Amoy means "love" or "must". 欲 in Singaporean Hokkien can be classified as an auxiliary verb denoting volition of the following verb.