Hakka (linguistics)

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Hakka
Traditional Chinese: 客家話
Simplified Chinese: 客家话
Hakka
客家話 / 客家话
Spoken in: People's Republic of China, Malaysia, Taiwan (Republic of China), Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Mauritius, Suriname, and other countries where Hakka Chinese migrants have settled. 
Region: in China: Eastern Guangdong province; adjoining regions of Fujian and Jiangxi provinces
Total speakers: 34 million 
Ranking: 32
Language family: Sino-Tibetan
 Chinese
  Hakka 
Official status
Official language in: none (legislative bills have been proposed for it to be one of the 'national languages' in the Republic of China); one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the ROC [1]; ROC government sponsors Hakka language television station to preserve language
Regulated by: The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created an official romanisation of Meixian Hakka dialect in 1960, one of four languages receiving this status in Guangdong. It is called Kejiahua Pinyin Fang'an.
Language codes
ISO 639-1: zh (Chinese)
ISO 639-2: chi (B)  zho (T)
ISO 639-3: hak
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Hakka (also: Kejia) (客家話/客家话, Hak-kâ-fa in Hakka, Kèjiāhuà in Mandarin) is a spoken variation of the Chinese language spoken predominantly in southern China by the Hakka ethnic group and descendants in diaspora throughout East and Southeast Asia and around the world.

The Hakka language has numerous variants or dialects, spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou provinces, including Hainan island and Taiwan. Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, Cantonese, Minnan and most of the significant spoken variants of the Chinese language.

There is a pronunciation difference between Taiwanese Hakka dialect and Guangdong Hakka dialect. Amongst the dialects of Hakka, the Moi-yen/Moi-yan (梅縣, Pinyin: Méixìan) dialect of northeast Guangdong has typically been viewed as a prime example of the Hakka language, forming a sort of standard dialect.

The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created an official romanisation of Meixian Hakka dialect in 1960, one of four languages receiving this status in Guangdong.

See Identification of the varieties of Chinese for more on the dispute whether Hakka and other Chinese linguistic groups should be properly considered languages or dialects.

Contents

[edit] Etymology

The name of the Hakka people who are the predominant original native speakers of the language literally means "guest families" or "guest people": Hak 客 (Mandarin: kè) means "guest", and ka 家 (Mandarin: jīa) means "family". Amongst themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa (-va) 客家話, Hak-fa (-va), 客話, Tu-gong-dung-fa (-va) 土廣東話, literally, "Native Guangdong language," and Ngai-fa (-va) 𠊎話, "My/our language".

[edit] History

[edit] Early history

The Hakka people have their origins in several episodes of migration from northern China into southern China during periods of war and civil unrest. The forebearers of the Hakka came from present-day Henan and Shaanxi provinces, and brought with them features of Chinese languages spoken in those areas during that time. (Since then the speech in those regions has evolved into dialects of modern Mandarin.) The presence of many archaic features occur in modern Hakka, including final consonants -p -t -k, as are found in other modern southern Chinese languages, but these have been lost in Mandarin.

Due to the migration of its speakers, the Hakka language may have been influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary are found in Hakka, Min and Cantonese Chinese languages.

Some people consider Hakka to have mixed with other languages, such as the language of the She people, throughout its development.

[edit] Linguistic development

A regular pattern of sound change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese languages, of the derivation of lexemes from earlier forms of Chinese. Some examples:

  • The lexeme represented by the characters 武 (war, martial arts) or 屋 (room, house), pronounced mvio and uk in Middle Chinese is vu and vuk in Hakka respectively (Mandarin: wu).
  • Lexemes corresponding with characters 人 and 日, among others, are pronounced with a ng consonant in Hakka (人:ngin, 日:ngit), and have a corresponding reading in Mandarin as an initial r- consonant.
  • The consonant initial of the lexeme corresponding with the character 話 (word, speech; Mandarin hua) is pronounced f or v in Hakka (v does not properly exist as a distinct unit in many Chinese languages).
  • The initial consonant of 學 hɔk usually corresponds with a h [h] approximant in Cantonese and a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative (x [ɕ]) or velar fricative (h [x]) in Mandarin[citation needed].

[edit] Phonology

[edit] Moiyen dialect initials

There are no voiced plosives ([b d ɡ]) in Hakka, but it exhibits two sets of voiceless stops, an unaspirated set ([p t k]), and the other aspirated ([pʰ tʰ kʰ]).

  Labial Dental Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal /m/ m /n/ n /ɲ/ ng(i) /ŋ/ ng  
Plosive plain /p/ b /t/ d k g (ʔ)
aspirated pʰ p tʰ t kʰ k  
Affricate plain /ts/ z/j(i)
aspirated /tsʰ/ c /q(i)
Fricative /f/ f /s/ s/x(i)     /h/ h
Approximant /ʋ/ v /l/ l (j) y    

When the initials [ts tsʰ s] and [ŋ] are followed by a palatised medial, they become [tɕ tɕʰ ɕ] and [ɲ] respectively.

[edit] Moiyen rimes

Moiyen Hakka has six vowels, [i ɿ ɛ a ə ɔ u], that are romanised as i, i, ê, a, e, o and u, respectively. The palatisation medial ([j]) is represented by i and the labialisation medial ([w]) is represented as u.

Moreover, Hakka rimes exhibits the final consonants found in Middle Chinese, namely [m, n, ŋ, p, t, k] which are romanised as m, n, ng, b, d, and g respectively in the official Moiyen romanisation.

vowel medial + vowel -i -u -m -n -ŋ -p -t -k
Syllabics         m   ŋ      
  a   ai au am an aŋ ap at ak
    ia iai iau iam ian iaŋ iap iat iak
    ua uai     uan uaŋ   uat uak
  ɛ     ɛu ɛm ɛn   ɛp ɛt  
    iɛ       iɛn     iɛt  
    uɛ       uɛn     uɛt  
  i     iu im in   ip it  
  ɔ   ɔi     ɔn ɔŋ   ɔt ɔk
    iɔ       iɔn iɔŋ     iɔk
    uɔ       uɔn uɔŋ     uɔk
  u   ui     un uŋ   ut uk
      iui     iun iuŋ   iut iuk
  ɿ       əm ən   əp ət  

[edit] Moiyen tones

The Middle Chinese fully voiced initial characters have become aspirated voiceless initial characters in Hakka. The four Middle Chinese tones Ping, Shang, Qu, Ru have developed in the Moiyen dialect to exhibit a yin-yang splitting in the Ping tone, and a yin-yang splitting in the Ru tone, giving it six tones.

Tone chart of Moiyen dialect
Tone number Tone name Tone letters Description
1 yin ping (陰平) ˦ (44) high
2 yang ping (陽平) ˩ (11) low
3 shang (上) ˧˩ (31) low falling
4 qu (去) ˥˧ (53) high falling
5 yin ru (陰入) ˩ʔ (1) low checked
6 yang ru (陽入) ˥ʔ (5) high checked

These so called yin-yang tonal splittings developed mainly as a consequence of the type of initial a Chinese character had during the Middle Chinese stage in the development of Chinese languages, with voiceless initial characters [p- t- k-] tending to become of the yin type, and the voiced initial characters [b- d- g-] developing into the yang type. In modern Moiyen Hakka however, part of the Yin Ping tone characters have sonorant initials [m n ŋ l] originally from the Middle Chinese Shang tone characters and fully voiced Middle Chinese Qu tone characters, so the voiced/voiceless distinction should be taken only as a rule of thumb.

Hakka tone contours differs more as one moves away from Moiyen. For example the Yin Ping contour is ˧ (33) in Changting (长汀) and ˨˦ (24) in Sixian (四县), Taiwan.

[edit] Tone sandhi in Moiyen Hakka

For Moiyen Hakka, the yin ping and qu tone characters exhibit sandhi when the following character has a lower pitch. The pitch of the yin ping tone changes from ˦ (44) to ˧˥ (35) when sandhi occurs. Similarly, the qu tone changes from ˥˧ (53) to ˦ (55) under sandhi. These are shown in red in the following table.

Moiyen tone sandhi
+ ˦ Yin Ping + ˩ Yang Ping + ˧˩ Shang + ˥˧ Qu + ˩ʔ Yin Ru + ˥ʔ YangRu + Neutral
˦ Yin Ping + ˦.˦ ˧˥.˩ ˧˥.˧˩ ˧˥.˥˧ ˧˥.˩ʔ ˦.˥ʔ ˧˥.˧
˥˧ Qu + ˥˧.˦ ˥.˩ ˥.˧˩ ˥.˥˧ ˥.˩ʔ ˥˧.˥ʔ ˥.˧

The neutral tone occurs in some postfixes used in Hakka. It has a mid pitch.

[edit] Other dialects of Hakka

The Hakka language has as many regional dialects as there are counties with Hakka speakers in the majority. Surrounding Meixian are the counties of Pingyuan 平遠, Dabu 大埔, Jiaoling 蕉嶺, Xingning 興寧, Wuhua 五華, and Fengshun 豐順. Each is said to have its own special phonological points of interest. For instance, the Xingning does not have rimes ending in [-m] or [-p]. These have merged into [-n] and [-t] ending rimes, respectively. Further away from Meixian, the Hong Kong dialect lacks the [-u-] medial, so whereas Meixian dialect pronounces the character 光 as [kwɔŋ44], Hong Kong Hakka dialect pronounces it as [kɔŋ33], which is similar to the Hakka spoken in neighbouring Shenzhen.

As much as endings and vowels are important, the tones also vary across the dialects of Hakka. The majority of Hakka dialects have six tones, as typified by Meixian dialect above. However, there are dialects which have lost all of their Ru Sheng tones, and the characters originally of this tone class are distributed across the non-Ru tones. Such a dialect is Changting 長汀 which is situated in the Western Fujian province. Moreover, there is evidence of the retention of an earlier Hakka tone system in the dialects of Haifeng 海 豐 and Lufeng 陸 豐 situated on coastal south eastern Guangdong province. They contain a yin-yang splitting in the Qu tone, giving rise to seven tones in all (with yin-yang registers in Ping and Ru tones and a Shang tone).

The Hoi-liuk (Hailu 海陸) Hakka dialect speakers found on Taiwan originated from this region. This particular dialect contains postalveloar consonants ([ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], etc.), usually not found in other Chinese languages. Taiwan's other main population of Hakka speakers, the Sixian (Hakka: Siyen 四縣) speakers come from Jiaying 嘉應 and surrounding Jiaoling, Pingyuan, Xingning, and Wuhua dialects. Jiaying county later changed its name to Meixian.

[edit] Vocabulary

Like other southern Chinese languages, Hakka retains single syllable words from earlier stages of Chinese because it can differentiate a large number of working syllables by tone and rime. This reduces the need for compounding or making words of more than one syllable. However, it is also similar to other Chinese languages in having words which are made from more than one syllable.

Examples of Single Syllable Words

人 [ŋin11] person (Mandarin rén)
碗 [ʋɔn33] bowl (Mand. wǎn)
狗 [kɛu33] dog (Mand. gǒu)
牛 [ŋiu11] cow (Mand. niú)
屋 [ʋuk3] house (Mand. wū)
嘴 [tsɔi53] mouth (Mand. zuǐ)
涯 [ŋai11] me/I (Mand. 我wǒ)

Example of Multiple-Syllable Words

日頭 [ŋit3 thɛu11] sun
月光 [ŋiɛt53 kwɔŋ33] moon
屋下/屋家 [ʋuk3 kha33] home
電話 [thiɛn54 ʋa53] telephone
學堂 [hɔk53 thɔŋ11] school

Hakka prefers the verb [kɔŋ31] 講 when referring to speaking rather than the Mandarin shuo 說 ( Hakka [sɔt3] ).

Hakka uses [sit5] 食, like Cantonese (sik) for the verb "to eat" and 飲("ngim") "to drink", unlike Mandarin which prefers chi 吃 as "to eat" and he 喝 as “to drink".

[edit] Writing systems

Various dialects of Hakka have been written in a number of Latin orthographies, largely for religious purposes, since at least the mid-19th century.

Currently the single largest work in Hakka is the New Testament and Psalms (1993, 1138 pp., see [2]), although that is expected to be surpassed soon by the publication of the Old Testament. These works render Hakka in both romanization and Han characters (including ones unique to Hakka) and are based on the dialects of Taiwanese Hakka speakers. The work of Biblical translation is being performed by missionaries of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

The popular Le Petit Prince has also been translated into Hakka (2000, indirectly from English), specifically the Miaoli dialect of Taiwan (itself a variant of the Sixian dialect). This also was dual-script, albeit using the Tongyong Pinyin scheme.

[edit] References

  • Branner, David Prager (2000). Problems in Comparative Chinese Dialectology — the Classification of Miin and Hakka, Trends in Linguistics series, no. 123. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 31-101-5831-0. 

[edit] External links

Wikipedia
Hakka edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia