Hakka language

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Hakka
客家語/客家语/客家話/客家话
Hak-kâ-fa/Hak-kâ-va (Hakka/Kejia) written in Chinese characters
Native toChina, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan (due to presence of Taiwanese community in Tokyo-Yokohama Metropolitan Area), Singapore, Indonesia, Mauritius, Suriname, South Africa, India, Vietnam and other countries where Hakka Chinese-speaking migrants have settled.
Regionin China: Eastern Guangdong province; adjoining regions of Fujian and Jiangxi provinces
EthnicityHakka people (Han Chinese)
Native speakers
30 million (2007)[1]
hanzi, romanization[2]
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)
Recognised minority
language in
one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the ROC;[3] government sponsors Hakka-language television station to preserve language
Language codes
ISO 639-3hak
Glottologhakk1236
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Hakka
Traditional Chinese客家話
Simplified Chinese客家话

Hakka is a dialect of the Chinese language spoken mainly in southern China by the Hakka people and their descendants now living in East and Southeast Asia and countries around the world.

References[change | change source]

  1. Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin
  2. Hakka was written in Chinese characters by missionaries around the turn of the 20th century.[1] Archived 2004-08-22 at the Wayback Machine
  3. http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%9C%BE%E9%81%8B%E8%BC%B8%E5%B7%A5%E5%85%B7%E6%92%AD%E9%9F%B3%E8%AA%9E%E8%A8%80%E5%B9%B3%E7%AD%89%E4%BF%9D%E9%9A%9C%E6%B3%95

Further reading[change | change source]

  • The Hakka Dialect. A Linguistic Study of its Phonology, Syntax and Lexicon, by Mantaro J. Hashimoto. (Cambridge University Press, 1973).