Northern Min language

…to the south, by the Fuzhou, or Northern Min, language of northern and central Fujian and by the Xiamen-Shantou (Amoy-Swatow), or Southern Min, language of southern Fujian and easternmost Guangdong. The Hakka language of southernmost Jiangxi and northeastern Guangdong has a rather scattered pattern of distribution. Probably the best known…

…languages are generally divided into Northern Min, with its centre at Fuzhou, and Southern Min, with its centre at Amoy (Xiamen). Some scholars also identify an Eastern Min, a Central Min, and a variant known as Puxian (Xinghua). Still others claim that there are at least nine varieties of Min,…

Fuzhou is the most important language of the Northern branch of Min. The very extensive sandhi affects not only tones but also consonants and vowels, so that the phonetic manifestation of a syllable depends entirely on interaction with the surroundings. There are three initial labial…