Southern Min in the context of "Longyan Min"

Chinese (spoken: simplified Chinese: 汉语; traditional Chinese: 漢語; pinyin: Hànyǔ, written: 中文; Zhōngwén) is an umbrella term for Sinitic languages in the Sino-Tibetan language family, widely recognized as a group of language varieties, spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China, as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora. Approximately 1.39 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak one of the Chinese languages as their first language.

The Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The Chinese government considers the spoken varieties of the Chinese languages dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are considered to be separate languages in a family by linguists. Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g., Southern Min), Wu (74 million, e.g., Shanghainese), and Yue (68 million, e.g., Cantonese). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with the other varieties within the same branch (e.g., Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin, Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan. All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic.

Hokkien, a variety of Chinese that forms part of the Southern Min family and is spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Standard Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the Ministry of Education including its Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan, but there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.

The Hoklo people (Chinese: 福佬人; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ho̍h-ló-lâng) are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, and known by various related terms such as Banlam people (閩南人; Bân-lâm-lâng), Minnan people, Fujianese people or more commonly in Southeast Asia as the Hokkien people (福建人; Hok-kiàn-lâng). The Hokkien people are found in significant numbers in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, and the United States. The Hokkien people have a distinct culture and architecture, including Hokkien shrines and temples with tilted sharp eaves, high and slanted top roofs, and finely detailed decorative inlays of wood and porcelain. The Hokkien language, which includes Taiwanese Hokkien, is the mainstream Southern Min, which is partially mutually intelligible to other Southern Min varieties such as Teochew, Zhongshan, Haklau, and Zhenan.

Fujian is a province in southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefecture city by population is Quanzhou, with other notable cities including the port city of Xiamen and Zhangzhou. Fujian is located on the west coast of the Taiwan Strait as the closest province geographically and culturally to Taiwan. This is as a result of the Chinese Civil War. Additionally, a small portion of historical Fujian is administered by Taiwan, romanized as Fuchien.

While the population predominantly identifies as Han, it is one of China's most culturally and linguistically diverse provinces. The dialects of the language group Min Chinese are most commonly spoken within the province, including the Fuzhou dialect and Eastern Min of Northeastern Fujian province and various Southern Min and Hokkien dialects of southeastern Fujian. The capital city of Fuzhou and Fu'an of Ningde prefecture along with Cangnan county-level city of Wenzhou prefecture in Zhejiang province make up the Min Dong linguistic and cultural region of Northeastern Fujian. Hakka Chinese is also spoken in Fujian, by the Hakka people. Min dialects, Hakka, and Standard Chinese are mutually unintelligible. Due to emigration, much of the ethnic Chinese populations of Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines speak Southern Min (or Hokkien).

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (/peɪweɪˈdʒiː/ pay-way-JEE; Taiwanese Hokkien: 白話字, pronounced [pe˩ˀ o̯e̞˩ d͡ʑi˧] , lit. 'vernacular writing'; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. It is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.

Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News.

Min is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 75 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in China in a region centered on modern Fujian Province, stretching from Southern Zhejiang to Eastern Guangdong, as well as on Hainan Island and the neighbouring Leizhou Peninsula. Min varieties are also spoken in Taiwan, and by a large international diaspora, particularly in Southeast Asia. The name Min is shared with the Min River in Fujian, and is also the abbreviated name of Fujian Province. Min languages are not mutually intelligible with one another nor with other varieties of Chinese.

The most widely spoken variety of Min outside of China is Hokkien, a variety of Southern Min which has its origin in Southern Fujian. Amoy Hokkien is the prestige dialect of Hokkien in Fujian, while a majority of Taiwanese people speak a dialect called Taiwanese Hokkien or simply Taiwanese. The majority of Chinese Singaporeans, Chinese Malaysians, Chinese Filipinos, Chinese Indonesians, Chinese Thais, and Chinese Cambodians are of Southern Min-speaking background (particularly Hokkien and Teochew), although some of these communities are shifting to national or regional languages. Communities speaking Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, Haklau Min, Leizhou Min, and Hainanese can also be found in parts of the Chinese diaspora, such as in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Minnan, Banlam, or Minnan Golden Triangle (simplified Chinese: 闽南金三角; traditional Chinese: 閩南金三角; pinyin: Mǐnnán jīnsānjiǎo; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm kim-saⁿ-kak; lit. 'South Fujian Golden Triangle'), refers to the coastal region in South Fujian Province, China, which includes the prefecture-level cities of Xiamen, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The region accounts for 40 percent of the GDP of Fujian Province. It is the native homeland of the Hokkien people who speak the Hokkien language or Minnan language, a variety of Southern Min.

Other terms used in the Minnan region include the one sinologist G. William Skinner used, which was the term Zhang-Quan (simplified Chinese: 漳泉分区; traditional Chinese: 漳泉分區; pinyin: Zhāng quán fēnqū; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Chiuⁿ chôaⁿ pun-khu) to describe the region in his guide to the physiographic macroregions of China.

Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/ HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/ HOH-kee-en) is a variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred to as Quanzhang (Chinese: 泉漳; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Choân-chiang), from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, and elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity.