penang hokkien () is a local variant of hokkien spoken in penang, malaysia. it is the lingua franca among the majority chinese population in penang as well as other northern states of malaysia surrounding it, and is characterised by the pronunciation of words according to the zhangzhou (æ¼³å·; hokkien: chiang-chiu) dialect, together with widespread use of malay and english borrowed words. it is predominantly a spoken dialect: it is rarely written in chinese characters, and there is no standard romanisation. this article uses the missionary romanisation or peÌh-Åe-jÄ« (ç½è©±å­) which is common in taiwan. minnan is one of the sub-languages of the chinese language and is mainly spoken in southern fujian, taiwan, hainan and parts of guangdong, with the main standard dialects being hokkien, teochew and hainanese. it is also spoken by many overseas chinese in malaysia, singapore, thailand, the philippines and indonesia. penang hokkien is based on the dialect of hokkien spoken in the zhangzhou prefecture of fujian. it is said that it most closely resembles the dialect spoken in the district of haicang (æµ·æ») in longhai (é¾æµ·; hokkien: liÃ´ng-hÃ¡i) county and in the districts of jiaomei (è§ç¾) and xinglin (ææ) in neighbouring xiamen prefecture. in southeast asia, similar dialects are spoken in the states bordering penang (kedah, perlis and northern perak), as well as in medan. in contrast, in southern malaysia and singapore, many hokkien speakers speak a dialect closer to the amoy (å»é; hokkien: ÎµÌ-mÃ»iâ¿) standard. ==tones== in penang hokkien, there are five tones in unchecked syllables (high, low, rising, high falling, and low falling), and two entering tones (high and low) in checked syllables. in most systems of romanisation, this is accounted as seven tones altogether. the tones are: {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center; margin:1em auto 1em auto" |+penang hokkien tones, illustrated with the rhymes [am], [ap] |- ! rowspan="2"| ||colspan="5" width="200"|upper || colspan="5" width="200"|lower |- ! no. || name || ipa || contour || poj || no. || name || ipa || contour || poj |- ! width="150"|level (å¹³) | 1 || é å¹³  ||  || (44) || am || 5 || ä¸å¹³  ||  || (24) || Ã¢m |- ! rising (ä¸) | 2 || ä¸è²  ||  || (54) || 
Languages_of_Malaysia Min_Nan Penang