page_title: Chaoshan Min
section_title: History and geography
hierarchical_section_title: Chaoshan Min / History and geography
caption_attribution_description: Kelenteng Tua Pek Kong, a chinese temple located in w:Ketapang city, w:West Kalimantan, in w:Borneo island.
context_page_description: Chaoshan is a Southern Min language spoken by the Teochew people of the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong province, China, and by their diaspora around the world. It is closely related to Hokkien, with which it shares some cognates and phonology, though the two are largely mutually unintelligible.
  Chaoshan preserves many similarities to Old Chinese in its pronunciation and vocabulary that have been lost in most other Sinitic languages. As such, Chaoshan is considered to be one of the more conservative Chinese languages.
context_section_description: The Chaoshan region, which includes the twin cities of Chaozhou and Shantou, is where the standard variant of Chaoshan is spoken. Parts of the Hakka-speaking regions of Jiexi County, Dabu County and Fengshun, also contain pocket communities of Chaoshan speakers.
  As Chaoshan was one of the major sources of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia during the 18th to 20th centuries, a considerable Overseas Chinese community in that region is Chaoshan-speaking. In particular, the Chaoshan people settled in significant numbers in Cambodia, Thailand and Laos, where they form the largest Chinese sub-language group. Additionally, there are many Chaoshan-speakers among Chinese communities in Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia (especially in the states of Johor and Selangor) and Indonesia (especially in West Kalimantan on Borneo). Waves of migration from Chaoshan to Hong Kong, especially after the communist victory of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, has also resulted in the formation of a community there, although most descendants now primarily speak Cantonese and English.
  Chaoshan speakers are also found among overseas Chinese communities in Japan and the Western world (notably in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France and Italy), a result of both direct emigration from Chaoshan to these nations and secondary emigration from Southeast Asia.
  In Singapore, Chaoshan remains the ancestral language of many Chinese Singaporeans, with Chinese of Teochew descent making up second largest Chinese group in Singapore, after the Hoklo. Despite this many Teochew, particularly the younger generations are shifting towards English and Mandarin as their main spoken language. This is due to the Singapore government's stringent bilingual policy that promotes English as the official language of education, government and commerce and promotes Mandarin at the expense of other Chinese languages. Some Teochew assimilated with the larger Hokkien community and speak Hokkien rather than Chaoshan due to Hokkien's prominent role as a lingua franca  previously among the Singaporean Chinese community.
caption: A Teochew Cek temple in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, Indonesia on the island of Borneo
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