page_title: Fuzhou dialect
section_title: Formation
hierarchical_section_title: Fuzhou dialect / History / Formation
caption_attribution_description: A page from the Qi Lin Bayin, a 17th-century compilation of two rime books for the Fuzhou dialect. The top half is part of the -y final in the Qī cānjūn bāyīn zìyì biànlǎn 戚參軍八音字義便覽 "Eight Sounds of General Qi and a Convenient Prospectus of Word Meaning", covering the initials t (低), pʰ (波), tʰ (他), ts (曾), n (日), and s (時). The lower half is part of the -aung/-auk final in the Tàishǐ Lín Bìshān xiānshēng zhūyù tóngshēng 太史林碧山先生珠玉同聲 "Homonyms of Pearl and Jade by the Honorable Lin Bishan", covering the initials n (女), pʰ (波), ng (鳥), ∅ (亦) and ts (之).
context_page_description: The Fuzhou dialect, also Fuzhounese, Foochow, Hokchew or Hok-chiu, is the prestige variety of the Eastern Min branch of Min Chinese spoken mainly in the Mindong region of Eastern Fujian Province. Like many other varieties of Chinese, the Fuzhou dialect is dominated by monosyllabic morphemes that carry lexical tones, and has a mainly analytic syntax. While the Eastern Min branch it belongs to is relatively closer to Southern Min or Hokkien than to other Sinitic branches such as Mandarin, Wu Chinese or Hakka, they are still not mutually intelligible.
  Centered in Fuzhou City, the Fuzhou dialect covers 11 cities and counties: Fuzhou City Proper, Pingnan, Gutian, Luoyuan, Minqing, Lianjiang, Minhou, Changle, Yongtai, Fuqing and Pingtan. It is also the second local language in many northern and middle Fujian cities and counties such as Nanping, Shaowu, Shunchang, Sanming and Youxi.
  Fuzhou dialect is also widely spoken in some regions abroad, especially in Southeastern Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. The Malaysian city of Sibu is called "New Fuzhou" due to the influx of immigrants there in the late 19th century and early 1900s.
context_section_description: After the Qin Dynasty conquered the Minyue kingdom of Southeast China in 110 BC, Chinese people began settling what is now Fujian Province. The Old Chinese language brought by the mass influx of Chinese immigrants from the Chinese heartland, along with the influences of local languages, became the early Proto-Min language from which Eastern Min, Southern Min, and other Min languages arose. Within this Min branch of Chinese, Eastern Min and Southern Min both form part of a Coastal Min subgroup, and are thus closer to each other than to Inland Min groups such as Northern Min and Central Min.
  The famous book Qī Lín Bāyīn, which was compiled in the 17th century, is the first and the most full-scale rime book that provides a systematic guide to character reading for people speaking or learning the Fuzhou dialect. It once served to standardize the language and is still widely quoted as an authoritative reference book in modern academic research in Min Chinese phonology.
caption: The authoritative Foochow rime book Qī Lín Bāyīn
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