Amoy Dialect

Amoy Dialect

Amoy (Chinese: 廈門話; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ē-mn̂g-ōe), also known as Xiamenese or Xiamen dialect, is a Hokkien dialect which originally comes from Southern Fujian province (in Southeast China), in the area centered around the city of Xiamen. It is highly similar to Taiwanese, and is widely known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia. Amoy is widely considered to be the prestige dialect within Hokkien and Min Nan (including Taiwanese) in general. For this reason, Amoy is often simply called Hokkien or Min Nan.

Spoken Amoy and Taiwanese are both mixtures of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou speech. As such, they are very closely aligned phonologically. However, there are some subtle differences between the two, as a result of physical separation and other historical factors. The lexical differences between the two are slightly more pronounced. Generally speaking the Hokkien dialects of Amoy, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia are mutually intelligible.