Teochew Dialect - History and Geography

History and Geography

Modern Teochew evolved from the more archaic Southern Min Language. Between the 9th and the 15th century, a group of Min people migrated south from Fujian to the coastal region of eastern Guangdong now known as Chaoshan (潮汕). This migration was most likely due in part to over-population in Fujian (福建).

Due to geographical isolation from Fujian, Teochew evolved into a separate dialect.

The Chaoshan region where Chaozhou is spoken includes the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou, which are jointly the source of the name, as well as Jieyang, Chaoyang, Puning, Chao'an, Raoping, Huilai, Chenghai, Nanao, Lufeng, Haifeng, Shanwei and Huidong (惠东). Parts of the Hakka-speaking region, like Jiexi (揭西), Dabu (大埔) and Fengshun (豐順/丰顺) are also Chaozhou-speaking.

The administrative region now known as Chaoshan in China was one of the major sources of Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia during the 18th–20th centuries, forming one of the larger dialect groups among the Overseas Chinese. In particular, the Teochew people settled in significant numbers in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos where they form the largest Chinese dialect group. They constitute a significant minority in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia (especially in Riau, North Sumatra, South Sumatra, and West Kalimantan, in Pontianak and Ketapang). Teochew speakers also live in Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States of America, France, Germany, and England, a result of both direct emigration from Chaoshan to these nations and secondary emigration from Southeast Asia.

In Singapore, due to common culture, and influences from the media and government, Singaporean Chinese youths whose ancestral language is Teochew are either converting to English, Mandarin or Hokkien (with which it shares a certain degree of mutual intelligibility). Teochew remains the ancestral language of many Chinese people in Singapore - Teochew people are the second largest Chinese group in Singapore, after the Hokkien - although Mandarin is gradually supplanting Teochew as their mother tongue, especially among the younger generations. In Thailand, particularly in Bangkok, Teochew is still spoken among older ethnic Chinese Thai-citizen, however the younger generation ethnic Chinese Thai-citizen tends to learn Mandarin as a third language after Thai and English. Teochew was never popular in Japan and South Korea among the Chinese communities since most of the ethnic Chinese of Teochew ancestry who migrated to these countries are secondary immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Most of them are second generation people from Hong Kong and Taiwan who speak Cantonese and Mandarin as well as Korean and Japanese, leaving Teochew to be spoken mostly by elders.