Northern Min

Northern Min
Min Bei
Mâing-bă̤-ngṳ̌/閩北語
Native to	Southern China, United States (mostly California)
Region	northwestern & central Fujian; Nanping
Native speakers	11 million (2007)[1]
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Min Inland Min Northern Min
Dialects	Jian'ou Jianyang Chong'an Songxi Zhenghe
Writing system	Chinese character Kienning Colloquial Romanized (Jian'ou Romanized)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	mnp
Glottolog	minb1244[2]
Northern Min (red)

Northern Min (simplified Chinese: 闽北; traditional Chinese: 閩北; pinyin: Mǐnběi), is a group of mutually intelligible dialects of Min spoken in Nanping Prefecture of northwestern Fujian.

The Chinese varieties of Fujian province were traditionally divided into Northern and Southern groups. However, dialectologists now divide Min more finely.^[3] By this narrower definition, Northern Min covers the dialects of Shibei (石陂, in Pucheng County), Chong'an (崇安, in Wuyishan City), Xingtian (兴田, in Wuyishan City), Wufu (五夫, in Wuyishan City), Zhenghe (in Zhenghe County), Zhenqian (镇前, in Zhenghe County), Jianyang and Jian'ou.^[3]

Dialects

• Jian'ou dialect
• Jianyang dialect
• Chong'an dialect (Wuyishan dialect)
• Songxi dialect
• Zhenghe dialect

References

1. Mikael Parkvall, "Världens 100 största språk 2007" (The World's 100 Largest Languages in 2007), in Nationalencyklopedin
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Min Bei Chinese". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Zev Handel (2003). "Northern Min Tone Values and the Reconstruction of Softened Initials" (PDF). Language and Linguistics 4 (1): 47–84. Retrieved February 16, 2011.

• Branner, David Prager (2000). Problems in Comparative Chinese Dialectology — the Classification of Miin and Hakka. Trends in Linguistics series, no. 123. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-015831-0.