Hakka is one language in the family of languages known as Chinese. The majority of its speakers are known Hakka people. Hak 客 (Mandarin: kè) means "guest", and ka 家 (Mandarin: jia) means "family". Amongst themselves, Hakka people variously called their language Hak-ka-fa/-va 客家語, Hak-fa/-va, 客語, Tu-gong-dung-fa/-va 土廣東話, Ngai-fa/-va "亻厓"話 (my/our speech).

The Hakka language has numerous dialects, spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Guizhou provinces, including Hainan island and Taiwan.

Amongst the dialects of Hakka, the Moi-yen/Moi-yan (梅縣, pinyin: MéiXìan) dialect has been used most as a prime example of the Hakka language. Moiyen is located in the north eastern region of Guangdong province.

Hakka Phonology

Moiyen Dialect Initials

There are no voiced plosives stops (b d g) in Hakka, but it exhibits two sets of stops, one unaspirated (p t k), and the other aspirated (pʰ tʰ kʰ).

	IPA/Rom	Labials	Dentals/Apicals	Silibants	Palatals	Velars	Laryngeals
Voiceless Unaspirated Stops	IPA	p	t	ʦ		k	(ʔ)
	Rom	b	d	z		g
Voiceless Aspirated Stops	IPA	pʰ	tʰ	ʦʰ		kʰ
	Rom	p	t			k
Nasals	IPA	m	n		ɲ	ŋ
	Rom	m	n		ngi	ng
Fricatives	IPA	f		s			h
	Rom	f		s			h
Liquids	IPA	ʋ	l		(j)
	Rom	v	l		(y)

When the initials z c s (ʦ ʦʰ s) and ng [ŋ] is followed by a palatised medial, they become j q x (ʨ ʨʰ ɕ) and ngi (ɲ) respectively.

Moiyan Rimes

Moiyan Hakka has six vowels ( i ɿ ɛ a ə ɔ u ) are romanised as i, i, ê a, e, o and u respectively. The palatisation medial (j) is represented by i and the labialisation medial (w) is represented as u in the following table corresponding to i and u in the romanisation.

Moreover, Hakka rimes exhibits the final stops found in Middle Chinese, namely ( m, n, ŋ p t k ) these are romanised as m, n, ng, b, d, and g respectively in the official Moiyan romanisation.

vowel	medial + vowel	-i	-u	-m	-n	-ŋ	-p	-t	-k
Syllabics				m		ŋ
a		ai	au	am	an	aŋ	ap	at	ak
	ia	iai	iau	iam	ian	iaŋ	iap	iat	iak
	ua	uai			uan	uaŋ		uat	uak
ɛ			ɛu	ɛm	ɛn		ɛp	ɛt
	iɛ				iɛn			iɛt
	uɛ				uɛn			uɛt
i			iu	im	in		ip	it
ɔ		ɔi			ɔn	ɔŋ		ɔt	ɔk
	iɔ				iɔn	iɔŋ			iɔk
	uɔ				uɔn	uɔŋ			uɔk
u		ui			un	uŋ		ut	uk
		iui			iun	iuŋ		iut	iuk
ɿ				əm	ən		əp	ət

Moiyen Tones

The Middle Chinese fully voiced initial characters have become aspirated unvoiced initial characters in Hakka. The four Middle Chinese tones Ping, Shang, Qu, Ru have developed in the Moiyan dialect to exhibit a yin-yang splitting in the Ping tone, and a yin-yang splitting in the Ru tone, giving it six tones.

Tone Name	Yin Ping	Yang Ping	Shang	Qu	Yin Ru	Yang Ru
Tone Contour	44	11	31	53	1	5
Tone	1	2	3	4	5	6

These so called yin-yang tonal splittings developed mainly as a consequence of the type of initial a Chinese character had during the Middle Chinese stage in the development of Chinese languages, with unvoiced initial characters (p- t- k-) tending to become of the yin type, and the voiced initial characters (b- d- g-) developing into the yang type. In modern Meixian Hakka however, part of the Yin Ping tone characters have sonorant initials (m n ŋ l) originally from the Middle Chinese Shang tone characters and fully voiced Middle Chinese Qu tone characters, so the voiced/unvoiced distinction should be taken only as a rule of thumb.

Tone Sandhi in Moiyen Hakka

For Meixian Hakka, the Yin Ping and Qu tone characters suffer sandhi when the following character is of a lower pitch than it. The pitch of the Yin Ping tone changes from /44/ to /35/ when sandhi occurs. Similarly, the Qu tone changes from /53/ to /55/ under sandhi.

Sandhi	+ Yin Ping	+ Yang Ping	+ Shang	+ Qu	+ Yin Ru	+ YangRu	+ Neutral
Yin Ping +	44 + 44	35 + 11	35 + 31	35 + 53	35 + 1	44 + 5	35 + ~
Qu +	53 + 44	55 + 11	55 + 31	55 + 53	55 + 1	53 + 5	55 + ~

The neutral tone is indicated by the tilde occuring in some postfixes used in Hakka. Its pitch level can is approximated by /3/.

Other Dialects of Hakka

The Hakka language has as many regional dialects as there are counties of Hakka speakers in the majority. Surrounding Meixian, are the counties of Pingyuan 平遠, Dabu 大埔, Jiaoling 蕉嶺, XingNing 興寧, Wuhua 五華, and FengShun 豐順. Each are said to have their own special phonological points of interest. For instance, the XingNing does not have rimes ending in -m por -p. These have merged into -n and -t ending rimes. Further away from Meixian, the Hong Kong dialect lacts the -u- medial, so whereas Meixian dialect pronounces the character 光 as [k^wɔŋ44], Hong Kong Hakka dialect pronounces it as [kɔŋ33], which is similar to the Hakka spoken in neighbouring Shenzhen.

In as much as endings and vowels are important, the tones also vary across the dialects of Hakka. The majority of Hakka dialects have six tones, as typified by Meixian dialect above. However, there are dialects which have lost all its Ru Sheng tones, and the characters originally of this tone class are distributed across the non-Ru tones. Such as dialect is ChangTing 長汀 which is situated in western Fujian province. Moreover, there is evidence of the retention of an earlier Hakka tone system in the dialects of HaiFeng 海 豐 and LuFeng 陸 豐 situated on coastal south eastern Guangdong province. They contain a yin-yang splitting in the Qu tone, giving rise to seven tones in all (with yin-yang registers in Ping and Ru tones and a Shang tone).

The Hailu 海陸 Hakka dialects speakers found on Taiwan originated from this region. Taiwan's other main population of Hakka speakers, the Sixian (Hakka: Siyen 四縣) speakers come from Jiaying 嘉應 and surrounding JiaoLing, PingYuan, XingNing, and WuHua dialects. Jiaying county later changed its name to Meixian.

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