Xiamen dialect volume one

Author: Xu Chang'an, Li Xitai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1993-12-01
Features: The fact that Xiamen and the Minnan region are closely linked with China's language modernization movement is not accidental but has objective reasons. Minnan dialect is one of the Chinese dialects with a wide geographical distribution and a large number of speakers. It gradually formed and developed as ancient Central Plains Han people migrated southward into the Minnan region. As a result, it retains a significant number of ancient Chinese elements. The complex linguistic situation, which is widely used and preserves many ancient features, has attracted the keen interest of researchers and provided convenient conditions for study. Therefore, researchers have come one after another, and an endless stream of research works have emerged. In terms of dialectal rhyming dictionaries alone, they are second to none in the country. After the Opium War, maritime restrictions were lifted, and the "Five Ports Trade" was established. Xiamen was the first to be affected, with Western missionaries flooding into the city, bringing Romanization methods and modern linguistics. This led to the combination of traditional dialectal phonology with Western Roman letters, producing dialectal phonetic scripts and ideas of language modernization. It was precisely the unique geographical environment and specific historical conditions that made Xiamen the birthplace and an important center of China's language modernization movement.