Singaporean Hokkien

Singaporean Hokkien is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect of Hokkien is known as Singaporean Minnan. It bears similarities with the Amoy dialect in Xiamen and Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwan.

Hokkien is the Southern Min pronunciation for the province of Fujian, and is generally the term used by the Chinese in Southeast Asia to refer to the Quanzhang dialects. Singaporean Hokkien heavily views the Amoy dialect as its prestige, and its accent is predominantly based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech, with a greater inclination towards the former instead of the latter.

Nevertheless, the grammar and tones of Singaporean Hokkien are still largely based on standard Hokkien. When compared to the prestige Taiwanese accent spoken in Tainan and Kaohsiung, the accent and pronunciation of Singaporean Hokkien inclines towards Quanzhou, which is also close to the pronunciation of Taipei and Xiamen, and is less close to that of Tainan, which has a greater inclination towards Zhangzhou.

Like many spoken languages in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced by other languages spoken in Singapore. For instance, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew, and is sometimes regarded by non-Singaporean speakers as a combined Hokkien–Teochew speech. In addition, it incorporates many loanwords from Singapore's four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. Because of its historical prevalence in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien has also exerted significant influence on the Singaporean variant of Mandarin.