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Hoklo

Regions with significant populations
Fujian Guangdong Hainan  Hong Kong  Malaysia Majority of Malaysian Chinese  Philippines Majority of Chinese Filipinos  Singapore Largest group of Chinese in Singapore  Taiwan Majority of population
Languages
Hokkien dialect of Minnan and Standard Mandarin. Diaspora also speak their respective home country's language(s)
Religion
Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, non-religion Small Christian minority

Minnan-speaking areas in South China and Taiwan. Only the speakers of Quanzhou Zhangzhou (also known as Hokkien) are seen as Hoklos.

Hoklo (endonym Hok-ló, Hō-ló, or Ho̍h-ló) commonly refers to those Chaozhou people, Hainanese people and Taiwanese people who claim Han Chinese ancestry from the southern part of Fujian province of China. Large populations of similar background can also be found in Malaysia, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Philippines, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, and Indonesia where they are usually referred to as Hokkien, meaning Fujian in Min Nan language. In Hong Kong's New Territories, "Fukienese" often refers to all Min Nan speakers relocating from Fujian.

In Taiwan, the Hoklos are the largest ethnic group (see Demographics of Taiwan). Most Hoklos trace their paternal ancestry to male settlers who migrated to Taiwan from Fujian in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Because about 70% of the population in Taiwan are Hoklo, Taiwanese is often used interchangeably with Hoklo. People who are aware of the multi-ethnic nature of Taiwan recognize the two are not identical, although most people will know by context when this word refers to people from Taiwan and when this word refers specifically to Hoklos.

In Taiwan, there are three common ways to write Hoklo in Chinese characters (Min Nan pronunciations are given in POJ):

• 福佬 (Hok-ló; lit. "Fujian person") – emphasizes their connection to Fujian province.
• 河洛 (Hô-lo̍k; lit. "Yellow River and Luo River") – emphasizes their purported long history originating from the area south of the Yellow River. This Han-character reading does not reflect the actual pronunciation in the southern-Chinese languages but only in Mandarin. It is likely a result of folk etymology.
• 鶴佬 (Ho̍h-ló; lit. "crane person") – emphasizes the modern pronunciation of the characters (without regard to the meaning of the Chinese characters). This variant is used by the Chinese Wikipedia version of this article.

In Hakka, Hoklo may be written as 學老 (lit. "knowledge aged") and 學佬 (lit. "knowledge person").

Despite many ways to write Hoklo in Chinese, many Taiwanese will use the term Hō-ló to refer to the language and Hoklo culture.

[edit] See also

• Demographics of Taiwan
• Taiwanese people
• Teochew people
• Hokkien (disambiguation)
• Hoklo (disambiguation)
• Lan-nang

[edit] References

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