Our People’s Tongue: the History and Future of the Hokkien Language in the Philippines
South African president Nelson Mandela once said, “Speak to a man in a language he understands, and you talk to his head. But speak to a man in his language, and you talk to his heart.” This is especially true in my life whenever I speak to my Angkong and Ama (“grandfather” and “grandmother” respectively) in their native Hokkien Chinese. Because while my grandparents can speak English, the language of education, and Tagalog, the language of our country, it is Hokkien that they call Lan Nang Oeh (咱人話), literally “Our People’s Tongue,” and is the language where they can fully express their thoughts, feelings and personalities.
Because of our history as traders and immigrants, the Chinese-Filipino (“Chinoy” for short) experience is a uniquely multilingual one. We learn English in school and from American TV shows, songs, and movies, and it connects us to Western pop culture and the modern global economy. We learn Tagalog, Bisaya, or other local languages from our friends, family, and the people around us, connecting us to our fellow countrymen. And many of us went to a Chinese school to learn Mandarin, so we can connect and do business with fellow Chinese in Mainland China or Taiwan. But Hokkien is the language of our heritage, the native tongue of our ancestors who came here from the Fujian province in China to seek a better life.
This ability has allowed our community to easily adapt and work with people of different cultures; and it has been one of the secrets to our success. Especially in today’s world, the ability to speak many languages, especially English and Mandarin, is an added advantage. But today I am here to argue that language is more than just words. That a language is important not only because of the people who speak it, but because the words, phrases, and figures of speech in a language preserves the identity, culture, and history of a people. And Lan Nang Oe or the unique variety of Filipinized Hokkien spoken by ethnic Chinese in the Philippines, contains valuable insights on where we come from and who we are as Chinese-Filipinos.
Language as Culture
People use language to describe their thoughts and experiences, so the language, dialect, or slang used by a group of people can act as a mirror to the thoughts, actions, and therefore culture of the people speaking it. Take the Tagalog word kilig for example. Often defined as “the happiness or rush in love at first sight,” the reason it has no English equivalent is because American culture lacks the passion for romance and sentimentality that Filipinos have. And whereas words like kilig show what Filipinos pays attention to, words in Tagalog like kabayanihan, or using po or opo show the values of Filipino culture, like helping others or respect of elders.
Languages can also uniquely contain present emotions and feelings that other languages cannot replicate. I have tried saying hugots into English, for example, and my friends would always say “hindi nakakatama kapag in-Ingles mo eh (it won’t feel right if you say it in English).
The same can be said for the things we say for Philippine Hokkien, which also reflects our values and customs as Chinese-Filipinos. When a Chinese person enters into a relative’s home, the host will not greet by saying hello or hi but “Di Tsia Beh?” (你食無) or “Have you eaten?” illustrating the importance of hospitality and the vital role that food plays in Chinese culture. Guests would then have to be phái sè(歹勢), a general attitude of politeness which is often translated as embarrassment, but is more like an overall gratitude to the host, and an unwillingness to abuse the hospitality accorded to you.
And just as Tagalog has “gusto” and “mahal,” Hokkien has two words for love. There is ài (愛) or “want,” a momentary, surface-level attraction which can be used for people as well as food or objects. But in Hokkien Chinese, the word for both pain and love is tià(疼), with exactly the same tone, sound, and character. This means saying “I’m hurt” and “I love” is the same both spoken and in writing. This may seem strange at first, but it is beautifully profound because love and pain is, at times, one of the same. A deeper, genuine sense of love for someone often entails sacrifice, which leads to having to endure hardship or adversity. And the act of truly loving or trusting is also putting oneself at the risk of being hurt by the one that person loves, either by disappointment, betrayal, or loss. Saying “Góa tià di” (我疼你) or “I love you” in Hokkien is not only a proclamation of one’s feelings, it is also saying, “I’m willing to go through pain or sacrifice for you.” No other dialect in Chinese can fully capture love in this precise, beautiful way other than Hokkien.
Language as History
Given that language mirrors the culture and experiences of the people speaking it, over time, the vocabulary and figures of speech in a language becomes a living record of its speaker’s history and environment. An example of this being the large number of Spanish words in Tagalog from 333 years of Spanish colonization. In the same way, the distinctive way we speak Hokkien in the Philippines has also preserved our long and rich history, and our story as the descendants of traders, travelers, and immigrants. Contrary to popular belief, the Hokkien language is not a dialect of Mandarin. Hokkien is its own language with a distinct history which began at a time before Mandarin was made the predominant language in China.
The vast majority of ethnic Chinese in the Philippines trace their lineage to the Fujian Province in China, a mountainous coastal province next to the South China Sea. The province was originally settled by the tribal Baiyue peoples of Northern Vietnam with small numbers of Han Chinese who migrated from the north around the year 300 AD. The history of the Hokkien language began when large numbers of Han Chinese workers and merchants came to the coasts of Fujian around three hundred years later to build port cities for maritime trade in the South China Sea.
This was during the Tang Dynasty, widely considered by scholars as Ancient China’s golden age, because of its great prosperity from trade in the Silk Road and a flourishing of art in the form of pottery, paintings, poetry and literature. Imperial court officials wanted to trade with and bring Chinese culture to foreign countries like Japan and Korea, and so they used Fujian as their main hub for commerce and cultural exchange. Fujian province would grow wealthy with goods and merchants coming from places like India and the Arab world, and would later became a place a refuge for Tang dynasty merchants, artists, and scholars when China fell into rebellion and civil war. The wealth and knowledge of the Tang nobility was preserved in Fujian’s coastal cities like Xiamen and Quanzhou.
The merging of old Fujian and Baiyue dialects with the language of the Tang imperial court is what gave rise to the Hokkien language. And evidences of this history as a rich trading center in China’s golden age still remain in the way the language is spoken today. For example, Hokkien speakers in Fujian today still call themselves tâng lâng (唐人) , literally “People of the Tang,” and linguists point to the fact that poetry from the Tang Dynasty rhymes in Hokkien and not Mandarin. Another remnant of Hokkien’s Tang Dynasty past is the fact that Hokkien, Japanese, and Korean have hundreds of the same words. The Tang Dynasty was an era of extensive trade when China influenced Japan and Korea’s development the most, so words like kîm(金, “gold”), kám sià (感謝,“giving thanks”), ūn tong (運動, “exercise”), sian si (先生, “teacher”), sî kan (時間, “time”) , mī lâi (未來 “future”), and sè kài(世界, “world”) are practically identical across all three languages.
In the years to come,the people of the Tang would develop a shrewdness in business and an emphasis on education, values that overseas Chinese carry to this day. They would become a trading, seafaring people, where the the word for goodbye became sūn hong (順風), literally “follow the wind.” In times of hardship and strife, they would emigrate and settle all over East and Southeast Asia, building Hokkien-speaking communities in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, and the Philippines, becoming the ancestors of the Filipino-Chinese community.
Today, Hokkien speakers in the Philippines often mix English,Spanish, and local Filipino languages like Tagalog, Bisaya, Waray-Waray, or Ilonggo into everyday conversation, a testament to our long history here in the Philippines. But many Filipino words also trace their origin to Hokkien. Staples in Philippine cuisine such as siopao, siomai, lumpia, taho, and tikoy all come from Hokkien Chinese, but so do Filipino last names like Cojuanco, Yaptangco, Dizon, Saison, and Sison. Other lesser known Hokkien words in Tagalog include bimpo (面布/bīn po, “face towel”), susi (鎖匙/só sî, “key” ), suki (主客/chù khè, “favorite customer”), ginto (金條/kîm tiàu, “gold”) and hikaw (耳鉤/ hī kau, “earrings”).
Language as Heritage
The number of Hokkien speakers in Fujian, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia is around 38 million, but the language is disappearing among younger generations. In Chinese-majority places like Taiwan and Singapore, government legislation and economic incentives from Mainland China have led Hokkien speaking communities to disregard their native language and focus on Mandarin. As for countries like the Philippines where the Filipino-Chinese community is barely 1% of the entire population, most young Chinoy’s have assimilated into Filipino culture and have a hard time learning or speaking Hokkien. The few that do have very few opportunities to speak the language so outside of home or with elders.
So while I am passionate about the Hokkien language, I do understand its limits in this country. As citizens of the Philippines, Chinoy’s must speak English, Filipino, and other dialects to effectively work and live in this country. And while there are attempts of reviving the Hokkien language among young people in Singapore, Malaysia, and Taiwan, the Chinese-Filipino community today is too small for younger Chinese-Filipinos to speak Hokkien the way that my grandparents do. And I definitely did not write this article to make Chinoy’s who do not speak Hokkien feel bad or feel less Chinese than they really are.
Instead, I want this article to make fellow Filipino-Chinese proud of our heritage, and appreciate the beauty of the Hokkien language. Speaking Hokkien helps us understand the values and culture that make us who we are, and connects us to our ancestors who sailed the seas and immigrated to this country to give us a better life. Our national hero Jose Rizal, himself half-Chinese, once said, “Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinangalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan,” (Those who do not look back will never know where they are going). And a vital part of looking back is remembering our culture, our history, and our language.
