r/Teochew

Hi there! I'm working on a language app that lets people record words or phrases from dying languages in order to preserve the knowledge but also expand people's understanding of what these languages are. I'm a 2nd Gen Teochew-Vietnamese immigrant in the US and noticed that as I got older, my knowledge of Teochew got displaced by English. This app is meant to be an archive of sorts, built by the community to create a modern library of our languages so that we can keep our roots alive.

Right now, I'd just want to know, is this something that sounds interesting to you? If so, what would you like to see from the app?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

my parents are teochew but born in vietnam, i'm born in canada

i've been immersed in viet culture and been there to see relatives a few times, so i say i'm chinese-viet, but i've never been to china

but i sometimes don't feel enough of both, i can speak teochew but not viet nor canto like my parents

i want to know your experiences and what you identify as

I've only passed through Huizhou on a high-speed train en route from Guangzhou to Meizhou, so I cannot confirm whether the Min dialect spoken in some areas there is Teochew or not. However, I've noticed that Huizhou is very diverse in terms of dialects, and it borders the Chaoshan region.

One thing that seems strange to me is that the Minnan dialect there is apparently Hokkien rather than Teochew, which feels geographically unusual. My theory is that the Hokkien dialect in Huizhou may be evidence that the Teochew language originally came from Hokkien due to migrations from Fujian. However, the Hokkien spoken in Huizhou may not have evolved as much as the one in Chaoshan, so it somehow remained closer to Hokkien.

That might not be the case since Zhongshan has an Eastern Min dialect and I don't know how that ended up there.

I've also noticed that some Hokkien-speaking communities seem to be located inland, though I'm not entirely sure. In particular, I'm wondering where most Hokkiens in Huizhou actually live. Since I've only passed through the area by train, I can't really be certain about any of this, so could someone please explain?