Hakka Chinese

Hakka /ˈhækə/, also rendered Kejia, is one of the major languages within the Sinitic branch of Sino-Tibetan and it is spoken natively by the Hakka people in southern China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and throughout the diaspora areas of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and around the world.

Due to its primary usage in scattered isolated regions where communication is limited to the local area, Hakka has developed numerous variants or dialects, spoken in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, and Guizhou provinces, including Hainan island, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Hakka is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, Wu, Southern Min, or other branches of Chinese. It is most closely related to Gan and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan.

Taiwan, where Hakka is the native language of a significant minority of the island's residents, is an important world center for study and preservation of the language. Pronunciation differences exist between the Taiwanese Hakka dialect and China's Guangdong Hakka dialect; even in Taiwan, two local varieties of Hakka exist.