Singapore Musical Box Museum

Singaporean Hokkien is a local variant of the Hokkien language spoken in Singapore. In Chinese academic circles, this dialect is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu . It is closely related to the Southern Malaysian Hokkien spoken in Southern Malaysia, as well as to Riau Hokkien spoken in the Indonesian province of Riau. It also closely resembles Amoy spoken in Amoy, China, and Taiwanese Hokkien which is spoken in Taiwan. Hokkien, is the Min Nan pronunciation for Fujian province, China, and is generally the term used by the Chinese in South-East Asia to refer to the Banlam dialect . Singaporean Hokkien generally uses Amoy as its standard, and its accent is predominantly based on a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech, with a greater inclination towards the former. Like many spoken languages in Singapore, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced by other languages or dialects spoken in Singapore. For instance, Singaporean Hokkien is influenced to a certain degree by Teochew, and is sometimes regarded as a combined Hokkien-Teochew speech . In addition, it has many loanwords from Malay and English. Nevertheless, the grammar and tones of Singaporean Hokkien are still largely based on Minnan. When compared to Taiwanese's prestige accent spoken in Tainan and Kaohsiung , Singaporean Hokkien pronunciation inclines toward the Quanzhou accent , is also close to the pronunciation of Taipei and Amoy, and is less close to that of Tainan which has a greater inclination towards the Zhangzhou accent . A Singaporean would likely not have trouble conversing with Taiwanese speakers in Singaporean Hokkien, with the exception of some Japanese loanwords. Similarly, Singaporean Hokkien is understood by Taiwanese speakers, with the exception of some Malay and English loanwords.
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