Min Bei Chinese linguistic data

Word order, tone system, gender count, case marking, adposition direction, syllable structure, consonant inventory traits, vowel system, morphological alignment, script, register stratification, speaker count, and geographic area. Each row is one feature with Min Bei's value visible; you can add other languages to read the same feature side by side.

Typological features are merged from URIEL+ (Mortensen et al.) and a curated set authored against descriptive grammars. Speaker counts come from Ethnologue and Glottolog. Geographic area is computed from the Asher 2007 world language atlas. Similarity scores combine genetic distance, typological overlap, and lexical-borrowing data.

Both are Min Sinitic varieties from Fujian province but spoken in different regions: Min Bei (Northern Min) in northwestern Fujian (Jian'ou area), Min Nan (Southern Min) in southeastern Fujian and Taiwan. They share Min-specific features inherited from Old Chinese (a deeper split from the rest of Sinitic) but diverge enough that mutual intelligibility is limited.

Primarily in northwestern Fujian province, around the city of Jian'ou and adjacent counties. Smaller speaker communities exist in nearby Zhejiang and Jiangxi border areas. Speakers are typically bilingual in Mandarin (used in education and broadcasting) and use Min Bei in home and local-community contexts.

Min varieties (Min Nan, Min Dong, Min Bei, Pu-Xian) share core features inherited from a deeper split from Sinitic — they're often grouped as the most distinctive Sinitic sub-family. Within Min, the sub-varieties share more recent ancestry with each other than with Mandarin or Cantonese. The factor breakdown chip on the row tells you which dimensions contributed most.