Early history It is commonly believed that
Hakka people have their origins in several episodes of migration from
North China into
South China during periods of war and civil unrest dating back as far as the end of the
Western Jin (266–316). The forebears of the Hakka came from present-day
Central Plains provinces of
Henan and
Shaanxi, and brought with them features of Chinese varieties spoken in those areas during that time. Since then, the speech in those regions has evolved into dialects of modern
Mandarin Chinese. There are many archaic features in Hakka, including final consonants , as found in other modern southern Chinese varieties, but lost in Mandarin.
Laurent Sagart (2002) considers Hakka and
Gan Chinese to be sister dialects that descended from a single common ancestral language (proto-Southern Gan) spoken in central Jiangxi during the
Song Dynasty. In Hakka and Gan, Sagart (2002) identifies a non-Chinese
substratum that is possibly
Hmong–Mien, an archaic layer, and a more recent Late
Middle Chinese layer. Lexical connections between Hakka,
Kra-Dai languages, and Hmong-Mien languages have also been suggested by Deng (1999). Due to the migration of its speakers, Hakka may have been influenced by other language areas through which the Hakka-speaking forebears migrated. For instance, common vocabulary is found in Hakka,
Min Chinese, and the
She (a Hmong–Mien language). Today, most
She people in Fujian and Zhejiang speak
She Chinese, which is closely related to Hakka.
Linguistic development A regular pattern of sound change can generally be detected in Hakka, as in most Chinese varieties, of the derivation of
phonemes from earlier forms of Chinese. Some examples: • Characters such as (war, martial arts) or (room, house), pronounced roughly
mwio and
uk (
mjuX and
ʔuwk in
Baxter's transcription) in Early
Middle Chinese, have an initial
v phoneme in Hakka, being
vu and
vuk in Hakka respectively. Like in Mandarin, labiodentalisation in Hakka also changed
mj- to a w-like sound before grave vowels, while Cantonese retained the original distinction (compare Mandarin
wǔ,
wū, Cantonese
mou5,
uk1). • Middle Chinese initial phonemes /ɲ/ (
ny in Baxter's transcription) of the characters (person, people) and (sun, day), among others, merged with
ng- /ŋ/ initials in Hakka (
ngin,
ngit). For comparison, in Mandarin, /ɲ/ became
r- /ɻ/ (
rén,
rì), while in Cantonese, it merged with initial
y- /j/ (
yan4,
yat6). • The initial consonant phoneme exhibited by the character (word, speech; Mandarin
huà) is pronounced
f or
v in Hakka (
v does not properly exist as a distinct unit in many Chinese varieties). • Word-initial
h [h] as in ''
usually corresponds with a voiceless alveo-palatal fricative (x'' [ɕ]) in Mandarin. ==Phonology==