Phonology and phonetics of Singapore Hakka

Abstract

Hakka is a major branch of the Sinitic language family. The language consists of many varieties due to language contact as, historically, Hakka people migrated southwards within China, and then to other parts of the world, with Singapore being one of the destinations. This results in mutually unintelligible Hakka varieties, such as Taiwanese Hakka and Guangzhou Hakka. Several studies have been conducted on different Hakka varieties, including Hakka in Southeast Asia, but there is a particular lack of research focusing on Singapore Hakka. Hence, this paper aims to set the foundation of a phonological and phonetic study on Singapore Hakka by examining three Hakka varieties spoken in Singapore (Meixian, Wuhua and Jiaoling Hakka).

This paper mainly uses first hand data obtained from two experiments, the Swadesh word list, and The Pear Film, as the basis of analysis and interpretation, supported by phonetic analysis of spectrograms using PRAAT and statistical tests to prove the significance of the findings.

The outline of this paper is as follows: Chapter 1 introduces the aims and definitions used in this paper, Chapter 2 covers the literature review related to the research, Chapter 3 gives an overview of the phonology of Singapore Hakka, Chapter 4 is a collective section about the methodology used and results found in this study, and finally, Chapter 5 concludes the paper and discusses the limitations as well as possible directions of future studies.