Hokkien : An Endangered Minority Language

Abstract

The long-term goal for this project is to raise awareness about language death that is happening to majority of the minority languages and specifically, Penang Hokkien. Other than Malaysians or Chinese people, barely anyone knows about the Hokkien language. Penang Hokkien is only a spoken language; although recently, locals have tried to improvise writing words with the English alphabet in casual contexts. This project is unique because it helps to spread new knowledge and culture. For the short-term goal, a survey on Qualtrics has been created to collect the locals’ thoughts and opinions on Penang Hokkien. Some questions are also linguistically structured, which allows us to start determining which spelling rules would best match the preference of the Penang Hokkien community. The results will allow us to understand the community’s opinion on their language. If many participants have a positive view of the language, then, for example, we can contact existing Penang Hokkien language groups and suggest working together for further research projects.