Penang Hokkien (Chinese: 槟城福建话; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Pin-siâⁿ Hok-kiàn-oē) is a local variant of Hokkien spoken in Penang, Malaysia. It is the lingua franca among the majority Chinese population in Penang as well as other northern states of Malaysia surrounding it, and is characterised by the pronunciation of words according to the Zhangzhou (漳州; Hokkien: Chiang-chiu) dialect, together with widespread use of Malay and English borrowed words. It is predominantly a spoken dialect: it is rarely written in Chinese characters, and there is no standard romanisation. This article uses the Missionary Romanisation or Pe̍h-ōe-jī (白話字) which is common in Taiwan.
Minnan is one of the sub-languages of the Chinese language and is mainly spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, Hainan and parts of Guangdong, with the main standard dialects being Hokkien, Teochew and Hainanese. It is also spoken by many overseas Chinese in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Penang Hokkien is based on the dialect of Hokkien spoken in the Zhangzhou prefecture of Fujian. It is said that it most closely resembles the dialect spoken in the district of Haicang (海滄) in Longhai (龍海; Hokkien: Liông-hái) county and in the districts of Jiaomei (角美) and Xinglin (杏林) in neighbouring Xiamen prefecture. In Southeast Asia, similar dialects are spoken in the states bordering Penang (Kedah, Perlis and northern Perak), as well as in Medan. In contrast, in southern Malaysia and Singapore, many Hokkien speakers speak a dialect closer to the Amoy (廈門; Hokkien: ε̄-mûiⁿ) standard.
Read more about Penang Hokkien: Tones, Literary and Colloquial Pronunciations, Differences From Standard Minnan, Differences From The Zhangzhou Dialect, Further Reading