What are Hakkas?

[Curious]

Are Hakkas one of those non-Han minority groups of China like the Tibetans, Miao, etc.?
Curious

[lisa c]

Try the www.asiawind.com There's a Hakka forum and I believe gives a history of the Hakkas.

[Sb]

Hakka group is not a minority group. Han people are divided into many small sub-groups based on their dialects such as Cantonese, Fukiennese, Shanghainese, Hunanese, Hakka, and etc. So, Hakka sub-group is still a part of majority Han people who shares the same writing characters with other Han sub-groups.

[Stanley]

I am Hakka. I remember Hakkas did not live in China in the beginning. We lived outside of it. And Hakka are different from Han people. I mean genetic differences. The original Han people may not exist.

[Ally]

I am Hakka too, and I have read that it Hakka people are the original Han people, and that the Hakka language bears the closest resemblence to the ancient Chinese language. Someone from China told me that Hakka are the Chinese Chinese. I thought that they were originally from Northern China, which is where the Han originated.

[ppk]

the hakkas are northerners who migrated to the south, in btw song to ming dynasty. when they began to settle in the south, they had problems in assimilating into the new environment, particularly language problems cos ppl in the south oredi formulated their own dialects, and oso had fear that the locals will bully them. so they built rounded fortress that can house over 1 hundred families and lived separate from the local population. they are the last batch of major migration among the chinese in the history of china, and bcos of their conservative attitude they maintained cultures that was passed down since ming dynasty. in some places they are the symbols of 'ancient chinese'(actually meaning middle ages chinese, some 600-700yrs back). they oso maintain the language of ming dynasty people and a lot of their pronounciation are very close to modern mandarin(modern mandarin evolved from ming/qing dynasty common tongue). they are, however, probably the youngest of the 7 major dialects in china, and are very different from ancient chinese.

[Ally]

I have read that the poems in the book of Odes/poems (Shijing), written pre-Qin rhyme better in Hakka than in Mandarin. Is that just a coincidence?

Reference from asiawind.com

[ppk]

i think they sound better in cantonese, cos its the earliest among the dialects and probably closest to ancient chinese. from the dictionary quoting found in the asiawind.com website that u posted, it was clearly stated that they first came to the south during jin dynasty, which was around 300 ad, and their language was called 'new dialects' by local cantonese. according to mainland china sources, they made 3 migration, the first around 300ad in smaller groups, the second in tang-5dynasties period(around 750-900+ad), and third time during the mongol empire(around 14 century) in large groups.

[Ally]

Mmm...don't know really...why does it matter when they migrated? I seem to interprete from what you are saying is that the dialect the Hakkas speak only formed during the migrations. I would have thought that they were already speaking the dialect before migration since they are renowned for keeping traditions. Does calling it a "new dialect" by the local Cantonese necessarily mean that it was a "new" dialect? Unless you mean that they meant that it was new in terms of it only recently being formed, it could just mean new to them. Who knows?

[ppk]

reasons stated above, they had difficulties in assimilating into local culture. the cantonese settled in the south around -200 when qin attacked 'baiyue' in present canton area and stationed their troops there. since then the soldiers married the locals and form cantonese. imho during qin era the common chinese language was a mixture of language from shannxi, henan and shandong area, which probably sounded like cantonese. the qin soldiers brought that to the south, taking in some words and language habits of baiyue language but generally maintaining it to remind themselves they are northerners of higher culture. but the ppl living in the north continued to have a different language evolution. so when the hakkas first went to the south in 300ad, 500yrs later than the qin soldiers, they sounded different from the descendants of the qin soldiers, so the term 'new dialects' was given to them. i dun think the first hakka made great impact on the locals as they were small in numbers and were probably assimilated into the cantonese locals. i think the second and third wave showed greater distinction.