Hakka
/ˈhakə
/noun (plural same or Hakkas)
1A member of a people of SE China who migrated from the north during the 12th century.The Hakkas had been a persecuted minority in the north of China, who moved to the south and then across to the Pescadores Islands and on to Taiwan itself, where they were the first Chinese arrivals....
- The Hakkas, usually mistakenly regarded as a minority race in China, are actually a unique ethnic sub-group of the majority Han nationality.
- In the mountains were many mines, some recently opened and employing ‘incomers’, a word which usually indicates the Hakkas, though some may have been aborigines.
2 [mass noun] The dialect of Chinese spoken by the Hakka, with about 27 million speakers. Also called Kejia.Some speakers of Hakka - the second most prominent dialect in Taiwan, spoken by one-fifth of the population - also disputed the use of Taiwanese in the examinations....
- My wife would pretend she didn't hear the children's words if they were not spoken in Hakka.
- The main varieties of ‘Chinese’ (Cantonese, Hakka, Hsiang, Kan, Mandarin, Min, and Wu) are as distinct from one another as English from Danish or German.
adjective
Relating to the Hakka or their language: the Hakka language and culture...
- The Hakka Perspective will run as a 26-episode program on Hakka language television channels sometime after July.
- Labor Exchange cleverly seizes the essential elements of rock as well as Hakka language and music.
- ‘The priority of the commission is to preserve the Hakka language in order to revitalize Hakka culture,’ Liu said.
Origin
From Chinese (Cantonese dialect) haàk ka 'stranger'.