Hainanese is a Chinese variety belonging to the Min group, spoken on Hainan, the island province off China's southern coast. Linguists usually treat it as part of Southern Min, though it has diverged so far from Hokkien and Teochew that mutual intelligibility is limited, and some classifications give it a branch of its own. The Wenchang dialect from the island's north-east is generally taken as the prestige form and is used in local broadcasting. Emigration from Hainan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries carried the language to Southeast Asia, and Hainanese-speaking communities remain in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Several million people speak it, though younger islanders increasingly use Mandarin in daily life. Like other Chinese varieties it is written with Chinese characters.
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