Northern Min, known in Chinese as Minbei, is a group of Chinese varieties spoken in the mountainous north-west of Fujian province, around the cities of Jian'ou and Nanping. It is one of several branches of the Min family, which split from the rest of Chinese early and also includes Southern Min, or Hokkien, and Eastern Min, the group containing Fuzhou speech; these branches are not mutually intelligible with one another or with Mandarin. The Jian'ou dialect is usually treated as representative of Northern Min. Like all Chinese varieties it is tonal and traditionally written in Chinese characters, though Mandarin dominates education and media. Speaker numbers are hard to state precisely; estimates generally run to a few million.
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