Sino-Tibetan · ISO 639-3 hak
Hakka Chinese Language 客家話
Hakka Chinese is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken by about 48 million people in 2 countries. It is written in the Latin script.
Where Hakka Chinese is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Language family
- Sino-Tibetan
- Sinitic
- Classical-Middle-Modern Sinitic
- Middle-Modern Sinitic
- Hakka Chinese
Writing system
Latin script
Related languages
About the Hakka Chinese language
Hakka Chinese (客家話) is spoken by about 48 million people, which makes it the 37th most spoken language in the world — just behind Kannada (49 million) and ahead of Nigerian Pidgin (48 million). It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and, more precisely, to the Middle-Modern Sinitic group within the Classical-Middle-Modern Sinitic branch.
Where is Hakka Chinese spoken?
Hakka Chinese is used in 2 countries. The largest communities live in China (33 million) and Singapore (259,223).
Share of the population that speaks Hakka Chinese: China 2.3% (33 million) and Singapore 4.3% (259,223).
Hakka Chinese is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Hakka Chinese is written in the Latin script. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Mandarin Chinese, Wu Chinese, Yue Chinese, Jinyu Chinese, Xiang Chinese, Gan Chinese and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-3 hak.
Frequently asked questions about Hakka Chinese
How many people speak Hakka Chinese?
Where is Hakka Chinese spoken?
What language family does Hakka Chinese belong to?
What is Hakka Chinese called in Hakka Chinese?
Is Hakka Chinese an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.