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'''Hakka''' is a language group of [[varieties of Chinese]], spoken natively by the [[Hakka people]] throughout Southern [[China]], [[Taiwan]], [[Hong Kong]], [[Macau]] and throughout the [[diaspora]] areas of [[East Asia]], [[Southeast Asia]] and in [[overseas Chinese]] communities around the world.
Due to its primary usage in scattered isolated regions where communication is limited to the local area, Hakka has developed numerous [[Variety (linguistics)|varieties]] or [[dialect]]s, spoken in different provinces, such as [[Guangdong]], [[Guangxi]], [[Hainan]], [[Fujian]], [[Sichuan]], [[Hunan]], [[Jiangxi]] and [[Guizhou]], as well as in [[Hong Kong]], [[Taiwan]], [[Singapore]], [[Malaysia]] and [[Indonesia]]. Hakka is not [[Mutual intelligibility|mutually intelligible]] with [[Yue Chinese|Yue]], [[Wu Chinese|Wu]], [[Southern Min]], [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]] or other branches of Chinese, and itself contains a few mutually unintelligible varieties. It is most closely related to [[Gan Chinese|Gan]] and is sometimes classified as a variety of Gan, with a few northern Hakka varieties even being partially mutually intelligible with southern Gan. There is also a possibility that the similarities are just a result of shared [[areal feature]]s.<ref>Thurgood & LaPolla, 2003. ''The Sino-Tibetan Languages''. Routledge.</ref>
Taiwan (where Hakka is the native language of a significant minority of the island's residents) is a center for the study and preservation of the language. Pronunciation differences exist between the [[Taiwanese Hakka]] dialects and Mainland China's Hakka dialects; even in Taiwan, two major local varieties of Hakka exist.
The [[Meixian dialect]] (Moiyen) of Northeast [[Guangdong]] in China has been taken as the "standard" dialect by the People's Republic of [[China]]. The Guangdong Provincial Education Department created an official [[romanization]] of Moiyen in 1960, one of four languages receiving this status in Guangdong.
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