Chaozhou dialect, also known as Chaozhou dialect and Chaoshan dialect, is distributed in the Chaoshan area along the eastern coast of Guangdong Province (Chaozhou, Jieyang, Shantou and Fengshun) and the overseas gathering place of hipsters mainly in Southeast Asia. Chaozhou Prefecture was an immigrant city in ancient times, and its ancestors were mainly people from the Central Plains and Fujian. At the same time, Fujian dialect and ancient Chinese are integrated in Chaozhou prefecture, and loanwords from Southeast Asian countries are integrated in Chaozhou prefecture, forming a unique language family, often the same word, which is manifested in different pronunciations of place names, names and characters.
The word "Chaozhou dialect" is generally recognized by Chaoshan people at home and abroad. Because 1000 years has been used, dictionaries, monographs and other academic works are all named after "Chaozhou dialect".
Chaozhou dialect mainly comes from Putian dialect of Min dialect, which is slightly different from Zhangzhou dialect. Putian dialect is similar to Zhang Quan dialect, so Chaozhou dialect is very similar to Zhangzhou dialect. Because Chaozhou is adjacent to Zhangzhou, it is influenced by Zhangzhou dialect. Although a large number of Putian people immigrated to Hainan, Guangdong Province, a large number of Putian people still stayed in Putian, and the Putian dialect of Putian people who stayed in Putian continued to be influenced by Fuzhou dialect, which was somewhat different from Chaozhou dialect.
Chaozhou has long been far away from Putian, whose ancestral home is in southern Fujian, and is not adjacent to Fuzhou, but adjacent to Zhangzhou, which is easily influenced by Zhangzhou dialect and other dialects. However, Chaozhou dialect is a Min dialect based on Putian dialect and influenced by Zhangzhou dialect. Because Fuzhou is the provincial capital, there are many exchanges between Putian and the provincial capital, but Putian is not adjacent to Zhangzhou, so Putian dialect is more influenced by Fuzhou conversation than Quanzhou dialect, and Putian is 200 kilometers away from Zhangzhou, so Putian dialect is hard to be influenced by Zhangzhou dialect.
Putian is the earliest and longest place where the contradiction between people and land occurred in southern Fujian. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, Putian was overpopulated and became a place of population export, and Putian began to export more people. Some Putian people immigrated to other places hundreds of years after they immigrated to Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, and their Putian dialect has been assimilated into Quanzhou dialect or Zhangzhou dialect. Because a large part of Putian people immigrate to Quanzhou and Zhangzhou every year, ranging from a few hundred to thousands, and from 10,000 to more. Compared with Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, they are a minority, so they are easily assimilated by Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Moreover, some Putian immigrants have been assimilated by Zhangzhou people in Quanzhou for hundreds to thousands of years.
Judging from the ancient language phenomenon, Chaozhou dialect should be the language of ancient Xinghua (now Putian), just like Putian dialect today. Because of the existence of a large number of ancient sounds, many people think that Xinghua dialect is "easier said than written" and cannot be written. In fact, most of Xinghua dialect can be written in words, and most of the words have their origins, so Chaozhou dialect is considered to be the oldest Minnan dialect.