Medan Hokkien

Medan Hokkien is a local variant of Hokkien spoken among the Chinese in Medan and Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the lingua franca in Medan as well as other northern city states of North Sumatra surrounding it, and is a subdialect of Zhangzhou (漳州) dialect, together with widespread use of Indonesian and English borrowed words. It is predominantly a spoken dialect: it is rarely written in Chinese characters as Indonesia had banned the use of Chinese characters back in New Order era, and there is no standard romanisation.

Comparing Medan Hokkien to Hokkien dialect in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore, Medan Hokkien is still understandable to certain extent. Medan Hokkien speakers may have a similar accent as Malaysian and Singaporean speakers. The closest comparison to Medan Hokkien is the Penang Hokkien Dialect. Both are so similar that it is hard to tell the difference between the two unless the Medan Hokkien speaker does not mix conversation with Indonesian language borrowings.