Hailufeng ( ''Hai Lok Hong''), or in the language itself ''Haklau'', is a
variety of Chinese
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of m ...
mostly spoken in the
Hailufeng region of
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...
. The region includes
Shanwei
Shanwei (), or Swabue is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guangdong province, People's Republic of China. It borders Jieyang to the east, Meizhou and Heyuan to the north, Huizhou to the west, and looks out to the South China Sea to the south. I ...
(Swabue),
Haifeng County (Hai Hong), and
Lufeng (Lok Hong) and the name 'Hailufeng' is a portmanteau of those places. It is a
Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ...
(Min Nan) language, though it has close geographical and cultural ties with
Teochew dialect
Teochew or Chaozhou (, , , Teochew endonym: , Shantou dialect: ) is a dialect of Chaoshan Min, a Southern Min language, that is spoken by the Teochew people in the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong and by their diaspora around the worl ...
and similarities to
Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages ...
. Ethnically, the ''Haklau'' see themselves as
Hokkiens
The Hoklo people or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such ...
and separate from the
Teochews.
Differences from Teochew include the preservation of the final codas