This little guide is created for myself and anyone who might find it useful since I personally had difficulty finding learning materials on the Hainan language in English.

I didn’t start learning Hainanese because I wanted to get back in touch with my roots. I’m not sentimental like that. lol I had simply wanted to have calm phone-calls with my mother without them devolving into pointless arguments. We both like to have the final say. By chance, I realized that when we have clear roles of learner and teacher, the ego struggle eased. My retorts are less aggressive, and actually comical in broken Hainanese.

Though I wasn’t surprised that literature on the language was scarce, I was shocked by just how scarce they were. Especially when compared to Korean, the language which I built my career on.

Most English resources I came across were academic. Interestingly, they often quote the Japanese linguistics scholar Mantaro Hashimoto, whose work dates back to 1939! He explained his methodology which included this text:

I started my study immediately after their arrival in Japan, which I had been expecting. During four months I recorded about 6,000 colloquial words and phrases, and noted carefully the type of articulation of each morpheme. Mr. Wui lived in my house for two months, July and August of 1959, and showed an unflagging spirit of co-operation. During this period I gathered about 300 pages of colloquial sentences, forming a manuscript "Materials for the Study of Hainanese (海 南 語 料)". I was able to make clear the basic structure of colloquial Hainanese in its sound system, its vocaculary and its grammar. 

In my learning journey, it is bittersweet that many existing literature about the Hainan language quote 2 non-Chinese persons, Carl C. Jeremiassen and  Mantaro Hashimoto.

Personally, there are a few challenges, like transcribing Hainanese pronunciation and recording the different variations of the Hainan language. My mother speaks Wenchang Hainan language, so this guide will start from there, but is very much a work in progress.