Revisions to Races of Man Classification

Click to enlarge. This is the chart from the paper, The Origin of Minnan & Hakka, the So-called "Taiwanese", Inferred by HLA Study, utilized in this post.

I usually try to be very conservative about adding in new races to my races of man post, but sometimes I just feel like I'm forced to. Based on this article, and in particular, the figure above, forced me to make some new splits.

The question was what to do about the Taiwanese people. Not the Taiwan aborigines - but the Hakka and Min Nan people of SE China who settled in Taiwan in the past 400 years. It turns out that they appear to be a discrete race, and that they are linked to Singapore Chinese and the Thai Chinese. In Singapore and Thailand, Chinese form a market-dominant minority position.

They are a minority of the population, but they tend to run businesses and be very wealthy. Similar cases are seen in Indonesia and the Philippines, where tiny Chinese minorities of 2-3% control up to 70% of the wealth in the nation.

So the interesting question arises - who exactly are the Chinese minorities of Thailand and Singapore? By genetic studies, we can now see that they are SE Chinese people related to the Min Nan and the Hakka.

The Min Nan and Hakka both speak languages that are called Chinese dialects, but in reality, they are completely separate languages. Both languages are doing fine - Min Nan (Southern Min) with 49 million speakers and Hakka with 34 million speakers.

Min Nan and Hakka both strangely lack official status anywhere, although Southern Min is widely spoken in Taiwan. It's odd that some of the world's most widely spoken languages lack official status - Min Nan is the 24th largest language, and Hakka is the 35th largest language, in terms of numbers of speakers.

Both languages are vigorous and are in good shape. Southern Min has a roman script that is fairly widely used. Hakka also has a roman script but I am not sure how widely it is used.

Southern Min actually may be four separate languages: Min Nan proper, Amoy, Teochew and Hainanese .

Click to enlarge. Here is a map of the various Chinese languages. These are not Chinese dialects, but actual separate languages. Some may be dialects of other Chinese languages though. The main languages are Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka and Gan. Ping, Hui and Jin are classed above as dialects of those larger languages.

Jin is classed as a dialect of Mandarin, but it is actually a separate language with 45 million speakers, making it around the 25th largest language in the world.

Min is 5 separate languages, but it is probably actually 9 separate languages. The 5 separate languages are Min Nan, Min Dong, Min Zhong, Min Bei and Puxian. Min Nan itself is probably 4 separate languages. Huizhou, or Hui, is a separate language that is probably a set of related languages. Wu may also be more than one and possibly as many as 3 separate languages.

Ping is traditionally considered to be part of Cantonese, but it is probably a separate language. Mandarin may also be a set of related languages instead of one language - up to 5 separate languages. Cantonese may also be more than one language - it is probably at least 3 languages. Hakka may also be more than one language - it may be 2 or 3 separate languages.

It is nonsense to say someone speaks "Chinese". There is no such thing as a language called "Chinese".

Instead, there are various languages in the Chinese language family - at least 14 separate languages, and probably even more. A casual count by me reveals up to 30 separate languages and possibly more. Mandarin is by far the largest of these languages, and most of the smaller languages are suffering under the influence of Mandarin. In addition, the Chinese government favors Mandarin and does not support the other languages much, if at all.

I also split off a group called the Li and another group called the Oroqen based on the chart above.

The Li are a transitional group between the Northern Chinese and the Southern Chinese, though they live on Hainan Island in the far south of China. They speak a Tai-Kadai language called Hlai which has 667,000 speakers. Use is vigorous; the language is doing well, but it is generally not written, although a Roman script exists. Mandarin is used for writing.

The Oroqen are nomadic people who live in far northeastern China and speak a Tungusic tongue. As you can see from the chart, they are closer to the Japanese than to the NE Chinese. There are only 1,200 speakers left out of a small 7,000 population, but there are 800 monolinguals and use is vigorous by those who speak the language.

They live by hunting and used to practice shamanism. They still lack an official script for their language, but there are radio programs in Oroqen.

The truth is that both the Oroqen people and their language are in poor shape, and most of the blame can be placed on the Communist Chinese regime, even though the regime has also done many good things for the Oroqen. The Cultural Revolution in particular was a period of insanity, stupidity and terror.

An Oroqen Race was added to the NE Asian Major Race due to the extreme divergence of these people. I also added Inner Mongolians to the Mongolian Race inside of NE Asian.

I added the Buyei to the Tai Race within the SE Asian Major Race and created a new race called SE Chinese Race consisting of Min Nan, Hakka, Singapore Chinese and Thai Chinese. The Buyei live in southern China and northern Vietnam and speak a Tai language that has over 2 million speakers yet has no official status. Buyei language use is vigorous and it is in good shape.

There is a romanized script and there are newspapers in the language, but they mostly use Mandarin for writing. The Buyei language is probably made up of a few separate languages, because some of the dialects are not mutually intelligible. The language is very close to the Zhuang language.

The SE Chinese Race really consists of the descendants of the ancient Chinese people known as the Yueh. The Yueh, or Yue, formed a state in southeastern coastal China during the Warring States Period and the Spring and Autumn Period. The state lasted from about 525 BC to 334 BC. The Chinese were already involved in metallurgy and were producing excellent swords during these periods.

The new lineup looks like this:


Northeast Asian Major Race*

Japanese-Korean Race
Southern Japanese Race (Honshu Kinki - Kyushu)
Ryukyuan Race
Ainu Race***
Gilyak Race**
Northern Chinese Race (Northern Chinese - Qiang - Manchu - Hui)
Oroqen Race
Sherpa-Yakut Race
Nepalese Race (Nepali - Newari)
Mongolian Race (Mongolian - Inner Mongolian - Buryat - Kazakh)
Northern Turkic Race (Dolgan - Altai - Shor - Tofalar - Uighur - Chelkan - Soyot - Kumandin Teleut - Hazara)***
Central Asian Race (Kirghiz - Karalkalpak - Uzbek - Turkmen)
Tuva Race
Tungus Race (Even - Evenki - Russian Saami)
Siberian Race
Beringian Race** (Chukchi - Aleut - Siberian Eskimo)
Koryak-Itelmen Race
Reindeer Chukchi Race
General Tibetan Race (Tibetan - Lisu - Nu - Karen - Tujia - Hui - Akha - Burmese - Bai - Yizu - Pnar - Mizo)
Bhutanese Race
Siberian Uralic Race (Nentsy - Samoyed - Ket - Mansi - Khanty)
Nganasan Race
Uralic Race (Komi - Mari)
North American Eskimo Race

Southeast Asian Major Race*

Southern Chinese Race (Hmong - Mien - Dong - Henan Han - Yi - Naxi)
Li Race
Southeast China Race (Hakka - Min Nan - Singapore Chinese - Thai Chinese)
South China Sea Race (Filipino - Ami Taiwanese Aborigine - Guangdong Han)
Tai Race (Thai - Lao - Lahu - Aini - Deang - Blang - Shan - Dai - Vietnamese - Muong - Buyei)
Kachin Race (Kachin - Va - Nung - Lu)
General Taiwanese Aborigine Race (Ayatal - Bunun - Yami)
Island SE Asian Race (Paiwan Taiwanese Aborigine - Sea Dayak - Sumatran - Balinese)
Indonesian Race (Sulawesi - Borneo - Lesser Sunda)
Malay Race (Javanese - Sarawak - Malaysia)
Zhuang Race (Senoi - Zhuang - She - Santhal - Ho - Nicobarese)
Austroasiatic Race (Mon - Khmer - Khasi - Nongtrai - Bhoi - Maram - Kynriam - Wajaintia)
Meghalaya NE Indian Race (Khasi - Garo - Lyngngam)
Philippines Negrito Race (Aeta - Ati - Palau Micronesian)
Mamanwa Philippines Negrito Race
Andaman Islands Negrito Race**
Semang Malay Negrito Race***

References

Lin M, Chu CC, Chang SL, Lee HL, Loo JH, Akaza T, Juji T, Ohashi J, Tokunaga K. March 2001. The Origin of Minnan & Hakka, the So-called "Taiwanese", Inferred by HLA Study. Tissue Antigens:57(3):192-9.

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