After several changes, Mandarin has become modern Chinese. It gives up many ancient sounds, but Minnan dialect still retains many ancient Chinese sounds. For example, the word "coffee" in Putonghua, and bi and B in Minnan dialect are the preservation of ancient sounds. It can also be seen from some phonetic notes in ancient books that there is an F in Mandarin today, which is pronounced as B or P in Minnan, such as "bark", "negative" as pnai and "rich" as bu in Minnan. There are also the rolling tongue sounds zh, ch and sh in Mandarin, some of which are pronounced as D or T in Minnan dialect. In other words, in fact, there is no difference in the pronunciation of Minnan dialect, so this is also a common phonetic error when Minnan people speak Mandarin. For example, "Du" is pronounced in Minnan dialect, and "Di" is pronounced in Minnan dialect, which is the pronunciation of zh and ch in Mandarin. We still retain the pronunciation of d and t, which is also the retention of ancient sounds. There is also the "moon" of the "moon", which is pronounced gguat in Minnan dialect. Gg is an ancient sound, probably an ancient sound, which remained until the Middle Ages and disappeared after the Yuan Dynasty, while Minnan dialect still retains this sound. Even at in gguat is an important pronunciation representing ggua in ancient times, which has been preserved to this day. Because Minnan dialect retains many ancient sounds, many scholars who study Minnan dialect say that Minnan dialect is a fossil of ancient sounds. Of course, there are other dialects, but not as many and systematic as Minnan dialect.

(2) Multi-tone in one word

Multi-tone is another feature of Minnan dialect. "Minnan dialect has a long history. It was the Han people in the Central Plains who came to Fujian from the north in different historical periods, bringing different periods of pronunciation. Therefore, Minnan dialect has become a great convergence of Chinese pronunciation in different periods. Some are ancient sounds, some are Tang sounds, some are Song sounds, and some are modern sounds. So together, one word reads many sounds. Therefore, Mandarin has only four pronunciations of "Yin and Yang", while Minnan dialect has eight pronunciations of "Yin Ping, Yangping, Yin Shang, Yang Shang, Yin Qu, Yang Qu, Yin Ru and Yang Ru".

For example, the successful "Cheng" is pronounced in Mandarin, and the petitions are all pronounced as "Cheng", "Cheng" and "Cheng". However, there are three pronunciations in Minnan dialect, that is, the word "Cheng" in the report is pronounced ting, the word "Cheng" in the submission is pronounced dnia, and the word "Cheng" in the letter and visit is pronounced tnia. According to statistics, there are 3,500 commonly used Chinese words, of which 1800 are all pronounced in Minnan dialect. Some pronunciations are literary pronunciations, while others are white pronunciations. Because there are so many pronunciations, the phonology of Minnan dialect is particularly rich. There are more than 80 light vowels, 8 tones and more than 2,300 syllables, and the ideographic sounds are very rich. Therefore, some linguists say that the system of preserving spoken and written pronunciation in Minnan language is incomparable to all Chinese dialects, which is also the characteristic of Minnan language.

(C) A lot of tone sandhi

Although there are many polyphonic words in Mandarin, there are fixed pronunciations between the corresponding words. But in Minnan dialect, words are pronounced in one way, and words are also pronounced in one way. For example, when "Tian Li" is read together, the word "Tian" will change its tone. "This tone sandhi is quite rich in Minnan dialect, which is a phonetic cohesion change at different levels in different historical periods and constitutes a rich Minnan dialect. [2]

(4) Some grammar of Minnan dialect still retains the word-formation characteristics of ancient Chinese.

Putonghua broadcasting pays attention to grammatical word order, which is generally "subject+preposition or verb+predicate+adjective+object", while Minnan language retains some word-formation characteristics of ancient Chinese, which is also the characteristic of Minnan language. For example, "I am older than you", and Minnan dialect means "I am older than you". Compared with other dialects and Putonghua, Minnan dialect has many things that Putonghua and other dialects do not have, which is a major feature of Minnan dialect. Because of this, many people think that Minnan dialect is more difficult to understand and learn than foreign languages, and some even compare several dialects. Finally, Minnan dialect was selected as one of the "Top Ten Difficult Dialects to Learn". Moreover, many words in Putonghua are stressed words, which come from the mouth, while some words in Minnan dialect come from the mouth and nose at the same time, which many foreigners think is unique to Minnan dialect. There are dozens of bare-nose vowels, which are not found in Mandarin, and there are no entering tones, so Minnan dialect is rich in pronunciation.