---
license: cc0-1.0
language:
- hak
- en
- id
pretty_name: "Hakka (Pontianak & Singkawang, West Kalimantan) Phrasebook & Vocabulary"
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
task_categories:
- translation
- text-generation
tags:
- hakka
- low-resource
- indonesia
- west-kalimantan
- pontianak
- singkawang
- phrasebook
- language-learning
- parallel-corpus
---

# Hakka (Pontianak & Singkawang, West Kalimantan) Phrasebook & Vocabulary

A structured dataset of **West Kalimantan Indonesian Hakka** (客家話) vocabulary, phrases, and
grammar patterns, romanized and glossed in English (and Indonesian for the parallel-sentence
`corpus` category) — including, where the source material allows it, a **dialect-level distinction
between Pontianak Hakka and Singkawang Hakka**, two genuinely different varieties often lumped
together under one generic label.

Hakka is spoken by roughly 80 million people worldwide but is under-documented online, especially
the Indonesian varieties. This dataset focuses specifically on the **Hakka spoken by the Chinese
Indonesian (Chindo) community of West Kalimantan** (Pontianak, Singkawang, Sanggau).

## Content

3,204 entries across four categories:

| category | rows | description |
|---|---|---|
| `corpus` | 1,985 | Full parallel sentences, Indonesian ↔ Pontianak Hakka, from a personal phrasebook-style corpus (travel, daily life, services) — the largest and most naturalistic part of the dataset. |
| `vocabulaire` | 748 | Single words: numbers, family terms, body parts, health/illness, food, verbs, adjectives, weather, places, colors, etc. Includes words extracted from the `corpus` sentences, a separate personal vocabulary list, and a thesis-sourced companion dictionary — see Source & compilation and Limitations. |
| `communication` | 339 | Everyday phrases and dialogue: greetings, shopping, work, small talk, register/politeness variation. |
| `grammaire` | 132 | Grammar patterns (question formation, tense/aspect markers, connectors, numeral classifiers) with example sentences. |

(Row count dropped from a peak of 3,494 on 2026-09-02 after a cleanup pass: the source vault's
markdown files had accumulated duplicate/near-duplicate entries across four separate append passes,
and one file — a "quick reference" cheat-sheet that re-packages entries already documented
elsewhere — was found to have moved into a scanned folder and started contributing ~90 duplicate
rows; both are now deduplicated/excluded. No unique vocabulary was intentionally removed.)

The `vocabulaire`/`communication`/`grammaire` categories come from personal study notes; `corpus`
comes from a separate, larger personal compilation (see Source & compilation).

## Fields

| field | type | description |
|---|---|---|
| `id` | int | Row identifier. |
| `hakka` | string | The Hakka word/phrase/sentence, romanized (no standardized romanization system exists for this dialect — see Limitations). May carry an inline dialect tag like `[PTK]` — see Dialect notation below. |
| `french` | string or null | Legacy field, always `null` as of 2026-09-03 — the source vault was fully translated from French to English on that date, see Source & compilation. Kept for schema stability. |
| `english` | string or null | English gloss, when available (`vocabulaire`/`communication`/`grammaire` only). |
| `indonesian` | string or null | Indonesian source sentence (`corpus` rows only — this is the pivot language for that part of the dataset, not a translation of `english`). |
| `notes` | string or null | Dialect/usage notes from the source material. |
| `category` | string | `vocabulaire`, `communication`, `grammaire`, or `corpus`. |
| `subcategory` | string | Topic within the category (e.g. `nombres`, `salutations`, `structures-de-phrase`, `khek-pontianak-phrasebook`). |
| `section` | string or null | Original subsection heading, for extra context. |
| `dialect` | string or null | Parsed from the dialect tag (see below), one of `pontianak`, `singkawang`, `west-kalimantan` (generic, source doesn't distinguish), `indonesia-general`, `bangka`, `taiwan`, `china-mainland`, `malaysia`, `universal`, `variation-noted` — or `null` if the source material carries no tag at all (mostly older, untagged entries; not a claim that the word is dialect-neutral). All `corpus` rows are `pontianak`. |
| `extra` | object | Any additional columns from the source table that didn't fit the fields above (e.g. Mandarin/Malay comparison terms, register form, grammar pattern description, Chinese characters for Singkawang loanwords). Empty object if none. |

`corpus` rows use `indonesian` instead of `english`, since the source material is an
Indonesian↔Hakka phrasebook rather than an English-glossed one.

## Dialect notation

`dialect` is parsed automatically from inline bracket tags in the source notes (either on the
term itself, e.g. `asuk [PTK]`, or on the table/section heading it belongs to, e.g. `## Singkawang
[SKW]`). Full tag legend:

- `[PTK]` — **Pontianak Hakka** (坤甸客語) — sourced from Huang Su-chen's 2013 master's thesis
  and community sources explicitly claiming Pontianak.
- `[SKW]` — **Singkawang Hakka** (山口洋客語) — sourced from Huang Hui-chen's 2008 master's
  thesis and a 2023 peer-reviewed article (verified with two native Singkawang speakers).
- `[WK]` — West Kalimantan, generic/unspecified (the source doesn't distinguish Pontianak from
  Singkawang — most of the pre-existing vocabulary in this dataset falls here or has no tag at all).
- `[ID]` — General Indonesian Hakka · `[BK]` — Bangka dialect · `[TW]` — Taiwanese Hakka ·
  `[CN]` — Mainland China Hakka · `[MY]` — Malaysian Hakka · `[Universal]` — used across all Hakka
  dialects · `[Variation]` — a regional variation exists without further detail.

**Pontianak vs Singkawang, briefly:** despite sharing the generic "West Kalimantan Hakka" label,
these are two distinct varieties — different Chinese-mainland origin (Meixian vs. Hailu/Hopo/Wuhua),
different local nicknames ("parler doux" 軟話 vs. "parler dur" 硬話), and different tone systems
(Pontianak: 24/11/31/55/2/5 · Singkawang: 53/55/24/31/34/5), while still sharing a layer of recent
loanwords (Teochew, Cantonese, Malay/Indonesian).

**Caution:** the real dialect continuum is fuzzier than these tags suggest. Concrete example: *fung*
means "smoke/enfumer" in Pontianak Hakka (tone 4) but "wind" in Singkawang Hakka — and a third,
unrelated community source glosses it as "red". Similarly, "to eat rice" is *set fan*/*sit fon* in
Meixian-leaning Pontianak sources, but *shit fon* is claimed by some as the Singkawang/Bangka form —
while other self-identified Pontianak sources also use *sit fon*. Treat `[PTK]`/`[SKW]` as "what the
source declares", not as a settled norm — this romanization also does not capture tone at all.

## Source & compilation

The source notes were originally written in a mix of English and French; on 2026-09-03 the French
portions (headers, prose, glosses) were translated to English throughout, since the intended
audience is primarily English-speaking. The `french` field is a leftover of that earlier state and
is now always `null` — kept in the schema rather than removed, so existing code that reads it
doesn't break.

This dataset was compiled from personal language-learning notes. Most of the
`vocabulaire`/`communication`/`grammaire` categories draw on a mix of family/community knowledge
and publicly available Hakka-learning blogs and dictionaries for the West Kalimantan dialect —
that portion is **not** an academic corpus, treat it as a community/hobbyist phrasebook, not a
normative reference. The `[PTK]`/`[SKW]`-tagged subset within it is more rigorously sourced: two
Taiwanese master's theses (Huang Su-chen 2013 on Pontianak Hakka, Huang Hui-chen 2008 on Singkawang
Hakka, both National Central University) and a 2023 peer-reviewed article (*Semiotika*, Universitas
Indonesia) that verified its Hakka loanword list with two native Singkawang speakers. The theses
themselves are institutionally locked in Taiwan; the original (2026-08-21) batch of this dataset
relied on their Wikipedia summaries, not the primary theses.

A larger, more rigorous batch (2026-09-02, ~266 rows) was added from a companion dictionary built
by a separate compilation effort that went back to the same two theses directly rather than their
Wikipedia summaries, with per-entry Chinese characters, IPA tone values for part of the Singkawang
entries, and an explicit 3-tier confidence system (★★★★★ = directly attested in a thesis, ★★★★☆ =
attested in an explicit community dictionary/blog, ★★★☆☆ = inferred from the `corpus` category,
unverified) — carried into this dataset's `notes` field per row. That compilation cites additional
source codes (S3/S4/S5/S6) that are never defined in its own bibliography — an unresolved gap in
the *source* material, not something this dataset can fix.

The `corpus` category (1,985 rows) comes from a separate personal phrasebook-style compilation
built over several years (first assembled 2015, last revised 2022), independent from the notes
above — likely originally translated from a common multilingual travel-phrasebook template (many
sentences follow a "duty-free/hotel/directions/health" pattern typical of that genre), then
rendered into Pontianak Hakka. It has not been cross-checked against the rest of this dataset for
spelling consistency (e.g. it tends to write some compounds as one word — `focha` — where the
`vocabulaire` category spells them with a space — `fo cha`).

A further batch (2026-09-02) was added from a third personal source: an unstructured vocabulary
list and a song lyric with line-by-line Indonesian translation. This batch is untagged for dialect
(no `[PTK]`/`[SKW]`) since it carries no city attribution of its own, unlike the academically-sourced
subset above.

## Limitations

- **No standardized romanization.** Spelling reflects common usage in West Kalimantan Hakka
  communities and varies between entries (e.g. `jit`/`yit` for "one").
- **No audio or tone marking.** Hakka is tonal; this dataset is text-only and does not capture tone
  — even the `[PTK]`/`[SKW]` tone-value note above is descriptive metadata, not annotated per-row.
- **Mostly single-contributor compilation**, not cross-validated by multiple native speakers for
  the bulk of the data — expect some inconsistencies or errors outside the academically-sourced subset.
- **`dialect: null` is not a claim of dialect-neutrality** — it just means the source material this
  row came from predates or doesn't use the tagging convention.
- Two romanized forms can collide with different meanings across sub-sources even within the same
  tag (e.g. `asuk` = "uncle, father's older brother" in the Pontianak list vs. the loanword `a-shuk`
  romanized `asuk` = "uncle, father's *younger* brother" in the Singkawang table) — a residual
  ambiguity in the underlying sources, not resolved by this compilation.
- A `vocabulaire` row glossing `si` as "lazy" (from the untagged personal-list batch) has no
  corroboration in the thesis-sourced companion dictionary, which documents `si` = "die"/"four"
  (context-dependent) and gives a *different* word entirely for "lazy" in Singkawang (`lan-shi`,
  懶屍) — treat the "lazy" sense with real caution pending native-speaker confirmation.
- The `corpus` rows have not been individually spot-checked for translation accuracy, and spelling
  conventions differ slightly from the rest of the dataset (see Source & compilation).
- 17 `vocabulaire` rows (11 on 2026-08-23, 6 more on 2026-09-02, subcategories `mots-essentiels`,
  `verbes`, `transport-vetements`, `lieux`) were extracted from the `corpus` sentences by frequency
  analysis, with meaning guessed from context across multiple example sentences rather than confirmed
  by a source or native speaker — flagged as unverified in their `notes` field, treat with extra
  caution. A second frequency pass after the 2026-09-02 vocabulary batch found diminishing returns
  (252 unknown tokens at ≥3 occurrences vs. 280 before, and the remainder is mostly grammatical
  particles/classifiers too ambiguous to gloss confidently from context alone) — not exhaustively
  mined further.
- **Unresolved conflict on `akhiu`**: the academically-sourced Pontianak material glosses it as
  "uncle, father's younger brother" (paternal side); a separate personal vocabulary list glosses
  the same word as maternal-side uncle. Both are the same contributor's own sources and they
  disagree — noted in `Famille.md`, not resolved here.
- Several romanized forms are tone-dependent homonyms with unrelated meanings in different rows —
  e.g. `si` = "die" (verb) vs. `si` = "lazy" (adjective), `ng` = "5" vs. `ng` = negation particle.
  Both senses are kept as separate rows; this dataset cannot disambiguate them without tone marking.
- **Moderate scale** (~3k rows) — good enough for phrasebook/reference use and as MT seed/fine-tuning
  data for a low-resource pair, but still too small to train a translation system from scratch.

## Loading

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

ds = load_dataset("rwm1cr0/hakka-khek", split="train")
ds = ds.filter(lambda r: r["category"] == "vocabulaire")
```

## License

Released under **CC0 1.0** (public domain dedication) — use freely, no attribution required.