Ngái people


The Ngái are a Hakka people in Vietnam and other nearby countries of Indochina, who originally come from southern China. However they “have never considered themselves Hakka. Because no one, including Chinese people, knows how to categorize the Ngái people, they were simply categorized as Hakka”.
According to Vietnamese sources the Ngái people speak Hakka, a Sino-Tibetan language but are classified separately from the Hoa or urban ethnic "Overseas Chinese". Other sources claim that “the Hakka language is not similar to the Ngai language”. According to official data, the Ngái population was 4,841 in 1999 but down only 1,035 in 2009 and up to 1,649 in 2019.