Taiwanese Language (other) on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Taiwanese Hokkien ( , ), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taigi ( zh, c=臺語, tl=Tâi-gí), Taiwanese Southern Min ( zh, c=臺灣閩南語, tl=Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan
Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...
. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people
Taiwanese people are the Taiwanese nationality law, citizens and nationals of the Republic of China (ROC) and those who reside in an Overseas Taiwanese, overseas diaspora from the entire Taiwan Area. The term also refers to natives or inhabitan ...
who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan
The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by th ...
.
Taiwanese is generally similar to Hokkien spoken in Amoy
Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...
, Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...
, and Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
, as well as dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia
Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...
, such as Singaporean Hokkien
Singaporean Hokkien; Tâi-lô: ; zh, poj=''Sin-ka-pho Hok-kiàn-ōe'' is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu. Tâi-l� ...
, Penang Hokkien
Penang Hokkien ( zh, c=庇能福建話, tl=Pī-néeng Hok-kiàn-uā, poj=Pī-né͘ng Hok-kiàn-ōa; IPA: ) is a local variant of Hokkien spoken in Penang, Malaysia. It is spoken natively by 63.9% of Penang's Chinese community, and also by ...
, Philippine Hokkien
Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch of Min Chinese descended directly from Old Chinese of the Sinitic languages, Sinitic family, primarily spoken vernacularly by Chinese Filipinos in the Philippine ...
, Medan Hokkien, and Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien
Southern Malaysian Hokkien ( zh, t=, s=, p=Nán Mǎ Fújiànhuà, poj=''Lâm-Má Hok-kiàn-oē'') is a local variant of the Min Nan Chinese variety spoken in Central and Southern Peninsular Malaysia ( Klang, Melaka, Muar, Tangkak, Segamat, ...
. It is mutually intelligible
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between different but related language varieties in which speakers of the different varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. Mutual intellig ...
with the Amoy and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in mainland China, and with Philippine Hokkien
Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch of Min Chinese descended directly from Old Chinese of the Sinitic languages, Sinitic family, primarily spoken vernacularly by Chinese Filipinos in the Philippine ...
to the south in the Philippines
The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...
, spoken altogether by about 3 million people. The mass popularity of Hokkien entertainment media from Taiwan has given prominence
In topography, prominence or relative height (also referred to as autonomous height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contour line encircling ...
to the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien, especially since the 1980s.
Classification
Taiwanese Hokkien is a variety ofHokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
, a Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwa ...
language. Like many varieties of Min Chinese
Min ( zh, t=, s=闽语, p=Mǐnyǔ, poj=Bân-gú / Bân-gír / Bân-gí; Bàng-uâ-cê, BUC: ''Mìng-ngṳ̄'') is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 75 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in Fujian province and Chaoshan ...
, it has distinct literary and colloquial layers of vocabulary, often associated with formal and informal register
Register or registration may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
Music
* Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc.
* ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller
* Registration (organ), ...
s respectively. The literary layer can be traced to the late Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...
, and as such is related to Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
. In contrast, the colloquial layers of Min varieties are believed to have branched from the mainstream of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty
The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
.
Regional variations within the Taiwanese variant may be traced back to Hokkien variants spoken in Southern Fujian, specifically those from Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...
and Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
, and later from Amoy
Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...
. Taiwanese also contains loanwords from Japanese and native Formosan languages
The Formosan languages are a geographic grouping comprising the languages of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, all of which are Austronesian. They do not form a single subfamily of Austronesian but rather up to nine separate primary subfamili ...
. Recent work by scholars such as Ekki Lu, Toru Sakai, and Li Khin-hoann, based on former research by scholars such as Ong Iok-tek, has gone so far as to associate part of the basic vocabulary of the colloquial Taiwanese with the Austronesian and Tai language families; however, such claims are controversial.
The literary form of Hokkien once flourished in Fujian
Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...
and was brought to Taiwan by early emigrants. ''Tale of the Lychee Mirror
The ''Tale of the Lychee Mirror'' () is a 16th-century Ming dynasty play written by an unknown author.
History
The play was written in a mixture of the Southern Min dialects of Quanzhou and Chaozhou ( Teochew), and is one of the earliest source ...
'', a manuscript of a series of plays published during the Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...
in 1566, is one of the earliest known works. This form of language is now largely extinct. However, literary readings of the numbers are used in certain contexts, such as reciting telephone numbers (see Literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters
Differing literary and colloquial readings for certain Chinese characters are a common feature of many Chinese varieties, and the reading distinctions for these linguistic doublets often typify a dialect group. Literary readings () are usuall ...
).
History and formation
Spread of Hokkien to Taiwan
During theYuan dynasty
The Yuan dynasty ( ; zh, c=元朝, p=Yuáncháo), officially the Great Yuan (; Mongolian language, Mongolian: , , literally 'Great Yuan State'), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after Div ...
, Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...
became a major international port for trade with the outside world. From that period onwards, many people from the Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
-speaking regions (southern Fujian) started to emigrate overseas due to political and economic reasons. One of the destinations for the emigrants was the island of Taiwan (formerly Formosa), starting around 1600. They brought their native Hokkien language with them.
During the late Ming dynasty
The Ming dynasty, officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming was the last imperial dynasty of ...
, the political chaos pushed more migrants from southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong
) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...
to Taiwan. The earliest immigrants involved in Taiwan's development included pirate-merchants Pedro Yan Shiqi and Zheng Zhilong. In 1621, Chinese Peter and his forces, hailing from Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
, occupied ''Ponkan'' (modern-day Beigang, Yunlin
Beigang, Hokkō or Peikang is an Township (Taiwan), urban township in Yunlin County, Taiwan. It is primarily known for its Chaotian Temple, one of the most prominent temples of Mazu, Temples of Lin Moniang, Mazu on Taiwan. It has a population of ...
) and started to develop ''Tirosen'' (modern-day Chiayi
Chiayi (,), officially known as Chiayi City, is a Provincial city (Taiwan), city located in Chianan Plain in Regions of Taiwan, southwestern Taiwan, surrounded by Chiayi County with a population of 263,188 inhabitants as of January 2023.
The H ...
). After the death of Peter and another pirate, Li Dan of Quanzhou, Zheng sought to dominate the Strait of Taiwan. By 1628, he had grown so powerful that the Ming court bestowed him the official title, "Patrolling Admiral".
In 1624, the number of Chinese on the island was about 25,000. During the reign of Chongzhen Emperor
The Chongzhen Emperor (6 February 1611 – 25 April 1644), personal name Zhu Youjian, courtesy name Deyue,Wang Yuan (王源)，''Ju ye tang wen ji'' (《居業堂文集》), vol. 19. "聞之張景蔚親見烈皇帝神主題御諱字德約，行� ...
(1627–1644), there were frequent droughts in the Fujian region. Zheng and a Chinese official suggested sending victims to Taiwan and provide "for each person three tael
Tael ( ),"Tael" entry
at the
Later, in the 20th century, the conceptualization of Taiwanese was more controversial than most variations of Chinese because, at one time, it marked a clear division between the mainlanders who arrived in 1949 and the pre-existing majority native Taiwanese. Although the political and linguistic divisions between the two groups have blurred considerably, the political issues surrounding the Taiwanese have been more controversial and sensitive than for other
Taiwanese has extremely extensive
Until the late 19th century, Taiwanese speakers wrote mostly in
Many
zh-min-nan
Taiwanese Min Nan can be represented as 'zh-min-nan-TW'. When writing Taiwanese in Han characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it is impossible to use directly or borrow existing ones; this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2
– to encode a new combining character 'dot above right'. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see document
N2507N2628N2699
, an
N2770
). Font support has followed: for example, in Charis SIL.
The prestige variant of Taiwanese Hokkien is the southern speech found in
As with many other languages, the Chinese Bible Translations, translations of the Bible in Taiwan marked milestones in the standardization attempts of the language and its orthography.
The first translation of the Bible in Amoy or Taiwanese in the Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography was by the first missionary to Taiwan, James Laidlaw Maxwell, with the New Testament ''Lán ê Kiù-chú Iâ-so͘ Ki-tok ê Sin-iok'' published in 1873 and the Old Testament ''Kū-iok ê Sèng Keng'' in 1884.
The next translation of the Bible in Taiwanese or Amoy was by the missionary to Taiwan, Thomas Barclay (missionary), Thomas Barclay, carried out in Fujian and Taiwan. A New Testament translation was completed and published in 1916. The resulting work containing the Old and the New Testaments, in the 
The Ko–Tân (Kerygma) Colloquial Taiwanese Version of the New Testament (''Sin-iok'') in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, also known as the (), was published in 1973 as an ecumenical effort between the Protestant Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Roman Catholic mission Maryknoll. This translation used a more modern vocabulary (somewhat influenced by Mandarin), and reflected the central Taiwan dialect, as the Maryknoll mission was based near Taichung, Tâi-tiong. It was soon confiscated by the Kuomintang government (which objected to the use of Latin orthography) in 1975.
A translation using the principle of Dynamic and formal equivalence, functional equivalence, "" (), containing only the New Testament, again in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was published in 2008 as a collaboration between the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Bible Society in Taiwan; a parallel-text version with both Han-character and Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthographies was published in 2013. A translation of the Old Testament following the same principle was completed and the whole Bible was published in 2021 as a parallel-text volume.
Another translation using the principle of functional equivalence, "Common Taiwanese Bible" (), with versions of Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Han characters and Ruby version (both Han characters and Pe̍h-ōe-jī) was published in 2015, available in printed and online.
Until the 1980s, the use of Taiwanese Hokkien, along with all Varieties of Chinese, varieties other than Taiwanese Mandarin, Mandarin, was discouraged by the Kuomintang through measures such as banning its use in schools and limiting the amount of Taiwanese broadcast on radio and television. These restrictions were lifted by the 1990s, and the Taiwanese became an emblem of Taiwanese localization movement, localization. Mandarin remains the predominant language of education, but Taiwanese schools have a "mother tongue" language requirement which can be satisfied with students' choice of the mother tongue: Taiwanese, Hakka, or
Blog on the Taiwanese language and language education in Taiwan
* * wikt:Appendix:Sino-Tibetan Swadesh lists, Sino-Tibetan Swadesh lists ; Dictionaries * * * * * ; Learning aids
Intermediate Taiwanese grammar (as a blog)
Taiwanese vocabulary: word of the day (blog)
Taiwanese teaching material
: Nursery rhymes and songs in Han characters and romanization w/ recordings in MP3
Travlang (language resources for travellers): Hō-ló-oē
''Spoken Hokkien''
- a beginner's e-textbook, with audio, for English-speaking learners of conversational Taiwanese. * ; Other
Open Directory (dmoz): World: Taiwanese
{{Chinese language Languages of Taiwan Hokkien-language dialects Culture of Taiwan
at the
Dutch Empire
The Dutch colonial empire () comprised overseas territories and trading posts under some form of Dutch control from the early 17th to late 20th centuries, including those initially administered by Dutch chartered companies—primarily the Du ...
, who ruled Taiwan as Dutch Formosa
The island of Taiwan, also commonly known as ''Formosa'', was partly under colonial rule by the Dutch Republic from 1624 to 1662 and from 1664 to 1668. In the context of the Age of Discovery, the Dutch East India Company established its presence ...
at the time.
Development and divergence
In 1624 and 1626, the Dutch and Spanish forces occupied theTainan
Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a Special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality in southern Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and commonly called the "Taiwan Prefecture, ...
and Keelung
Keelung ( ; zh, p=Jīlóng, c=基隆, poj=Ke-lâng), Chilung or Jilong ( ; ), officially known as Keelung City, is a major port city in northeastern Taiwan. The city is part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area with neighboring New Ta ...
areas, respectively. During the 40 years of Dutch colonial rule of Taiwan, the Dutch recruited many Chinese from the regions around Quanzhou and Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
in southern Fujian to help develop Taiwan.
In the 1661 Siege of Fort Zeelandia, Chinese general Koxinga
Zheng Chenggong (; 27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), born Zheng Sen () and better known internationally by his honorific title Koxinga (, from Taiwanese: ''kok sèⁿ iâ''), was a Southern Ming general who resisted the Qing conquest of Chin ...
, marshaling a military force composed of fellow hometown hoklo soldiers of Southern Fujian, expelled the Dutch and established the Kingdom of Tungning
The Kingdom of Tungning, also known as Tywan, was a dynastic maritime state that ruled part of southwestern Taiwan and the Penghu islands between 1661 and 1683. It is the first predominantly ethnic Han state in Taiwanese history. At its z ...
. Koxinga originated from the Quanzhou region. Chen Yonghua, who was in charge of establishing the education system of Tungning, also originated from Tong'an
Tong'an District () is a northern mainland district of Xiamen which faces Quemoy County, Republic of China. To the north is Anxi and Nan'an, and to the south is Jimei. Tong'an is also east of Lianxiang and Changqin to the West. It covers
county of Quanzhou Prefecture. Because most of the soldiers he brought to Taiwan came from Quanzhou, the prestige variant of Hokkien on the island at the time was the Quanzhou dialect
The Quanzhou dialects ( zh, s=泉州话, t=泉州話, poj=Choân-chiu-ōe), also rendered Chin-chew or Choanchew, are a collection of Hokkien dialects spoken in southern Fujian (in southeast China), in the area centered on the city of Quanzhou. ...
.
In 1683, Chinese admiral Shi Lang
Shi Lang (1621–1696), Marquis Jinghai, also known as Secoe or Sego, was a Chinese admiral who served under the Ming dynasty, Ming and Qing dynasty, Qing dynasties in the 17th century. He was the commander-in-chief of the Qing fleets which dest ...
, marshaling a military force again composed of fellow hometown hoklo soldiers of Southern Fujian, attacked Taiwan in the Battle of Penghu, ending the Tungning era and beginning Qing dynasty rule (until 1895).
In the first decades of the 18th century, the linguistic differences between the Qing imperial bureaucrats and the commoners were recorded by the Mandarin-speaking first Imperial High Commissioner to Taiwan (1722), Huang Shujing
Huáng Shújǐng (黃叔璥, 1682-1758) was the first Imperial High Commissioner to Taiwan (1722). A Beijinger, he was sent by the Kangxi Emperor
The Kangxi Emperor (4 May 165420 December 1722), also known by his temple name Emperor Sheng ...
:
The tone of Huang's message foretold the uneasy relationships between different language communities and colonial establishments over the next few centuries.
During the 200 years of Qing dynasty rule, thousands of immigrants from Fujian
Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...
arrived yearly; the population was over one million in the middle of the 18th century. Civil unrest and armed conflicts were frequent. In addition to resistance against governments (both Chinese and later Japanese), battles between ethnic groups were also significant: the belligerents usually grouped around the language they used. History has recorded battles between Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
speakers and Hokkien speakers, between these and the aborigines, and even between those who spoke different variants of Hokkien.
In the early 20th century, the Hoklo people
The Hoklo people () are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, and known by various related terms such as Banlam people (), Minnan people, Fujianese people o ...
in Taiwan could be categorized as originating from modern-day Xiamen
Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...
, Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...
, Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
, and Zhangpu
Zhangpu County () is a county of Zhangzhou prefecture-level city in far southern Fujian province, People's Republic of China with 847,535 (2020 census). The county seat is located in the town of Sui'an ().
Zhangpu is bordered by the Longhai Cit ...
. People from the former two areas (Quanzhou-speaking) were dominant in the north of the island and along the west coast, whereas people from the latter two areas (Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
-speaking) were dominant in the south and perhaps the central plains as well.
Although there were conflicts between Quanzhou- and Zhangzhou speakers in Taiwan historically, their gradual intermingling led to the mixture of the two accents. Apart from Lukang city and Yilan County, which have preserved their original Quanzhou and Zhangzhou accents, respectively, almost every region of Taiwan now speaks a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou Hokkien. A similar phenomenon occurred in Xiamen
Xiamen,), also known as Amoy ( ; from the Zhangzhou Hokkien pronunciation, zh, c=, s=, t=, p=, poj=Ē͘-mûi, historically romanized as Amoy, is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Stra ...
(Amoy) after 1842, when the mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou Hokkien displaced the Quanzhou dialect to yield the modern Amoy dialect
The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect (), also known as Amoyese, Amoynese, Amoy Hokkien, Xiamenese or Xiamen Hokkien, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen (historically known as "Amoy") and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the ...
.
During the Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan, Taiwan began to hold Amoy Hokkien as its standard pronunciation; the Japanese called this mixture .
Due to the influx of Japanese loanwords before 1945 and the political separation after 1949, Amoy Hokkien and Taiwanese Hokkien began to diverge slightly.
Modern times
Later, in the 20th century, the conceptualization of Taiwanese was more controversial than most variations of Chinese because, at one time, it marked a clear division between the mainlanders who arrived in 1949 and the pre-existing majority native Taiwanese. Although the political and linguistic divisions between the two groups have blurred considerably, the political issues surrounding the Taiwanese have been more controversial and sensitive than for other varieties of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
.
After the First Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 189417 April 1895), or the First China–Japan War, was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily over influence in Joseon, Korea. In Chinese it is commonly known as th ...
, due to military defeat to the Japanese, the Qing dynasty
The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...
ceded Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
to Japan, causing contact with the Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
-speaking regions of mainland China to stop. During Japanese rule, Japanese became an official language in Taiwan, and Taiwanese began to absorb a large number of Japanese loanwords into its language. Examples of such loanwords (some which had in turn been borrowed from English) include ''piān-só͘'' from , ''phêng'' from (see also Taiwanese units of measurement
Taiwanese units of measurement (; Hakka: Thòi-chṳ) are the customary and traditional units of measure used in Taiwan. The Taiwanese units formed in the 1900s when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. The system mainly refers to Japanese system. T ...
), ''ga-suh'' from , ''o͘-tó͘-bái'' from . All of these caused the Taiwanese to deviate from Hokkien used elsewhere.
During Kōminka of the late Japanese colonial period, the Japanese language
is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...
appeared in every corner of Taiwan. The Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
beginning in 1937 brought stricter measures into force, and along with the outlawing of romanized Taiwanese, various publications were prohibited and Confucian-style private schools which taught Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...
with literary
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...
Southern Min pronunciation – was closed down in 1939. Taiwanese thus was reduced to a common daily language. In 1937 the colonial government introduced a concept called "National Language Family" (), which meant that families that proved that they adopted Japanese as their daily language enjoyed benefits such as greater access to education.
After the handover of Taiwan to the Republic of China
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
in 1945, there was a brief cultural exchange with mainland China followed by further oppression. The Chinese Civil War
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led Nationalist government, government of the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermitt ...
resulted in another political separation when the Kuomintang
The Kuomintang (KMT) is a major political party in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It was the one party state, sole ruling party of the country Republic of China (1912-1949), during its rule from 1927 to 1949 in Mainland China until Retreat ...
(Chinese Nationalist Party) government retreated to Taiwan following their defeat by the communists in 1949. The influx of two million soldiers and civilians caused the population of Taiwan to increase from 6 million to 8 million. The government subsequently promoted Mandarin while suppressing, but short of banning, the use of written Taiwanese Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
(e.g. Pe̍h-ōe-jī
( ; , , ; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing syst ...
, a phonetic rendering of spoken Hokkien using the Latin alphabet) as part of its general policy of political repression. In 1964 the use of spoken Taiwanese Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
or Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
in schools or in official settings was forbidden; violations of the prohibition in schools often resulted in physical punishments, fines, or humiliation.
Only after the lifting of martial law
Martial law is the replacement of civilian government by military rule and the suspension of civilian legal processes for military powers. Martial law can continue for a specified amount of time, or indefinitely, and standard civil liberties ...
in 1987 and the mother tongue
A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers ...
movement in the 1990s did Taiwan finally see a true revival in Taiwanese Hokkien. Today, there are a large number of Taiwanese Hokkien scholars dedicated to researching the language. Despite this, however, according to census data, the number of people speaking Taiwanese continued to drop.
The history of the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien and its interaction with Mandarin is complex and, at times, controversial, even regarding its name. The language has no official name in Taiwan. Some dislike the name "Taiwanese" as they feel that it belittles other languages spoken on the island such as Mandarin, Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
, and the indigenous languages
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an indigeno ...
. Others prefer the names Southern Min
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwa ...
, Minnan or Hokkien as this views Taiwanese as a form of the Chinese variety spoken in Fujian
Fujian is a provinces of China, province in East China, southeastern China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou and its largest prefe ...
province in mainland China
"Mainland China", also referred to as "the Chinese mainland", is a Geopolitics, geopolitical term defined as the territory under direct administration of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the aftermath of the Chinese Civil War. In addit ...
. Others dislike those names for precisely the same reason. In the American Community Survey
The American Community Survey (ACS) is an annual demographics survey program conducted by the United States Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the United States census, decennial census ...
run by the United States Census Bureau
The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...
, Taiwanese was referred to as "Formosan" from 2012 to 2015 and as "Min Nan Chinese" since 2016.
Phonology
Phonologically
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often prefer ...
, Hokkien is a tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...
with extensive tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirec ...
rules. Syllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
s consist maximally of an initial consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
, a vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
, a final consonant, and a tone.
Consonants
Unlike many other varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin,Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
, Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
, etc., there are no native labiodental
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth, such as and . In English, labiodentalized /s/, /z/ and /r/ are characteristic of some individuals; these may be written .
Labiodental consonants in ...
phonemes (i.e. , , , etc.).
# Coronal affricates and fricatives become alveolo-palatal
In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (alveolopalatal, ''alveo-palatal'' or ''alveopalatal'') consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simu ...
before , that is, , , , and are pronounced , , , and .
# The consonant may be realized as a fricative; that is, as in most environments and before .
# The voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refe ...
plosives ( and ) become the corresponding fricatives ( and ) in some phonetic contexts. This is similar to begadkefat
Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the phenomenon of lenition affecting the non-emphatic consonant, emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not gemination, geminated. The name is also given to si ...
in Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
and a similar allophony of intervocalic plosive consonants and their fricatives in Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
.
Vowels
Taiwanese has the followingvowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
s:
The vowel is akin to a schwa; in contrast, (with dot) or is a more open vowel
An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned approximately as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels (in U.S. terminology ) in reference to the low position of the tongue ...
. In addition, there are several diphthong
A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...
s and triphthong
In phonetics, a triphthong ( , ) (from Greek , ) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are ...
s (for example, ). The consonants and can function as a syllabic nucleus and are therefore included here as vowels. The vowels may be either plain or nasal
Nasal is an adjective referring to the nose, part of human or animal anatomy. It may also be shorthand for the following uses in combination:
* With reference to the human nose:
** Nasal administration, a method of pharmaceutical drug delivery
* ...
: is non-nasal, and or is the same vowel with concurrent nasal articulation. This is similar to French, Portuguese, Polish, and many other languages.
There are two pronunciations of vowel . In the south (e.g., Tainan
Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a Special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality in southern Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and commonly called the "Taiwan Prefecture, ...
and Kaohsiung
Kaohsiung, officially Kaohsiung City, is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsiung City has a population of approximately 2.73 million p ...
) it is ; in the north (e.g., Taipei
, nickname = The City of Azaleas
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, pushpin_map = Taiwan#Asia#Pacific Ocean#Earth
, coordinates =
, subdivision_type = Country ...
) it is . Due to the development of transportation and communication, both pronunciations are common and acceptable throughout the country.
is a diphthong iNear-close near-front unrounded vowel">ɪ">Close front unrounded vowel">iNear-close near-front unrounded vowel">ɪbefore -k or -ng ( zh">poj=ek, eng, tl=ik, ing), and is slightly shortened and retracted before -p or -t to something more like í̞ Similarly, is slightly shortened and retracted before -t or -n to something more like ʊ">nowiki/> ʊ
Tones
In the traditional analysis, there are eight "tones", tone number">numbered from 1 to 8. Strictly speaking, there are only five Tone (linguistics)">tonal contours. But as in other Sinitic languages, the two kinds of stopped syllables are also considered to be tones and assigned numbers 4 and 8. Words of tone 6 have merged into either tone 2 or tone 7 in most Taiwanese variants, and thus tone 6 is duplicated in the count. Here the eight tones are shown, following the traditional tone class categorization, named after the tones ofMiddle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese language, Chinese recorded in the ''Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expande ...
:
:
See (for one example) the modern phonological analysis in , which challenges these notions.
For tones 4 and 8, a final consonant , , or may appear. When this happens, it is impossible for the syllable to be nasal. Indeed, these are the counterpart to the nasal final consonants , , and , respectively, in other tones. However, it is possible to have a nasal 4th or 8th tone syllable such as or , as long as there is no final consonant other than .
In the dialect spoken near the northern coast of Taiwan, there is no distinction between tones number 8 and number 4 – both are pronounced as if they follow the tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirec ...
rules of tone number 4.
Tone number 0, typically written with two consecutive hyphens (--a) or a point (·a) before the syllable with this tone, is used to mark enclitics denoting the extent of a verb action, the end of a noun phrase, etc. A frequent use of this tone is to denote a question, such as in or (). This is realized by speaking the syllable with either a low-falling tone (3) or a low stop (4). The syllable prior to the maintains its original tone.
Ninth tone
Although uncommon in written Taiwanese, there is a ninth tone which is used for three main purposes: contractions, triplicated adjectives, andloan words
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
. The writing conventions for this tone vary, but the most common are with a breve accent (U+0306, ⟨◌̆⟩) in POJ and with a double acute accent
The double acute accent () is a diacritic mark of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. It is used primarily in Hungarian or Chuvash, and consequently it is sometimes referred to by typographers as hungarumlaut. The signs formed with a regular umlau ...
(U+030B, ⟨◌̋⟩) in Tai-lo.
Syllabic structure
Asyllable
A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...
requires a vowel (or diphthong or triphthong
In phonetics, a triphthong ( , ) (from Greek , ) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel quality to another that passes over a third. While "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, are ...
) to appear in the middle. All consonants can appear at the initial position. The consonants and (and some consider ) may appear at the end of a syllable. Therefore, it is possible to have syllables such as ("(to) tickle") and ("soup").
Tone sandhi
Taiwanese has extremely extensive tone sandhi
Tone sandhi is a phonological change that occurs in tonal languages. It involves changes to the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes, based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. This change typically simplifies a bidirec ...
(tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. What an 'utterance
In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, by one person, before or after which there is silence on the part of the person. In the case of oral language, spoken languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded ...
' (or ' intonational phrase') is, in the context of this language, is an ongoing topic for linguistic research, but some general rules apply:
The following syllables are unaffected by tone sandhi:
* The final syllable in a sentence, noun
In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...
(including single syllable nouns, but not pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (Interlinear gloss, glossed ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts of speech, but so ...
s), number, time phrase (i.e., today, tomorrow, etc.), spatial preposition
Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...
(i.e., on, under), or question word
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most ...
(i.e., who, what, how).
* The syllable immediately preceding the possessive particle 的 (ê) or a neutralized tone. In POJ and TL, this is the syllable before a double hyphen, e.g., or zh, tl=Ông--sian-sinn, labels=no.
* Some common aspect markers: , , or zh, tl=uân, labels=no, or zh, tl=suah, labels=no
Normal tone sandhi
The following rules, listed in the traditional pedagogical mnemonic order, govern the pronunciation of tone on each of the syllables affected (that is, all but those described according to the rules listed above): * If the original tone number is 5, pronounce it as tone number 3 (Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...
/Taipei speech) or 7 (Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
/Tainan speech).
* If the original tone number is 7, pronounce it as tone number 3.
* If the original tone number is 3, pronounce it as tone number 2.
* If the original tone number is 2, pronounce it as tone number 1.
* If the original tone number is 1, pronounce it as tone number 7.
* If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 4.
* If the original tone number is 4 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 8.
* If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 3.
* If the original tone number is 4 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 2.
An example of the normal tone sandhi rule is:
: 老老 lao lao: 7 + 7 = 7 + 3
: 拍拍 phah phah: 4 + 4 = 2 + 4
Double tone sandhi
There are a number of a single syllable words that undergo double tone sandhi, that is, they follow the tone change rule twice and are pronounced according to the second tone change. These syllables are almost always a 4th tone ending in -h, and include the words 欲 (beh), 佮 (kah), 閣 (koh), 才 (chiah/tsiah), as well as the 3rd tone verb 去 khì. As a result of following the tone change rule twice, these syllables are all pronounced as tone number 1. :Before the -á suffix
Apart from the normal tone sandhi rules described above, there are two special cases where a different set of tone sandhi apply. In a noun with the nounsuffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...
'' (), the penultimate syllable is governed by the following rules:
* If the original tone number is 5, pronounce it as tone number 7.
* If the original tone number is 7, pronounce it as tone number 7.
* If the original tone number is 2 or 3, pronounce it as tone number 1.
* If the original tone number is 1, pronounce it as tone number 7.(same as normal)
* If the original tone number is 8 and final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 4.(same as normal)
* If the original tone number is 4 and final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 8.(same as normal)
* If the original tone number is 8 and final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 7.
* If the original tone number is 4 and final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 1. (same as double)
:
In triplicated adjectives
Finally, in the case of a single-syllable adjective triplication (for added emphasis), the first syllable is governed by the following rules (the second syllable follows the normal tone sandhi rules above): * If the original tone number is 5, pronounce it as tone number 5. * If the original tone number is 7, pronounce it as tone number 1. * If the original tone number is 3, pronounce it as tone number 2 (same as normal). * If the original tone number is 2, pronounce it as tone number 1 (same as normal). * If the original tone number is 1, pronounce it as tone number 5. * If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 4 (same as normal). * If the original tone number is 4 and the final consonant is not h (that is, it is p, t, or k), pronounce it as tone number 8 (same as normal). * If the original tone number is 8 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 5. * If the original tone number is 4 and the final consonant is h, pronounce it as tone number 2 (same as normal). : See , and the work of Robert L. Cheng (鄭良偉; Tēⁿ Liông-úi or Tēnn Liông-úi) for modern linguistic approaches to tones and tone sandhi in Taiwanese.Lexicon
Modern linguistic studies (by Robert L. Cheng and Chin-An Li, for example) estimate that most (75% to 90%) Taiwaneseword
A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...
s have cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language.
Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...
s in other Sinitic languages. False friend
In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ('pre ...
s do exist; for example, ''cháu''/''tsáu'' () means "to run" in Taiwanese, whereas the Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
cognate, ''zǒu'', means "to walk". Moreover, cognates may have different lexical categories; for example, the morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
''phīⁿ''/''phīnn'' () means not only "nose" (a noun, as in Mandarin ''bí'') but also "to smell" (a verb, unlike Mandarin).
Among the apparently cognate-less words are many basic words with properties that contrast with similar-meaning words of pan-Chinese derivation. Often the former group lacks a standard Han character, and the words are variously considered colloquial, intimate, vulgar, uncultured, or more concrete in meaning than the pan-Chinese synonym. Some examples: ''lâng'' ( or , person, concrete) vs. ''jîn'' (人, person, abstract); '/''tsa-bóo'' (, woman) vs. ''lú-jîn'' (女人, woman, literary). Unlike the English Germanic/Latin contrast, however, the two groups of Taiwanese words cannot be as strongly attributed to the influences of two disparate linguistic sources.
Extensive contact with the Japanese language
is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese dia ...
has left a legacy of Japanese loanwords
A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
, with 172 recorded in the Ministry of Education's '' Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan''. Although a very small percentage of the vocabulary, their usage tends to be high-frequency because of their relevance to modern society and popular culture. Examples are: ''o͘-tó͘-bái''/''oo-tóo-bái'' from and ''pháng'' from . Grammatical particle
In grammar, the term ''particle'' ( abbreviated ) has a traditional meaning, as a part of speech that cannot be inflected, and a modern meaning, as a function word (functor) associated with another word or phrase in order to impart meaning. Alth ...
s borrowed from Japanese, notably ''te̍k''/''ti̍k'' from and ''ka'' from , show up in the Taiwanese of older speakers.
Whereas Mandarin attaches a syllabic suffix to the singular pronoun to make a collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...
form, Taiwanese pronouns are collectivized through nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is .
...
. For example, ''i'' (he/she/it) and ''goá''/''guá'' (I) become ''in'' (they) and ''goán''/''guán'' (we), respectively. The ''-n'' thus represents a subsyllabic morpheme
A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...
. Like all other varieties of Chinese
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the m ...
, Taiwanese does not have true grammatical plural
In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...
s.
Unlike English, Taiwanese has two first-person plural pronouns. This distinction is called inclusive, which includes the addressee, and exclusive, which excludes the addressee. Thus, ''goán''/''guán'' means ''we excluding you'', while ''lán'' means ''we including you'' (similar to pluralis auctoris). The inclusive ''lán'' may be used to express politeness or solidarity, as in the example of a speaker asking a stranger "Where do we live?" while implicitly asking "Where do ''you'' live?".
Syntax
Thesyntax
In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituenc ...
of Taiwanese is similar to southern Sinitic languages such as Hakka
The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka-speaking Chinese, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a southern Han Chinese subgroup whose principal settlements and ancestral homes are dispersed widely across the provinces of southern China ...
and Yue. The subject–verb–object sequence is typical as in, for example, Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
, but subject–object–verb or the passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
(with the sequence object–subject–verb) is possible with particles. Take a simple sentence for example: 'I hold you.' The words involved are: ''goá''/''guá'' ('I' or 'me'), ''phō'' ('to hold'), ''lí'' ('you').
* Subject–verb–object (typical sequence): The sentence in the typical sequence would be: ''Goá phō lí.''/''Guá phō lí.'' ('I hold you.')
* Subject–''kā''–object–verb: Another sentence of roughly equivalent meaning is ''Goá kā lí phō''/''Guá kā lí phō.'', with the slight connotation of 'I take you and hold' or 'I get to you and hold'.
* Object–''hō͘''/''hōo''–subject–verb (the passive voice): Then, ''Lí hō͘ goá phō''/''Lí hōo guá phō'' means the same thing but in the passive voice
A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...
, with the connotation of 'You allow yourself to be held by me' or 'You make yourself available for my holding'.
The word ''hō͘''/''hōo'' also has other uses, such as to introduce an embedded clause: ''Goá hō͘ lí chúi lim''/''Guá hōo lí tsúi lim'' ('I give water for you to drink': ''chúi''/''tsúi'' means 'water'; ''lim'' is 'to drink').
Scripts and orthographies
Until the late 19th century, Taiwanese speakers wrote mostly in Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese is the language in which the classics of Chinese literature were written, from . For millennia thereafter, the written Chinese used in these works was imitated and iterated upon by scholars in a form now called Literary ...
, although songbooks using Han characters
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one ...
are attested from the 1820s. Among many systems of writing Taiwanese using Latin characters, the most used is called Pe̍h-ōe-jī
( ; , , ; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing syst ...
(POJ) and was developed in the 19th century, while the Taiwanese Romanization System
Taiwanese may refer to:
* of or related to Taiwan
**Culture of Taiwan
**Geography of Taiwan
** Taiwanese cuisine
*Languages of Taiwan
** Formosan languages
** Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as the Taiwanese language
* Taiwanese people, residents of ...
(Tâi-lô) has been officially promoted since 2006 by Taiwan's Ministry of Education
An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...
. (For additional romanized systems, see references in "Orthography in Latin characters", below.) Nonetheless, Taiwanese speakers nowadays most commonly write in Mandarin, though many of the same characters are also used to write Taiwanese.
Han characters
In most cases, Taiwanese speakers write using thescript
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
called Han characters
Chinese characters are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represent the only one ...
as in Mandarin, although there are a number of special characters which are unique to Taiwanese and which are sometimes used in informal writing. Where Han characters are used, they are not always etymological or genetic; the borrowing of similar-sounding or similar-meaning characters is a common practice. Bilingual speakers of both Mandarin and Taiwanese sometimes attempt to represent the sounds by adopting similar-sounding Mandarin Han characters. For example, the Han characters of the vulgar slang 'khoàⁿ sáⁿ-siâu' or 'khuánn sánn-siâu' (, substituted for the etymologically correct , meaning 'What the hell are you looking at?') has very little meaning in Mandarin and may not be readily understood by a Taiwanese monolingual, as knowledge of Mandarin character readings is required to fully decipher it.
In 2007, the Ministry of Education
An education ministry is a national or subnational government agency politically responsible for education. Various other names are commonly used to identify such agencies, such as Ministry of Education, Department of Education, and Ministry of Pub ...
in Taiwan published the first list of Taiwanese Southern Min Recommended Characters, a list of 300 Han characters standardized for the use of writing Taiwanese and implemented the teaching of them in schools. In 2008, the ministry published a second list of 100 characters, and in 2009 added 300 more, giving a total of 700 standardized characters used to write uniquely Taiwanese words. With increasing literacy in Taiwanese, there are currently more Taiwanese online bloggers who write Taiwanese online using these standardized Chinese characters. Han characters are also used by Taiwan's Hokkien literary circle for Hokkien poets and writers to write literature or poetry in Taiwanese.
Orthography in Latin characters
There are several Latin-based orthographies, the oldest beingPe̍h-ōe-jī
( ; , , ; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing syst ...
(POJ, meaning "vernacular writing"), developed in the 19th century. Taiwanese Romanization System
Taiwanese may refer to:
* of or related to Taiwan
**Culture of Taiwan
**Geography of Taiwan
** Taiwanese cuisine
*Languages of Taiwan
** Formosan languages
** Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as the Taiwanese language
* Taiwanese people, residents of ...
(Tâi-ôan lô-má-jī, Tâi-lô) and Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA) are two later adaptations of POJ. Other 20th-century innovations include Daighi tongiong pingim (DT), Ganvsig daiuuan bhanlam ghiw tongiong pingimv (GDT), Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), Simplified MLT (SMLT), Phofsit Daibuun (PSDB). The last four employ tonal spelling
Spelling is a set of conventions for written language regarding how graphemes should correspond to the sounds of spoken language. Spelling is one of the elements of orthography, and highly standardized spelling is a prescriptive element.
Spelli ...
to indicate tone without use of diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
symbols, but letters instead.
In POJ, the traditional list of letters is
:a b ch chh e g h i j k kh l m n ng o o͘ p ph s t th (ts) u
Twenty-four in all, including the obsolete , which was used to represent the modern at some places. The additional necessities are the nasal symbol (superscript ; the uppercase form is sometimes used in all caps
In typography, text or font in all caps (short for "all capitals") contains capital letters without any lowercase letters. For example: All-caps text can be seen in legal documents, advertisements, newspaper headlines, and the titles on book co ...
texts, such as book titles or section headings), and the tonal diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...
s.
POJ was developed first by Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Pr ...
missionaries
A missionary is a member of a religious group who is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Miss ...
and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan; they have been active in promoting the language since the late 19th century. Recently there has been an increase in texts using a mixed orthography of Han characters and romanization, although these texts remain uncommon.
In 2006, the National Languages Committee (Ministry of Education, Republic of China) proposed its Taiwanese Romanization System
Taiwanese may refer to:
* of or related to Taiwan
**Culture of Taiwan
**Geography of Taiwan
** Taiwanese cuisine
*Languages of Taiwan
** Formosan languages
** Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as the Taiwanese language
* Taiwanese people, residents of ...
(Tâi-ôan Lô-má-jī pheng-im, Tâi-Lô). This alphabet reconciles two orthographies, TLPA and POJ. The changes for the consonants involved using for POJ's (reverting to the orthography in the 19th century), and for . For the vowels, could optionally be represented as . The nasal mark could also be represented optionally as . The rest of the alphabet, most notably the use of diacritics to mark the tones, appeared to keep to the POJ tradition. One of the aims of this compromise was to curb any increase of 'market share' for Daighi tongiong pingim/Tongyong Pinyin. It is unclear whether the community will adopt this new agreement.
Orthographies in kana and in bopomofo
There was an orthography of Taiwanese based on the Japanese kana during Japanese rule. The Kuomintang government also tried to introduce an orthography inbopomofo
Bopomofo, also called Zhuyin Fuhao ( ; ), or simply Zhuyin, is a Chinese transliteration, transliteration system for Standard Chinese and other Sinitic languages. It is the principal method of teaching Chinese Mandarin pronunciation in Taiwa ...
.
Comparison of orthographies
Here the different orthographies are compared:Computing
Many keyboard layout
A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. Standard keybo ...
s and input methods
An input method (or input method editor, commonly abbreviated IME) is an operating system component or program that enables users to generate characters not natively available on their input devices by using sequences of characters (or mouse oper ...
for entering either Latin or Han characters in Taiwanese are available. Some of them are free of charge, and some are commercial.
The Min Nan
Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ...
dialect group is registered per azh-min-nan
Taiwanese Min Nan can be represented as 'zh-min-nan-TW'. When writing Taiwanese in Han characters, some writers create 'new' characters when they consider it is impossible to use directly or borrow existing ones; this corresponds to similar practices in character usage in
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
, Vietnamese chữ nôm, Korean hanja and Japanese kanji. These are usually not encoded in Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
(or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set
The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of characters defined by the international standard ISO/ IEC 10646, ''Information technology — Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)'' (plus amendments to that standard), w ...
), thus creating problems in computer processing.
All Latin characters required by Pe̍h-ōe-jī can be represented using Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
(or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal character set
The Universal Coded Character Set (UCS, Unicode) is a standard set of characters defined by the international standard ISO/ IEC 10646, ''Information technology — Universal Coded Character Set (UCS)'' (plus amendments to that standard), w ...
), using precomposed or combining (diacritics) characters.
Prior to June 2004, the vowel akin to but more open than ⟨o⟩, written with a 'dot above right', was not encoded. The usual workaround was to use the (stand-alone; spacing) character ' middle dot' (U+00B7, ⟨·⟩) or, less commonly, the combining character 'dot above' (U+0307). As these are far from ideal, since 1997, proposals have been submitted to the ISO/IEC working group in charge of ISO/IEC 10646 – namelyISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2
– to encode a new combining character 'dot above right'. This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see document
, an
N2770
). Font support has followed: for example, in Charis SIL.
Sociolinguistics
Regional variations
The prestige variant of Taiwanese Hokkien is the southern speech found in Tainan
Tainan (), officially Tainan City, is a Special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality in southern Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait on its western coast. Tainan is the oldest city on the island and commonly called the "Taiwan Prefecture, ...
and Kaohsiung
Kaohsiung, officially Kaohsiung City, is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsiung City has a population of approximately 2.73 million p ...
. Other major variants are the northern speech, the central speech (near Taichung and the port town of Lukang, Changhua, Lukang), and the northern (northeastern) coastal speech (dominant in Yilan County, Taiwan, Yilan).
The distinguishing feature of the coastal speech is the use of the vowel or in place of . The northern speech is distinguished by the absence of the #Tones, 8th tone, and some vowel exchanges (for example, and , and or ). The central speech has an additional vowel or between and , which may be represented as . There are also a number of other pronunciation and lexical differences between the Taiwanese variants; the online Ministry of Education dictionary specifies these to a resolution of eight regions on Taiwan proper, in addition to Kinmen and Penghu.
Concerning the fifth (rising) tone in normal sandhi patterns, the Quanzhou/Coastal/Northern dialects change to the seventh (mid-level) tone, whereas the Zhangzhou/"Mixed"/Southern dialects change to the third (low falling) tone.
Certain new north–south distinctions have appeared in recent decades. The fourth and eighth tones tend to be reversed in the north and south.
Quanzhou–Zhangzhou inclinations
Hokkien
Hokkien ( , ) is a Varieties of Chinese, variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese language, Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred ...
immigrants to Taiwan originated from Quanzhou
Quanzhou is a prefecture-level city, prefecture-level port city on the north bank of the Jin River, beside the Taiwan Strait in southern Fujian, China, People's Republic of China. It is Fujian's largest most populous metropolitan region, wi ...
prefecture (44.8%) and Zhangzhou
Zhangzhou (, ) is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and (with Quanzhou) surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
Nam ...
prefecture (35.2%). The original phonology from these regions was spread around Taiwan during the immigration process. With the advanced development of transportation and greater mobility of the Taiwanese population, Taiwanese speech has steered itself towards a mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech, known as ''Chiang–Chôan-lām''/''Tsiang–Tsûan-lām'' (漳泉濫, in Mandarin ''Zhāng–Quán làn''). Due to different proportions of the mixture, some regions are inclined more towards the Quanzhou accent, while others are inclined more towards the Zhangzhou accent.
In general, the Quanzhou accent is more common along the coastal region and is known as the ''hái-kháu'' accent; the Zhangzhou accent is more common within the mountainous region of Taiwan and is known as the ''lāi-po͘''/''lāi-poo'' accent. The regional variation within Taiwanese may be attributed to variations in the mixture of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou accents and/or lexicons. It ranges from Lukang accent (based on Quanzhou accent) on one end to the northern coastal Yilan City, Yilan accent (based on Zhangzhou accent) on another end. Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Taitung accents, on the other hand, are closest to the prestige accent.
Recent terminological distinctions
Recent research has found a need for new terminology of Taiwanese dialects, mainly because the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects in Taiwan developed independently from those in Fujian. Thus, some scholars (i.e., Klöter, following ) have divided Taiwanese into five subdialects, based on geographic region: #''hái-kháu'' (): west coast, based on what was formerly referred to as Quanzhou dialect (represented by the Lukang accent) #''phian-hái'' (): coastal (represented by the Nanliao () accent) #''lāi-po͘''/''lāi-poo'' (): western inner plain, mountain regions, based on the Zhangzhou dialect (represented by the Yilan accent) #''phian-lāi'' (): interior (represented by the Taibao accent) #''thong-hêng''/''thong-hîng'' (): common accents (represented by the Taipei (spec. Datong District, Taipei, Datong) accent in the north and the Tainan accent in the south) Both ''phian-hái'' and ''phian-lāi'' are intermediate dialects between ''hái-kháu'' and ''lāi-po͘''/''lāi-poo'', these also known as ''thong-hêng''/''thong-hîng'' () or "". In some ways this mixed dialect is similar to the Amoy dialect, which itself is a blend of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou speech. The common dialect refers to that which can be heard on radio, television, official announcements, etc.Fluency
A great majority of people in Taiwan can speak bothMandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
and Hokkien, but the degree of fluency varies widely. There are, however, small but significant numbers of people in Taiwan, mainly but not exclusively Hakka people, Hakka and waishengren, Mainlanders, who cannot speak Taiwanese fluently. A shrinking percentage of the population, mainly people born before the 1950s, cannot speak Mandarin at all or learned to speak Mandarin later in life, though some of these speak Japanese fluently. Urban, working-class Hakkas, as well as younger, southern-Taiwan Mainlanders, tend to have better, even native-like fluency. Approximately half of the Hakka in Taiwan do speak Taiwanese. There are many families of mixed Hakka, Hoklo, and Taiwanese aborigines, Aboriginal bloodlines. There is, however, a large percentage of people in Taiwan, regardless of their background, whose ability to understand and read written Taiwanese is greater than their ability to speak it. This is the case with some singers who can sing Taiwanese songs with native-like proficiency but can neither speak nor understand the language.
Which variant is used depends strongly on the context, and in general, people will use Mandarin in more formal situations and Taiwanese in more informal situations. Taiwanese tends to get used more in rural areas, while Mandarin is used more in urban area, urban settings. Older people tend to use Taiwanese, while younger people tend to use Mandarin. In the broadcast media where Mandarin is used in many genres, soap opera, variety shows, and even some news programs can also be found in Taiwanese.
Special literary and art forms
''Chhit-jī-á''/''Tshit-jī-á'' (literally, "that which has seven syllables") is a poetry, poetic meter (poetry), meter where each verse has 7 syllables. There is a special form of musical/dramatic performance ''koa-á-hì''/''kua-á-hì'': the Taiwanese opera; the subject matter is usually a history, historical event. A similar form ''pò͘-tē-hì''/''pòo-tē-hì'' (glove puppetry) is also unique and has been elaborated in the past two decades into impressive television, televised spectacles. See Taiwanese cuisine for names of several local dishes.Bible translations
As with many other languages, the Chinese Bible Translations, translations of the Bible in Taiwan marked milestones in the standardization attempts of the language and its orthography.
The first translation of the Bible in Amoy or Taiwanese in the Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthography was by the first missionary to Taiwan, James Laidlaw Maxwell, with the New Testament ''Lán ê Kiù-chú Iâ-so͘ Ki-tok ê Sin-iok'' published in 1873 and the Old Testament ''Kū-iok ê Sèng Keng'' in 1884.
The next translation of the Bible in Taiwanese or Amoy was by the missionary to Taiwan, Thomas Barclay (missionary), Thomas Barclay, carried out in Fujian and Taiwan. A New Testament translation was completed and published in 1916. The resulting work containing the Old and the New Testaments, in the Pe̍h-ōe-jī
( ; , , ; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese and Amoy dialect, Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing syst ...
orthography, was completed in 1930 and published in 1933 as the (). 2000 copies of the Amoy Romanized Bible were confiscated by the Taiwan Garrison from the Bible Society of Taiwan in 1975. This edition was later transliterated into Han characters and published as () in 1996.
The Ko–Tân (Kerygma) Colloquial Taiwanese Version of the New Testament (''Sin-iok'') in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, also known as the (), was published in 1973 as an ecumenical effort between the Protestant Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Roman Catholic mission Maryknoll. This translation used a more modern vocabulary (somewhat influenced by Mandarin), and reflected the central Taiwan dialect, as the Maryknoll mission was based near Taichung, Tâi-tiong. It was soon confiscated by the Kuomintang government (which objected to the use of Latin orthography) in 1975.
A translation using the principle of Dynamic and formal equivalence, functional equivalence, "" (), containing only the New Testament, again in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was published in 2008 as a collaboration between the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Bible Society in Taiwan; a parallel-text version with both Han-character and Pe̍h-ōe-jī orthographies was published in 2013. A translation of the Old Testament following the same principle was completed and the whole Bible was published in 2021 as a parallel-text volume.
Another translation using the principle of functional equivalence, "Common Taiwanese Bible" (), with versions of Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Han characters and Ruby version (both Han characters and Pe̍h-ōe-jī) was published in 2015, available in printed and online.
Politics
Until the 1980s, the use of Taiwanese Hokkien, along with all Varieties of Chinese, varieties other than Taiwanese Mandarin, Mandarin, was discouraged by the Kuomintang through measures such as banning its use in schools and limiting the amount of Taiwanese broadcast on radio and television. These restrictions were lifted by the 1990s, and the Taiwanese became an emblem of Taiwanese localization movement, localization. Mandarin remains the predominant language of education, but Taiwanese schools have a "mother tongue" language requirement which can be satisfied with students' choice of the mother tongue: Taiwanese, Hakka, or indigenous languages
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an indigeno ...
.
Although the use of Taiwanese Hokkien over Mandarin was historically part of the Taiwan independence movement, the linkage between politics and language is not as strong as it once was. Some fluency in Taiwanese Hokkien is desirable for political office in Taiwan for both independence and unificationist politicians. At the same time, even some supporters of Taiwan's independence have played down its connection with the Taiwanese in order to gain the support of the waishengren, Mainlanders and Hakka people.
James Soong restricted the use of Taiwanese Hokkien and other local tongues in broadcasting while serving as Director of the Government Information Office earlier in his career, but later became one of the first politicians of Mainlander origin to use it in semi-formal occasions. Since then, politicians opposed to Taiwanese independence have used it frequently in rallies, even when they are not native speakers. Conversely, politicians who have traditionally been identified with Taiwan's independence have used Mandarin on formal occasions and semi-formal occasions such as press conferences. An example of the latter is former President Chen Shui-bian, who uses Mandarin in all official state speeches but uses mainly Taiwanese in political rallies and some informal state occasions such as New Year greetings. Former President of the Republic of China, President Tsai Ing-wen was criticized by some of her supporters for not using Taiwanese in speeches. Her predecessor Ma Ying-jeou spoke in Taiwanese during his 2008 Double Ten Day speech when he was talking about the state of the Economy of Taiwan, economy in Taiwan.
In the early 21st century, there are few differences in language usage between the Chinese unification, pro-unification leaning Pan-Blue Coalition and the Taiwan independence movement, independence leaning Pan-Green Coalition. Both tend to use Taiwanese at political rallies and sometimes in informal interviews, and both tend to use Mandarin at formal press conferences and official state functions. Both also tend to use more Mandarin in Northern Taiwan and more Taiwanese in Southern Taiwan. However, at official party gatherings (as opposed to both Mandarin-leaning state functions and Taiwanese-leaning party rallies), the DPP tends to use Taiwanese while KMT and PFP (Taiwan), PFP tend to use Mandarin. The Taiwan Solidarity Union, which advocates a strong line on Taiwan independence, tends to use Taiwanese even in formal press conferences. In speaking, politicians will frequently Code-switching, code switch. In writing, almost everyone uses written vernacular Chinese, vernacular Mandarin which is further from Taiwanese, and the use of semi-alphabetic writing or even Written Hokkien#Chinese characters, colloquial Taiwanese characters is rare.
In 2002, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party with about 10% of the Legislative Yuan seats at the time, suggested making Taiwanese Hokkien a second official language. This proposal encountered strong opposition not only from Mainlander groups but also from Hakka and aboriginal groups who felt that it would slight their home languages, as well as others including Hoklo people, Hoklo who objected to the proposal on logistical grounds and on the grounds that it would increase ethnic tensions. Because of these objections, support for this measure is lukewarm among moderate Taiwan independence supporters, and the proposal did not pass.
In 2003, there was a controversy when parts of the civil service examination for judges were written in characters used only in Taiwanese Hokkien. After strong objections, these questions were not used in scoring. As with the official-language controversy, objections to the use of Taiwanese came not only from Mainlander groups but also Hoklo, Hakka, and aborigines. The Control Yuan later created a rule that only allowed Standard Mandarin characters on civil service exams. According to public opinion surveys in 2008, more people supported making English a second official language than Taiwanese.
Mother tongue movement
Taiwanese localization movement, Taiwanization developed in the 1990s into a 'mother tongue
A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongue'' refers ...
revival movement' aiming to save, preserve, and develop the local ethnic culture and language of Holo (Taiwanese), Hakka, and aborigines. The effort to Language revitalization, save declining languages has since allowed them to revive and flourish. In 1993, Taiwan became the first country in the world to implement the teaching of Taiwanese Hokkien in schools. By 2001, Taiwanese languages such as Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and indigenous languages were taught in all Taiwanese schools. Since the 2000s, elementary school students are required to take a class in either Taiwanese, Hakka or aboriginal languages. In junior high this is usually an available Course (education)#Elective and required courses, elective. Taiwan also has its own Taiwan literature movement, literary circle whereby Hokkien poets and writers compose poetry and literature in Taiwanese on a regular basis.
As a result of the mother tongue movement, Taiwan has emerged as a significant cultural hub for Hokkien in the world in the 21st century. It also plans to be the major export center for Hokkien culture worldwide in the 21st century.
Television
* Lady Rainicorn for ''Adventure Time'' broadcast by Cartoon Network (Taiwanese TV channel), Cartoon Network Taiwan used Taiwanese Hokkien for Li Hanfei ()Scholarship
Klöter's ''Written Taiwanese'' (cited below) has been described as "the most comprehensive English-language study of written Taiwanese".See also
* Languages of Taiwan * Min Nan Wikipedia * Speak Hokkien Campaign * Taiwanese literature movement * :nan:Bân-lâm-gí Gí-giân Lêng-le̍k Jīn-chèng, Bân-lâm-gí Gí-giân Lêng-le̍k Jīn-chèng (Taiwanese Hokkien Test)Notes
Words in native languages
References
Citations
Cited sources
* * * * * * *Further reading
Books and other material
(As English language material on Taiwanese learning is limited, Japanese and German books are also listed here.) ; English textbooks & dictionaries * * Su-chu Wu, Bodman, Nicholas C.: Spoken Taiwanese with cassette(s), 1980/2001, or or * ** * Iâu Chèng-to: Cheng-soán Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Concise Colloquial Writing). Tainan, Taiwan: Jîn-kong (an imprint of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan). 1992. * Tân, K. T: A Chinese-English Dictionary: Taiwan Dialect. Taipei: Southern Materials Center. 1978. * Maryknoll Language Service Center: English-Amoy Dictionary. Taichung, Taiwan: Maryknoll Fathers. 1979. ; Japanese publications * Higuchi, Yasushi (樋口 靖 ''Higuchi Yasushi''): 台湾語会話, 2000, (Good and yet concise introduction to the Taiwanese language in Japanese; CD: ) * Zhao, Yihua (趙 怡華 ''Zhào Yíhuá''): はじめての台湾語, 2003, (Introduction to Taiwanese [and Mandarin]; in Japanese). * Zheng, Zhenghao (鄭 正浩 ''Zhèng Zhènghào''): 台湾語基本単語2000, 1996, (Basic vocabulary in Taiwanese 2000; in Japanese). * Zhao, Yihua (趙 怡華 ''Zhào Yíhuá''), Chen Fenghui (陳 豐惠 ''Chén Fēnghuì''), Kaori Takao (たかお かおり ''Takao Kaori''), 2006, 絵でわかる台湾語会話. (Conversations in Taiwanese [and Mandarin] with illustrations; in Japanese). ;Others * Katharina Sommer, Xie Shu-Kai: Taiwanisch Wort für Wort, 2004, (Taiwanese for travellers, in German. CD: ) ; Articles and other resources * *External links
; On the language *Blog on the Taiwanese language and language education in Taiwan
* * wikt:Appendix:Sino-Tibetan Swadesh lists, Sino-Tibetan Swadesh lists ; Dictionaries * * * * * ; Learning aids
Intermediate Taiwanese grammar (as a blog)
Taiwanese vocabulary: word of the day (blog)
Taiwanese teaching material
: Nursery rhymes and songs in Han characters and romanization w/ recordings in MP3
Travlang (language resources for travellers): Hō-ló-oē
''Spoken Hokkien''
- a beginner's e-textbook, with audio, for English-speaking learners of conversational Taiwanese. * ; Other
Open Directory (dmoz): World: Taiwanese
{{Chinese language Languages of Taiwan Hokkien-language dialects Culture of Taiwan