The writing systems of the
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 ...
are
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
-based alphabets. Currently, 16 languages (45 dialects) have been regulated. The alphabet was made official in 2005.
History
The
Sinckan Manuscripts are one of the earliest written materials of several Formosan languages, including
Siraya. This writing system was developed by Dutch
missionaries in the period of
Dutch rule (1624–1662).
After 1947, with the need for translation of
Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
, Latin scripts for Bunun, Paiwan, Taroko, Atayal, and Amis were created.
Currently, all 16 Formosan languages are written with similar systems. 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 ...
of
Taiwanese Hokkien
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 language spoken natively ...
and
Pha̍k-fa-sṳ of
Taiwanese Hakka were also created with by the western missionaries.
In 2005, standardized writing systems for the languages of Taiwan's 16 recognized indigenous peoples were established by the government.
Alphabets
The table shows how the letters and symbols are used to denote sounds in the 16 officially recognized
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 ...
.
Spelling rules
Revision
Revision of the alphabets is under discussion. The table below is a summary of the proposals and decisions (made by the indigenous peoples and linguists).
[ Revised January 2018.][ Revised March 2019.] Symbols enclosed with angle brackets ‹› are letters, while those enclosed with square brackets [] are from the International Phonetic Alphabet. The names of dialects are written in Chinese.
See also
*
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 ...
*
Taiwanese indigenous peoples
Taiwanese indigenous peoples, formerly called Taiwanese aborigines, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, with the nationally recognized subgroups numbering about 600,303 or 3% of the Geography of Taiwan, island's population. This total is incr ...
*
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 ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
Taiwanese Indigenous Ebooks This site provides open access ebooks for the indigenous languages.
{{Formosan languages
Taiwanese indigenous peoples
Austronesian languages
Languages of Taiwan
Endangered Austronesian languages
Latin alphabets
Multilingual orthographies