Taiwanese Hokkien () (; Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-uân-uē''), also known as Taigi/Taigu (;

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (; ; ), also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in South ...

/ Tâi-lô: ''Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú''), Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the

Hokkien The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in ...

language spoken natively by about 70%+ of the

population of Taiwan The population of Taiwan is approximately 23.19 million as of September 2022. Immigration of Han Chinese to the Penghu islands started as early as the 13th century, while settlement of the main island occurred from the 16th century during t ...

. It is spoken by a significant portion of

Taiwanese people Taiwanese people may be generally considered the people of Taiwan who share a common culture, ancestry and speak Taiwanese Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka or indigenous Taiwanese languages as a mother tongue. Taiwanese people may also refer to the i ...

descended from immigrants of southern

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of 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 capi ...

during the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speak ...

. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan. Taiwanese is generally similar to spoken

Amoy Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...

Quanzhou Quanzhou, postal map romanization, alternatively known as Chinchew, 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. It is Fujian's largest metrop ...

, and

Zhangzhou Zhangzhou (), alternately romanized as Changchow, 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 surrounding the prefec ...

, as well as their dialectal forms used in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

, such as

Singaporean Hokkien Singaporean Hokkien 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. It bears similarities with the Amoy spoken in Amoy, now bet ...

Penang Hokkien Penang Hokkien (; Tâi-lô: ''Pin-siânn Hok-kiàn-uā''; ; ) is a local variant of Hokkien spoken in Penang, Malaysia. It is spoken as a mother tongue by 63.9% of Penang's Chinese community, and also by some Penangite Indians and Penangit ...

Philippine Hokkien Philippine Hokkien is a dialect of the Hokkien language of the Southern Min branch, primarily spoken vernacularly by Chinese Filipinos in the Philippines, where it serves as the local Chinese ''lingua franca'', primarily spoken as an oral langu ...

Medan Hokkien Medan Hokkien is a local variety of Hokkien spoken among Chinese Indonesians in Medan and Jakarta, Indonesia. It is the ''lingua franca'' in Medan as well as other northern city states of North Sumatra surrounding it, and is a subdialect of the ...

, &

Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien Southern Malaysian Hokkien () is a local variant of the Min Nan Chinese variety spoken in Central and Southern Peninsular Malaysia ( Klang, Melaka, Muar, Tangkak, Segamat, Batu Pahat, Pontian and Johor Bahru). Due to geographical proximit ...

. It is

mutually intelligible In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an ...

with

and

at the mouth of the

Jiulong River The Jiulong River, formerly known as the Longjiang or Zhangjiang, is the largest rivers of China, river in southern Fujian and the second largest in the province. It has a length of and a basin of . Like all Fujianese rivers Ting River, but ...

(九龍) immediately to the west in

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

and with

to the south, spoken altogether by about 3 million people. The mass popularity of

Hokkien entertainment media Hokkien media is the mass media produced in Hokkien. Taiwan is by far the largest producer of Hokkien-language media. The "golden age" of both Hokkien popular music and film in Asia was the mid-1950s through to the mid-1960s. Films Many films in ...

from Taiwan has given

prominence In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contou ...

to the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien, especially since the 1980s.

Classification

Taiwanese Hokkien is a branched-off variety of standard

, a group of

Southern Min Southern Min (), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ( ...

language. Like many

Min Min or MIN may refer to: Places * Fujian, also called Mǐn, a province of China ** Min Kingdom (909–945), a state in Fujian * Min County, a county of Dingxi, Gansu province, China * Min River (Fujian) * Min River (Sichuan) * Mineola (Am ...

varieties, 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), th ...

s respectively. The literary layer can be traced to the late

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...

and can thus be related to

Middle Chinese Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...

. 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 imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...

. Regional variations within the Taiwanese variant may be traced back to Hokkien variants spoken in Southern Fujian, specifically those from

and

, then later

. Taiwanese also contains loanwords from

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

and the 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 nine separate subfamilies. The Taiwa ...

. Recent work by scholars such a
Ekki LuToru Sakai
(酒井亨 ''Sakai Tōru''), and Lí Khîn-hoāⁿ (also known as Tavokan Khîn-hoāⁿ or Chin-An Li), based on former research by scholars such as Ông Io̍k-tek, has gone so far as to associate part of the basic vocabulary of the colloquial Taiwanese with the Austronesian and

Tai Tai or TAI may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Tai (comics) a fictional Marvel Comics supervillain *Tai Fraiser, a fictional character in the 1995 film ''Clueless'' *Tai Kamiya, a fictional character in ''Digimon'' Businesses and organisations ...

language families; however, such claims are controversial. The literary form of Hokkien once flourished in

and was brought to Taiwan by early emigrants. ''

Tale of the Lychee Mirror The ''Tale of the Lychee Mirror'' () is a play written by an unknown author in the Ming dynasty. ''Tân Saⁿ and Gō͘-niû'' () is a popular Taiwanese opera based on the script. History The play was written in a mixture of the Southern Min di ...

'', a manuscript for a series of plays published during the

Ming dynasty The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

in 1566, is one of the earliest known works. This form of the 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 usually ...

History and formation

Spread of Hokkien to Taiwan

During the

Yuan dynasty The Yuan dynasty (), officially the Great Yuan (; xng, , , literally "Great Yuan State"), was a Mongol-led imperial dynasty of China and a successor state to the Mongol Empire after its division. It was established by Kublai, the fifth ...

became a major international port for trade with the outside world. From that period onwards, many people from the

-speaking regions (southern Fujian) started to emigrate overseas due to political and economic reasons. One of the destinations of the emigrants is the relatively undeveloped island of

Formosa Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is an island country located in East Asia. The main island of Taiwan, formerly known in the Western political circles, press and literature as Formosa, makes up 99% of the land area of the territorie ...

, starting around 1600. They brought with them their native language, Hokkien. During the late

, the political chaos pushed more migrants from southern Fujian and eastern

Guangdong Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...

to Taiwan. The earliest immigrants involved in Taiwan's development included pirate-merchants

Pedro Yan Shiqi Yan Shiqi (顏思齊) (1586 – September 1625), courtesy name Zhenquan (振泉), was a native of Haicheng, Zhangzhou. He was a tailor, fugitive, armed maritime merchant and also known as the "King of Pioneer Taiwan" (開台王). He may have als ...

and

Zheng Zhilong Zheng Zhilong, Marquis of Tong'an and Nan'an (; April 16, 1604 – November 24, 1661), baptismal name Nicholas Iquan Gaspard, was a Chinese admiral, merchant, military general, pirate, and politician of the late Ming dynasty who later defec ...

. In 1621, Chinese Peter and his forces, hailing from

, occupied ''Ponkan'' (modern-day

Beigang, Yunlin Beigang, Hokkō or Peikang is an urban township in Yunlin County, Taiwan. It is primarily known for its Chaotian Temple, one of the most prominent Temples of Mazu on Taiwan. It has a population of 37,899 as of September 2022. Geography The ...

) and started to develop ''Tirosen'' (modern-day

Chiayi Chiayi (, Taigi POJ: ''Ka-gī''; ), officially known as Chiayi City, is a city located in the plains of southwestern Taiwan. Formerly called ''Kagee'' during the late Qing dynasty and ''Kagi'' during the Japanese era (), its historical name i ...

). After the death of Peter and another pirate, Li Dan of Quanzhou, Zheng sought to dominate the

Strait of Taiwan The Taiwan Strait is a -wide strait separating the island of Taiwan and continental Asia. The strait is part of the South China Sea and connects to the East China Sea to the north. The narrowest part is wide. The Taiwan Strait is itself a ...

. By 1628, he had grown so powerful that the Ming court bestowed him the official title, "Patrolling Admiral". In 1624, the number of Chinese in 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� ...

(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

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

, 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 the

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 also commonly known as the "Capital City" ...

and

Keelung Keelung () or Jilong () (; Hokkien POJ: '), officially known as Keelung City, is a major port city situated in the northeastern part of Taiwan. The city is a part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, along with its neighbors, New Taipe ...

areas, respectively. During the 40 years of Dutch colonial rule of Taiwan, the Dutch recruited many Chinese from the

area of southern Fujian to help develop Taiwan. In the 1661

Siege of Fort Zeelandia The siege of Fort Zeelandia () of 1661–1662 ended the Dutch East India Company's rule over Taiwan and began the Kingdom of Tungning's rule over the island. Prelude From 1623 to 1624 the Dutch had been at war with Ming China over the Pescadore ...

, Chinese general

Koxinga Zheng Chenggong, Prince of Yanping (; 27 August 1624 – 23 June 1662), better known internationally as Koxinga (), was a Ming loyalist general who resisted the Qing conquest of China in the 17th century, fighting them on China's southeastern ...

, marshalling a military force composed of fellow hometown

hoklo The Hoklo people or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such a ...

soldiers of Southern Fujian, expelled the Dutch and established the

Kingdom of Tungning The Kingdom of Tungning (), also known as Tywan by the British at the time, was a dynastic maritime state that ruled part of southwestern Taiwan and the Penghu islands between 1661 and 1683. It is the first predominantly Han Chinese state in Ta ...

. Koxinga originated from the Quanzhou region.

Chen Yonghua Chen Yonghua (; 1634–1680), courtesy name Fufu ()), was a prominent official of the Kingdom of Tungning in Taiwan in the late 17th century. He was from the region near modern-day Quanzhou. Biography Chen Yonghua was born in 1634 in the ...

, 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 Amoy 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 (), 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. Due to migration, various Quanzhou dialects are sp ...

. 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 and Qing dynasties in the 17th century. He was the commander-in-chief of the Qing fleets which destroyed the power of Zheng Che ...

, marshalling a military force again composed of fellow hometown

soldiers of Southern Fujian, attacked Taiwan in the

Battle of Penghu The Battle of Penghu () was a naval battle fought in 1683 between the Qing dynasty and the Kingdom of Tungning. The Qing admiral Shi Lang led a fleet to attack the Tungning forces in Penghu. Each side possessed more than 200 warships. The Tungn ...

, 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 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 ...

-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 of the Qing Empire, during whose reign Taiwan was annexed in 1684. He recorded his findings in ''Tái ...

: 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

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 Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhej ...

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 or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such a ...

in Taiwan could be categorized as originating from modern day

Xiamen Xiamen ( , ; ), also known as Amoy (, from Hokkien pronunciation ), is a sub-provincial city in southeastern Fujian, People's Republic of China, beside the Taiwan Strait. It is divided into six districts: Huli, Siming, Jimei, Tong'an, ...

, and

Zhangpu Zhangpu County () is a county of Zhangzhou prefecture-level city in far southern Fujian province, People's Republic of China. The county seat is located in the town of Sui'an (). Zhangpu is bordered by the Longhai City in the north, the countie ...

. 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 (

-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 Intermingling, or heterophily, from a sociological perspective includes the various forms of interactions between individuals that go against a particular society's Norm (social), cultural norms. These relationships stem from Interpersonal ties#We ...

led to the mixture of the two

accents Accent may refer to: Speech and language * Accent (sociolinguistics), way of pronunciation particular to a speaker or group of speakers * Accent (phonetics), prominence given to a particular syllable in a word, or a word in a phrase ** Pitch acce ...

. 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

(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 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 southern ...

. 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

Proportion of Taiwanese Language Used in House

Later, in the 20th century, the conceptualization of Taiwanese is 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 Taiwanese have been more controversial and sensitive than for other

varieties of Chinese Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...

. After the

First Sino-Japanese War The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the po ...

, due to military defeat to the Japanese, the

ceded

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

to Japan, causing contact with the

-speaking regions of mainland China to stop. During Japanese rule, Japanese became an official language in Taiwan, and Taiwanese began to absorb 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 ( Chinese: , Taiwanese Hokkien: Tâi-chè, Hakka: Thòi-chṳ, Mandarin: Táizhì) are the customary and traditional units of measure used in Taiwan. The Taiwanese units formed in the 1900s when Taiwan was under Ja ...

), ''ga-suh'' from , ''o͘-tó͘-bái'' from . All of these caused Taiwanese to deviate from Hokkien used elsewhere. During Kōminka of the late Japanese colonial period, the

Japanese language is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...

appeared in every corner of Taiwan. The

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

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, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning "literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning "literar ...

with

literary Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...

Southern Min pronunciation – were 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, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...

in 1945, there was brief cultural exchange with mainland China followed by further oppression. The

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...

resulted in another political separation when the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

(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

while suppressing, but short of banning, the use of written Taiwanese

(e.g.

, 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

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 imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Marti ...

in 1987 and the

mother tongue A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

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,

, and the

indigenous languages An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...

. Others prefer the names

, Minnan or Hokkien as this views Taiwanese as a form of the Chinese variety spoken in

province in

. Others dislike those names for precisely the same reason. In the

American Community Survey The American Community Survey (ACS) is a demographics survey program conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the decennial census, such as ancestry, citizenship, educati ...

run by the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of the ...

, Taiwanese was referred to as "Formosan" from 2012 to 2015 and as "Min Nan Chinese" since 2016.

Phonology

Phonologically Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

, 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 verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey empha ...

with extensive

tone sandhi Tone sandhi is a phonological change occurring in tonal languages, in which the tones assigned to individual words or morphemes change based on the pronunciation of adjacent words or morphemes. It usually simplifies a bidirectional tone into a ...

rules.

Syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

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. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

, a

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

, a final consonant, and a tone.

Consonants

Unlike many other varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin and

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding are ...

, there are no native

labiodental In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants Place of articulation, articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth. Labiodental consonants in the IPA The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: The IPA c ...

phonemes (i.e., ). # Coronal affricates and fricatives become

alveolo-palatal In phonetics, alveolo-palatal (or alveopalatal) consonants, sometimes synonymous with pre-palatal consonants, are intermediate in articulation between the coronal and dorsal consonants, or which have simultaneous alveolar and palatal artic ...

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 refer ...

plosives ( and ) become the corresponding fricatives ( and ) in some phonetic contexts. This is similar to

begadkefat Begadkefat (also begedkefet) is the name given to a phenomenon of lenition affecting the non- emphatic stop consonants of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic when they are preceded by a vowel and not geminated. The name is also given to similar cases of s ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

and a similar

allophony In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor ''phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in ''s ...

of intervocalic

plosive consonants In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...

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 Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

Vowels

Taiwanese has the following

s: The vowel is akin to a

schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...

; in contrast, (with dot) is a more

open vowel An open vowel is a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned 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 the cont ...

. In addition, there are several

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, 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 the speech o ...

s and

triphthong In phonetics, a triphthong (, ) (from Greek τρίφθογγος, "triphthongos", literally "with three sounds," or "with three tones") is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement of the articulator from one vowel qu ...

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: is non-nasal, and is the same vowel with concurrent nasal articulation. This is similar to French,

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

, and many other languages. There are two pronunciations of vowel . In the south (e.g.,

and

Kaohsiung Kaohsiung City (Mandarin Chinese: ; Wade–Giles: ''Kao¹-hsiung²;'' Pinyin: ''Gāoxióng'') is a special municipality located in southern Taiwan. It ranges from the coastal urban center to the rural Yushan Range with an area of . Kaohsi ...

) it is ; in the north (e.g.,

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the n ...

) it is . Due to development of transportation and communication, both pronunciations are common and acceptable throughout the country. is a diphthong i i ə.html"_;"title="Mid_central_vowel.html"_;"title="Close_front_unrounded_vowel.html"_;"title="nowiki/>Close_front_unrounded_vowel">iMid_central_vowel">ə">Mid_central_vowel.html"_;"title="Close_front_unrounded_vowel.html"_;"title="nowiki/>Close_front_unrounded_vowel">iMid_central_vowel">əbefore_-k_or_-ng_(POJ:_ek,_eng),_and_is_slightly_shortened_and_retracted_before_-p_or_-t_to_something_more_like_[Near-close_near-front_unrounded_vowel.html" ;"title="Mid_central_vowel">ə.html" ;"title="Mid_central_vowel.html" ;"title="Close_front_unrounded_vowel.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Close front unrounded vowel">iMid central vowel">ə">Mid_central_vowel.html" ;"title="Close_front_unrounded_vowel.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Close front unrounded vowel">iMid central vowel">əbefore -k or -ng (POJ: ek, eng), and is slightly shortened and retracted before -p or -t to something more like [Near-close near-front unrounded vowel">í̞]. Similarly, is slightly shortened and retracted before -t or -n to something more like [Near-close near-back rounded vowel, ʊ].

Tones

In the traditional analysis, there are eight "tones", numbered from 1 to 8. Strictly speaking, there are only five tonal contours. But as in other Sinitic languages, the two kinds of stopped syllables are considered also to be tones and assigned numbers 4 and 8. In Taiwanese tone 6 has merged into tone 7, and thus duplicated in the count. Here the eight tones are shown, following the traditional tone class categorization, named after the tones of

: : 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 , 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

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

enclitic In morphology and syntax, a clitic (, backformed from Greek "leaning" or "enclitic"Crystal, David. ''A First Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics''. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1980. Print.) is a morpheme that has syntactic characteristics of a wo ...

s 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 "Chia̍h-pá--bōe?", literally meaning 'Have you eaten yet?’. 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.

Syllabic structure

syllable A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...

requires a vowel (or diphthong or

) 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-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, often beginning and ending with a clear pause. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written langu ...

’ (or ‘

intonational phrase In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour ( pitch and rhythm contour). The abbreviation IU is used and therefore the full form is o ...

’) 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 A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

(including single syllable nouns, but not

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) 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 parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...

s), number, time phrase (i.e., today, tomorrow, etc.), spatial

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

(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 o ...

(i.e., who, what, how). * The syllable immediately preceding the possessive particle 的 (ê) or a neutralized tone. In POJ, this is the syllable before a double hyphen, e.g., 王先生 (Ông--sian-siⁿ) * Some common

aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...

markers: 了 (liáu), 好 (hó), 完 (oân), 煞 (soah)

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 (

/Taipei speech) or 7 (

/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), 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 noun

suffix 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, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

'' (), 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 single-syllable adjective

triplication In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change. The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...

(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) for modern linguistic approaches to tones and tone sandhi in Taiwanese. Watch thi
video
by 阿勇台語 (Aiong Taigi) for a more in depth look at the triplicated tone sandhi with examples.

Lexicon

Modern linguistic studies (by Robert L. Cheng and Chin-An Li, for example) estimate that most (75% to 90%) Taiwanese

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...

s have

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...

s in other Sinitic languages.

False friend In linguistics, a false friend is either of two words in different languages that look or sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning. Examples include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ''embarazada'' 'pregnant'; English ''parents'' ...

s do exist; for example, ''cháu'' () means "to run" in Taiwanese, whereas the

cognate, ''zǒu'', means "to walk". Moreover, cognates may have different

lexical categories In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...

; for example, the

morpheme A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology. In English, morphemes are ...

''phīⁿ'' () 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); ' (, 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

has left a legacy of Japanese

loanwords A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because the ...

, with 172 recorded in the Ministry of Education's ''

Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan The ''Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan'' () is a dictionary of Taiwanese Hokkien (including Written Hokkien) commissioned by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. The dictionary uses the Taiwanese Romanization System (based on pe̍h-� ...

''. 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'' 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 associated with another word or phrase, generally in order to impart meaning. Altho ...

s borrowed from Japanese, notably ''te̍k'' 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 ...

form, Taiwanese pronouns are collectivized through

nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) 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 . In the Internationa ...

. For example, ''i'' (he/she/it) and ''goá'' (I) become ''in'' (they) and ''goán'' (we), respectively. The ''-n'' thus represents a subsyllabic

. Like all other

, Taiwanese does not have true grammatical

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

s. Unlike English, Taiwanese has two first-person plural pronouns. This distinction is called inclusive, which includes the

addressee Addressee may refer to: * Someone to whom mail or similar things are addressed or sent * Interlocutor (linguistics), a person to whom a conversation or dialogue is addressed See also * Address (disambiguation) * Addressee honorific, linguistic ...

, and exclusive, which excludes the addressee. Thus, ''goán'' means ''we excluding you'', while ''lán'' means ''we including you'' (similar to

pluralis auctoris The royal ''we'', majestic plural (), or royal plural, is the use of a plural pronoun (or corresponding plural-inflected verb forms) used by a single person who is a monarch or holds a high office to refer to themselves. A more general term fo ...

). 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

The

syntax 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 ( constituency) ...

of Taiwanese is similar to southern sinitic languages such as

and Yue. The subject–verb–object sequence is typical as in, for example,

, but

subject–object–verb Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective con ...

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 t ...

(with the sequence object–subject–verb) is possible with particles. Take a simple sentence for example: 'I hold you.' The words involved are: ''goá'' ('I' or 'me'), ''phō'' ('to hold'), ''lí'' ('you'). * Subject–verb–object (typical sequence): The sentence in the typical sequence would be: ''Goá phō lí.'' ('I hold you.') * Subject–''kā''–object–verb: Another sentence of roughly equivalent meaning is ''Goá kā lí phō'', with the slight connotation of 'I take you and hold' or 'I get to you and hold'. * Object ''hō͘'' subject–verb (the passive voice): Then, ''Lí hō͘ goá phō'' means the same thing but in the

, with the connotation of 'You allow yourself to be held by me' or 'You make yourself available for my holding'. With this, more complicated sentences can be constructed: ''Goá kā chúi hō͘ lí lim'' ('I give water for you to drink': ''chúi'' means 'water'; ''lim'' is 'to drink'). This article can only give a few very simple examples on the syntax, for flavour. Linguistic work on the

of Taiwanese is still a (quite nascent) scholarly topic being explored.

Scripts and orthographies

Until the late 19th century, Taiwanese speakers wrote mostly in

, although songbooks using

Han characters Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...

are attested from the 1820s. Among many systems of writing Taiwanese using Latin characters, the most used is called

(POJ) and was developed in the 19th century, while the

Taiwanese Romanization System Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan (Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, r ...

(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 the

script 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

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 Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse, or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social class, or social climbers. John Bayley claims the term can never be self-referential, because to be aware of vulgarity is to ...

'khoàⁿ sáⁿ-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

in Taiwan published the first list of

Taiwanese Southern Min Recommended Characters ''Taiwanese Southern Min Recommended Characters'' is a set of three lists of Taiwanese Hokkien characters, numbering 700 in total, which were published by the Taiwan Ministry of Education between 2007 and 2009 recommending which Chinese charac ...

, 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 being

(POJ, meaning "vernacular writing"), developed in the 19th century.

(Tâi-ôan lô-má-jī, Tâi-lô) and

Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (), more commonly known by its initials TLPA, is a romanization system for the Taiwanese language, Taiwanese Hakka language, and Formosan languages. Based on Pe̍h-ōe-jī and first published in full in 1998, it ...

(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 Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), also known as Modern Taiwanese Language (MTL), is an orthography in the Latin alphabet for Taiwanese based on the Taiwanese Modern Spelling System (TMSS). MLT is able to use the ASCII character set to indicate the ...

(MLT),

Simplified MLT Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), also known as Modern Taiwanese Language (MTL), is an orthography in the Latin alphabet for Taiwanese based on the Taiwanese Modern Spelling System (TMSS). MLT is able to use the ASCII character set to indicate the ...

(SMLT), Phofsit Daibuun (PSDB). The last four employ tonal

spelling Spelling is a set of conventions that regulate the way of using graphemes (writing system) to represent a language in its written form. In other words, spelling is the rendering of speech sound (phoneme) into writing (grapheme). Spelling is one ...

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 ''diacriti ...

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, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in ...

texts, such as book titles or section headings), and the tonal

s. POJ was developed first by

Presbyterian Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which 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 Mi ...

and later by the indigenous

Presbyterian Church in Taiwan The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT; ; ) is the largest Protestant Christian denomination based in Taiwan. The PCT is a member of the World Council of Churches, and its flag features a "Burning Bush," which signifies the concept of burning y ...

; 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 The National Languages Committee was established in 1928 by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China with the purpose of standardizing and popularizing the usage of Standard Chinese (also called Mandarin) in the Republic of China. The ...

(Ministry of Education, Republic of China) proposed

(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 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

government also tried to introduce an orthography in

bopomofo Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...

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. is the actua ...

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 o ...

for entering either Latin or Han characters in Taiwanese are available. Some of them are free-of-charge, some commercial. The

Min Nan Southern Min (), Minnan ( Mandarin pronunciation: ) or Banlam (), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Sinitic languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan ...

dialect group is registered per a
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

, Vietnamese chữ nôm, Korean hanja and

Japanese kanji are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequent ...

. These are usually not encoded in

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

(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), whi ...

), thus creating problems in computer processing. All Latin characters required by Pe̍h-ōe-jī can be represented using

(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), whi ...

), 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 An interpunct , also known as an interpoint, middle dot, middot and centered dot or centred dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a vertically centered dot used for interword separation in ancient Latin script. (Word-separating spaces did no ...

’ (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 A working group, or working party, is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. The groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdis ...

in charge of ISO/IEC 10646 – namely
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.

Sociolinguistics

Regional variations

The prestige variant of Taiwanese Hokkien is the southern speech found in

and

. Other major variants are the northern speech, the central speech (near

Taichung Taichung (, Wade–Giles: ''Tʻai²-chung¹'', pinyin: ''Táizhōng''), officially Taichung City, is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Taiw ...

and the port town of

Lukang Lukang, formerly romanized as Lugang and also known by other names, is an urban township in northwestern Changhua County, Taiwan. The township is on the west coast of Taiwan, facing the Taiwan Strait. Lukang was an important sea port in the 18t ...

), and the northern (northeastern) coastal speech (dominant in

Yilan Yilan may refer to: China * Yilan County, Heilongjiang (依兰县), county of central Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China * Yilan Town, Heilongjiang (依兰镇), seat of Yilan County * Yilan, Jilin (依兰镇), town in Yanji Taiwan ...

). The distinguishing feature of the coastal speech is the use of the vowel in place of . The northern speech is distinguished by the absence of the 8th tone, and some vowel exchanges (for example, and , and ). 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 Kinmen, alternatively known as Quemoy, is a group of islands governed as a county by the Republic of China (Taiwan), off the southeastern coast of mainland China. It lies roughly east of the city of Xiamen in Fujian, from which it is separate ...

and

Penghu The Penghu (, Hokkien POJ: ''Phîⁿ-ô͘'' or ''Phêⁿ-ô͘'' ) or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait, located approximately west from the main island of Taiwan, covering an area ...

. Concerning the fifth (rising) tone in normal sandhi patterns, the Quanzhou/Coastal/Northern dialects change to seventh (mid level) tone, whereas the Zhangzhou/"Mixed"/Southern dialects change to 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

immigrants to Taiwan originated from

prefecture (44.8%) and

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'' (漳泉濫, in Mandarin ''Zhāng–Quán làn''). Due to different proportion of mixture, some regions are inclined more towards Quanzhou accent, while others are inclined more towards Zhangzhou accent. In general, Quanzhou accent is more common along the coastal region and is known as the ''hái-kháu'' accent; Zhangzhou accent is more common within the mountainous region of Taiwan and is known as the ''lāi-po͘'' 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

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'' (): western inner plain, mountain regions, based on the Zhangzhou dialect (represented by the Yilan accent) #''phian-lāi'' (): interior (represented by the

Taibao Taibao (Hokkien POJ: ''Thài-pó'') is a county-administered city and the county seat of Chiayi County, Taiwan. Name The city was named after the government position of Wang De-lu, whose hometown is Taibao, in the 19th century. History Form ...

accent) #''thong-hêng'' (): common accents (represented by the Taipei (spec.

Datong Datong is a prefecture-level city in northern Shanxi Province in the People's Republic of China. It is located in the Datong Basin at an elevation of and borders Inner Mongolia to the north and west and Hebei to the east. As of the 2020 cens ...

) 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'', these also known as ''thong-hêng'' () 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 both

and Hokkien, the degree of fluency varies widely. There are however small but significant numbers of people in Taiwan, mainly but not exclusively

and 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 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 In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are describ ...

areas, while Mandarin is used more in

urban Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to: * Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas * Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities Urban may also refer to: General * Urban (name), a list of people ...

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 A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...

variety show Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical theatre, musical performances, sketch comedy, magic (illusion), magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is ...

s, and even some news programs can also be found in Taiwanese.

Sociolinguistics and gender

Taiwanese is also perceived by some to have a slight masculine leaning, making it more popular among the males of the younger population. It is sometimes perceived as "unladylike" when spoken by the females of the younger population.

Special literary and art forms

''Chhit-jī-á'' (literally, "that which has seven syllables") is a

poetic Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...

meter The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its prefi ...

where each verse has 7 syllables. There is a special form of

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

al/

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

tic performance ''koa-á-hì'': the

Taiwanese opera Taiwanese opera () commonly known as Ke-Tse opera or Hokkien opera, is a form of traditional drama originating in Taiwan. Taiwanese opera uses a stylised combination of both the literary and colloquial registers of Taiwanese Hokkien. Its earliest ...

; the subject matter is usually a historical event. A similar form ''pò͘-tē-hì'' (

glove puppetry Glove puppetry () is a type of opera using cloth puppets that originated during the 17th century in Quanzhou or Zhangzhou of China's Fujian province, and historically practised in the Min Nan-speaking areas such as Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, the Chaos ...

) is also unique and has been elaborated in the past two decades into impressive

televised Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

spectacles. See

Taiwanese cuisine Taiwanese cuisine (, Bopomofo:ㄊㄞˊㄨㄢˉㄌㄧㄠˋㄌㄧˇ, or , Bopomofo:ㄊㄞˊㄨㄢˉㄘㄞˋ) has several variations. The earliest known cuisines of Taiwan are that of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples. Over hundred years of histor ...

for names of several local dishes.

Bible translations

As with many other languages, the

translations of the Bible The Bible has been translated into many languages from the biblical languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. all of the Bible has been translated into 724 languages, the New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,617 languages, and ...

in Taiwanese 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 James Laidlaw Maxwell Senior (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: ''Má Ngá-kok''; ; born 18 March 1836 in Scotland – March 1921) was the first Presbyterian missionary to Formosa ( Qing-era Taiwan). He served with the English Presbyterian Mission. 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. Taiwanese Bible Chim-gian 1933

The next translation of the Bible in Taiwanese or Amoy was by the missionary to Taiwan, 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 orthography, was completed in 1930 and published in 1933 as the Amoy Romanized Bible () (on Hokkien Wikipedia). 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 (on Hokkien Wikipedia) in 1996. Ang-phoe Seng-keng te-571-bin

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

and the Roman Catholic mission

Maryknoll Maryknoll is a name shared by a number of related Catholic organizations, including the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers (also known as the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America or the Maryknoll Society), the Maryknoll Sisters, and the Mary ...

. This translation used a more modern vocabulary (somewhat influenced by Mandarin), and reflected the central Taiwan dialect, as the Maryknoll mission was based near Tâi-tiong. It was soon confiscated by the Kuomintang government (which objected to the use of Latin orthography) in 1975. The copies of the ecumenical NT are now available on the online stores. A translation using the principle of functional equivalence, "Today's Taiwanese Romanized Version" () (on Hokkien Wikipedia), containing only the New Testament, again in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was published in 2008 as a collaboration between the

and the Bible Society in Taiwan. A translation of the Old Testament, following the same principle, is being prepared. 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 Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

other than

, was discouraged by the

through measures such as banning its use in schools and limiting the amount of Taiwanese broadcast on electronic media. These measures were removed by the 1990s, and Taiwanese became an emblem of

localization Localization or localisation may refer to: Biology * Localization of function, locating psychological functions in the brain or nervous system; see Linguistic intelligence * Localization of sensation, ability to tell what part of the body is a ...

. Mandarin remains the predominant language of education, although there is a "mother tongue" language requirement in Taiwanese schools which can be satisfied with student's choice of mother tongue: Taiwanese, Hakka, or

aboriginal languages Aboriginal language may refer to: * Indigenous language * Australian Aboriginal languages * Taiwanese aboriginal languages * Indigenous languages of the Americas * Aboriginal Malay languages The Malayic languages are a branch of the Malayo-P ...

. Although the use of Taiwanese Hokkien over Mandarin was historically part of the

Taiwan independence movement The Taiwan independence movement is a political movement which advocates the formal declaration of an independent and sovereign Taiwanese state, as opposed to Chinese unification or the status quo in Cross-Strait relations. Currently, Tai ...

, 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 independence have played down its connection with Taiwanese in order to gain the support of the Mainlanders and

Hakka people The Hakka (), sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhe ...

James Soong James Soong Chu-yu (born 16 March 1942) is a Taiwanese politician. He is the founder and current Chairman of the People First Party. Born to a Kuomintang military family of Hunanese origin, Soong began his political career as a secretary to ...

restricted the use of Taiwanese Hokkien and other local tongues in broadcasting while serving as Director of the

Government Information Office The Government Information Office, Executive Yuan (GIO; ) was a cabinet-level agency of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan (the Republic of China) in charge of promoting government policies and regulating domestic media. History In April 1947, the R ...

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 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 Chen Shui-bian (; born 12 October 1950) is a retired Taiwanese politician and lawyer who served as the president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2000 to 2008. Chen was the first president from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) whic ...

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. The current

President of Taiwan The president of the Republic of China, now often referred to as the president of Taiwan, is the head of state of the Republic of China (ROC), as well as the commander-in-chief of the Republic of China Armed Forces. The position once had aut ...

and of the (

DPP DPP may stand for: Business *Digital Production Partnership, of UK public service broadcasters * Direct Participation Program, a financial security * Discounted payback period Photography * Digital Photo Professional, Canon software Law en ...

Tsai Ing-wen Tsai Ing-wen (; born 31 August 1956) is a Taiwanese politician serving as president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) since 2016. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Tsai is the first female president of Taiwan. She served as ...

has been criticized by her supporters for not using Taiwanese in speeches. Former President

Ma Ying-jeou Ma Ying-jeou ( zh, 馬英九, born 13 July 1950) is a Hong Kong-born Taiwanese politician who served as president of the Republic of China from 2008 to 2016. Previously, he served as justice minister from 1993 to 1996 and mayor of Taipei from ...

spoke in Taiwanese during his 2008

Double Ten Day The National Day of the Republic of China ( zh, 中華民國的國慶日) or the Taiwan National Day, also referred to as Double Ten Day or Double Tenth Day, is a public holiday on 10 October, now held annually in Taiwan (officially the Republi ...

speech when he was talking about the state of the economy in Taiwan. In the early 21st century, there are few differences in language usage between the pro-unification leaning

Pan-Blue Coalition The pan-Blue coalition, pan-Blue force or pan-Blue groups is a political coalition in the Republic of China (Taiwan) consisting of the Kuomintang (KMT), People First Party (PFP), New Party (CNP), Non-Partisan Solidarity Union (NPSU), and Young ...

and the

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

leaning

Pan-Green Coalition The pan-Green coalition, pan-Green force or pan-Green groups is a nationalist political coalition in Taiwan (Republic of China), consisting of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP), Taiwan Solidarity Union ...

. 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 The regions of Taiwan are based on the historical administrative divisions. However, most of the definitions are not precise. Division into two regions * Eastern and Western Taiwan: the Central Mountain Range separates Taiwan into east and west. :* ...

and more Taiwanese in

Southern Taiwan The regions of Taiwan are based on the historical administrative divisions. However, most of the definitions are not precise. Division into two regions * Eastern and Western Taiwan: the Central Mountain Range separates Taiwan into east and west. :* ...

. 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 tend to use Mandarin. The

Taiwan Solidarity Union The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) is a political party in Taiwan which advocates Taiwan independence, and is affiliated with the Taiwanese localization movement. It was officially founded on 12 August 2001 and is considered part of the Pan-Gr ...

, which advocates a strong line on Taiwan independence, tends to use Taiwanese even in formal press conferences. In speaking, politicians will frequently

code switch ''Code Switch'' is a race and culture outlet and a weekly podcast from American public radio network NPR. It began in 2013 with a blog as well as contributing stories to NPR radio programs. The Code Switch podcast launched in 2016. In the wake ...

. In writing, almost everyone uses vernacular Mandarin which is further from Taiwanese, and the use of semi-alphabetic writing or even colloquial Taiwanese characters is rare. In 2002, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party with about 10% of the

Legislative Yuan The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China (Taiwan) located in Taipei. The Legislative Yuan is composed of 113 members, who are directly elected for 4-year terms by people of the Taiwan Area through a parallel v ...

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 The Hoklo people or Hokkien people () are a Han Chinese (also Han Taiwanese) subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to Southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such a ...

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 The Control Yuan is the supervisory and auditory branch of the government of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Prior to constitutional reforms in the 1990s, the Control Yuan, along with National Assembly (electoral college) and the Legislative ...

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. In 2017, indigenous languages were given official status in Taiwan, as was the

Hakka language Hakka (, , ) forms a language group of varieties of Chinese, spoken natively by the Hakka people throughout Southern China and Taiwan and throughout the diaspora areas of East Asia, Southeast Asia and in overseas Chinese communities around th ...

. , English was planned to become an official language in Taiwan, although this has not happened ever since. Taiwanese Hokkien is required for some activities but not others. For further information, see

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 branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous pe ...

Mother tongue movement

Taiwanization Taiwanese nationalism () is a nationalist movement to identify the Taiwanese people as a distinct nation. Due to the complex political status of Taiwan, it is strongly linked to the Taiwan independence movement in seeking an identity separate ...

developed in the 1990s into a ‘

revival movement' aiming to save, preserve, and develop the local ethnic culture and language of Holo (Taiwanese), Hakka, and aborigines. The effort to 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 elective. Taiwan also has its own

literary circle A literary circle is a small group of students who gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. Famous or noteworthy examples include: * The Socrates School * The Bloomsbury Group * The Dymock Poets * The Algonquin Roundtable * The ...

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 Minnan culture or Hokkien/Hoklo culture (Hokkien Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm bûn-hòa; ), also considered as the Mainstream Southern Min Culture, refers to the culture of the Hokkien people, Hoklo people, a Han Chinese subgroups, group of Han Chinese ...

worldwide in the 21st century.

Television

Lady Rainicorn The American animated television series ''Adventure Time'' features a cast of fictional characters created by Pendleton Ward. The series revolves around the adventures of protagonists Finn the Human (voiced by Jeremy Shada), a teenage human ...

for ''

Adventure Time ''Adventure Time'' is an American fantasy animated television series created by Pendleton Ward for Cartoon Network and distributed by Warner Bros. Domestic Television. The series follows the adventures of a boy named Finn (Jeremy Shada) and ...

'' broadcast by 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".

Notes

Words in native languages

References

Citations

Cited sources

* * * * *

External links

; On the language *
Blog on the Taiwanese language and language education in Taiwan
* * 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 Taiwanese culture