Taiwanese

Infobox Language
name=Taiwanese
nativename=臺灣話; "Tâi-oân-oē"
familycolor=Sino-Tibetan
states=Taiwan
region=The whole of Taiwan and overseas Taiwanese communities
speakers=About 15 million in Taiwan; 49 million (Min Nan as a group)
rank=21 (Min Nan as a group)
fam2=Chinese
fam3=Min
fam4=Min Nan
script=Latin (pe̍h-ōe-jī), Hanzi
nation=None. Legislative bills have been proposed for it to be one of the national languages in the Republic of China (Taiwan). It is one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements in the ROC [http://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E7%9C%BE%E9%81%8B%E8%BC%B8%E5%B7%A5%E5%85%B7%E6%92%AD%E9%9F%B3%E8%AA%9E%E8%A8%80%E5%B9%B3%E7%AD%89%E4%BF%9D%E9%9A%9C%E6%B3%95] .
agency=National Languages Committee (Ministry of Education, ROC). Some NGOs such as the [http://www.tlh.org.tw/ Tâi-oân Lô-má-jī Hia̍p-hoē] are influential.
iso1=zh|iso2b=chi|iso2t=zho|iso3=nan

Taiwanese (pe̍h-oē-jī: "Tâi-oân-oē" or "Tâi-gí"; zh-t|t=臺灣話, 臺語; Tongyong Pinyin: Táiwānhuà, Táiyǔ; Jhuyin Fuhao: ㄊㄞˊ ㄨㄢ ㄏㄨㄚˋ, ㄊㄞˊ ㄩˇ; Hakka: Thòi-vàn-fa, Thòi-ngî)is a variant of Hokkien Min Nan Chinese spoken by about 70% of Taiwan's population. [ [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=TW Ethnologue] ] The largest ethnic group in Taiwan for which Taiwanese is considered a native language is known as Hoklo or Holo (Hō-ló). The correspondence between language and ethnicity is generally true though not absolute, as some Hoklo speak Taiwanese poorly while some non-Hoklo speak Taiwanese fluently. Pe̍h-oē-jī (POJ) is a popular orthography for this language, and Hokkien in general.

Despite the fact that it is the most widely spoken vernacular on the island of Taiwan, it is not the official language of the Republic of China that governs the island. The government has promoted Mandarin in the Taiwan standard as the official language.

Classification

Taiwanese is a variant of Hokkien Min Nan, closely related to the Amoy dialect. It is often seen as a "Chinese dialect" within the larger Sinitic language family. On the other hand, it may also be seen as a "language" in the Sino-Tibetan family. As with most “language/dialect” distinctions, how one describes Taiwanese depends largely on one's political views (see the article “varieties of Chinese”).

Min is the only branch of Chinese that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese. [ [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2718766 Mei Tsu-lin (1970) Tones and Prosody in Middle Chinese and The Origin of The Rising Tone. "Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies" 30:86–110] ] This may account for the difficulty in finding the appropriate Chinese characters for some Min Nan vocabulary. This is maybe also part of the reasons why it is almost totally mutually unintelligible with Mandarin or other Chinese dialects.

There is both a colloquial version and a literary version of Taiwanese. Spoken Taiwanese is almost identical to spoken Amoy. Regional variations within Taiwanese may be traced back to Hokkien variants spoken in Southern Fujian (Quanzhou and Zhangzhou). Taiwanese also contains loanwords from Japanese and the Formosan languages. Recent work by scholars such as [http://ws.twl.ncku.edu.tw/hak-chia/l/lou-ek-ki/kongpah-oat.htm Ekki Lu] , [http://203.64.42.21/iug/ungian/POJ/siausit/2002/2002POJGTH/lunbun%5CA1-sakai.pdf Sakai Toru] , and [http://ws.twl.ncku.edu.tw/hak-chia/l/li-khin-hoann/phok-su/phok-su.htm 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 language families; however, such claims are still controversial.

A literary form of Min Nan once flourished in Fujian and was brought to Taiwan by early emigrants. "", the manuscript for a series of plays published during the Ming Dynasty in 1566, is one of the earlist known works. This form of the language is now largely extinct.

Phonology

Phonologically, Taiwanese is a tonal language with extensive tone sandhi rules. Syllables consist maximally of an initial consonant, a vowel, a final consonant, and a tone; any or all of the consonants or vowels may be nasal.

Consonants

See (for one example) Wi-vun Taiffalo Chiung's modern phonological analysis in the References, which challenges these notions.

For tones 4 and 8, a final consonant "p", "t", or "k" may appear. When this happens, it is impossible for the syllable to be nasal. Indeed, these are the counterpart to the nasal final consonants "m", "n", and "ng", respectively, in other tones. However, it is possible to have a nasal 4th or 8th tone syllable such as "siaⁿh", as long as there is no final consonant other than "h".

In the dialect spoken near the northern coast of Taiwan, there is no distinction between tones number 8 and number 4 – both are pronounced as if they follow the tone sandhi rules of tone number 4.

Tone number 0, typically written with a double dash ("--") before the syllable with this tone, is used to denote 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--bē?", 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

A syllable requires a vowel (or diphthong or triphthong) to appear in the middle. All consonants can appear at the initial position. The consonants "p", "t", "k"; "m", "n", and "ng" (and some consider "h") may appear at the end of a syllable. Therefore, it is possible to have syllables such as "ngiau" ("(to) itch") and "thng" ("soup"). Incidentally, both of these example syllables are nasal: the first has a nasal initial consonant; the second a nasal vowel. Compare with hangul.

Tone sandhi

Taiwanese has extremely extensive tone sandhi (tone-changing) rules: in an utterance, only the last syllable pronounced is not affected by the rules. What an ‘utterance’ (or ‘intonational phrase’) is, in the context of this language, is an ongoing topic for linguistic research. For the purpose of this article, an utterance may be considered a word, a phrase, or a short sentence. 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 the last in an utterance):
* If the original tone number is 5, pronounce it as tone number 3 (Quanzhou/Taipei speech) or 7 (Zhangzhou/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.

See the work by Tiuⁿ Jū-hông and Wi-vun Taiffalo Chiung in the References, and the work by [http://www.chinesestudies.hawaii.edu/community/faculty/cheng_robert.html Robert L. Cheng] (Tēⁿ Liông-úi) of the University of Hawaii, for modern linguistic approaches to tones and tone sandhi in Taiwanese.

Lexicon

Modern linguistic studies (by Robert L. Cheng and Chin-An Li, for example) estimate that most (75% to 90%) Taiwanese words have cognates in other Chinese languages. False friends do exist; for example, "cháu" means "to run" in Taiwanese, whereas the Mandarin cognate, "zǒu", means "to walk". Moreover, cognates may have different lexical categories; for example, the morpheme "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" (person, concrete) vs. "jîn" (人, person, abstract); "cha-bó͘" (woman) vs. "lú-jîn" (女人, woman, literary). Unlike the English Germanic/Latin contrast, however, the two groups of Taiwanese words cannot be as strongly attributed to the influences of two disparate linguistic sources.

Extensive contact with the Japanese language has left a legacy of Japanese loanwords. 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 オートバイ "ootobai" "autobike", an "Engrish" word) and "pháng" (from パン "pan" "bread," which is itself a loanword from Portuguese). Grammatical particles borrowed from Japanese, notably "te̍k" (from "teki" 的) and "ka" (from か), show up in the Taiwanese of older speakers.

Whereas Mandarin attaches a syllabic suffix to the singular pronoun to make a collective form, Taiwanese pronouns are collectivized through nasalization. For example, "i" (he/she/it) and "goá" (I) become "in" (they) and "goán" (we), respectively. The "-n" thus represents a subsyllabic morpheme. Like all other Chinese languages, Taiwanese does not have true plurals.

Unlike English, Taiwanese has two first-person plural pronouns. This distinction is called inclusive, which includes the addressee, and exclusive, which excludes the addressee. For example, "goán" means "we excluding you", while "lán" means "we including you" (that is, pluralis auctoris). The inclusive "lán" may be used to express politeness or solidarity, as in the example of a speaker asking a stranger "Where do we live?", but meaning "Where do "you" live?". This distinction is a relatively common feature of Sino-Tibetan languages, the canonical example from Mandarin being 我們 (wǒmen, exclusive) versus 咱們 (zánmen, inclusive).

Grammar

The grammar of Taiwanese is similar to southern Chinese languages such as Hakka and Cantonese. The sequence 'subject verb object' is typical as in, for example, Mandarin, but 'subject object verb' or the passive voice (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 passive voice, 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 grammar, for flavour. Linguistic work on the syntax of Taiwanese is still a (quite nascent) scholarly topic being explored.

Listen to an for the sentence: "Kin-á-jit hit-ê cha-bó͘ gín-á lâi góan tau khòaⁿ góa." (Today that girl came to my house to see me.)

Scripts and orthographies

Taiwanese does not have a strong written tradition. Until the late 19th century, Taiwanese speakers wrote solely in literary Chinese. A system of writing Taiwanese using Latin characters called pe̍h-oē-jī (POJ) was developed in the 19th century. Today, Taiwanese speakers most commonly write in vernacular Chinese, which uses the vocabulary and grammar of Mandarin, though Chinese characters are also used to represent spoken Taiwanese in writing.

Han characters

In most cases, Taiwanese speakers write using the script called Han characters 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. Mandarin-Taiwanese bilingual speakers sometimes attempt to represent the sounds by adopting similar-sounding Mandarin Han characters. For example, the Han characters of the vulgar slang 'khoàⁿ sáⁿ siâu' (看三小, substituted for the etymologically correct 看啥痟, 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.

Orthography in Latin characters

In some situations, Taiwanese is written with the Latin alphabet using an orthography called pe̍h-oē-jī (POJ), meaning "vernacular writing". POJ was developed first by Presbyterian missionaries and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan; they have been active in promoting the language since the late 19th century. Recently there has been an increase in texts using a mixed orthography of Han characters and romanization, although these texts remain uncommon. Other Latin-based orthographies exist, the most significant being Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA), Tongyong Pinyin, Modern Literal Taiwanese (MLT), and Phofsit Daibuun (PSDB). MTL and PSDB both employ tonal spelling to indicate tone without use of diacritic symbols.

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) uTwenty-four in all, including the obsolete "ts", which was used to represent the modern "ch" at some places. The additional necessities are the nasal symbol "ⁿ" (superscript n; the uppercase form "^N" is sometimes used in all caps texts, such as book titles or section headings), and the tonal diacritics.

In 2006, the National Languages Committee (Ministry of Education, Republic of China) proposed a scheme called "Tâi-ôan Lô-má-jī" (literally, "romanized orthography for Taiwanese"). This scheme reconciles the two of the more senior orthographies, TLPA and POJ. [ [http://tlh.de-han.org/untong/2006/0929TaiLo.pdf 臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案 (Orthographical scheme for the Minnan language in Taiwan, "Tâi-ôan Lô-má-jī")] ] The changes for the consonants involved using "ts" for POJ's "ch" (reverting to the orthography in the 19th century), and "tsh" for "chh". For the vowels, "o͘" could optionally represented as "oo". The nasal mark "ⁿ" could also be represented optionally as "nn". The rest of the scheme, 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 Tongyong Pinyin. [ [http://203.64.42.21/TG/khinhoaN/other/TLsoatthiap.pdf 教育部國語推行委員會: 關於閩南語拼音整合工作相關問題說帖 (National Languages Committee: On the integration of Minnan orthographies), 2006-10-16] ] It is unclear whether the community will adopt this new agreement.

Orthographies in kana and in bopomofo

There was an orthography of Taiwanese based on the Japanese kana during Japanese rule. The Kuomintang government also tried to introduce an orthography in bopomofo.

Comparison of orthographies

Here the different orthographies are compared:

Computing

Many keyboard layouts and input methods for entering either Latin or Han characters in Taiwanese are available. Some of them are free-of-charge, some commercial.

The language Min-nan is registered per RFC 3066 as [http://www.iana.org/assignments/ _ta. Vietnamese chữ nôm] ] , Korean hanja and Japanese kanji. These are usually not encoded in Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal Character Set), thus creating problems in computer processing.

All Latin characters required by pe̍h-oē-jī can be represented using Unicode (or the corresponding ISO/IEC 10646: Universal character set), using precomposed or combining (diacritics) characters. Prior to June 2004, the vowel IPA| [ɔ] akin to but more open than "o", written with a dot above right, was not encoded. The usual workaround was to use the (stand-alone; spacing) character "middle dot" (U+00B7, "·") or less commonly the combining character "dot above" (U+0307). As these are far from ideal, since 1997 proposals have been submitted to the ISO/IEC working group in charge of ISO/IEC 10646 – namely, [http://anubis.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/ ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2] – to encode a new combining character "dot above right". This is now officially assigned to U+0358 (see documents [http://www.evertype.com/standards/la/taioan.html N1593] , [http://anubis.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2507 N2507] , [http://anubis.dkuug.dk/JTC1/SC2/WG2/docs/n2628 N2628] , [http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2699 N2699] , and [http://std.dkuug.dk/JTC1/sc2/wg2/docs/N2770r.pdf N2770] ). Font support has followed: for example, in Charis SIL.

Sociolinguistics

Regional variations

Within the wider Hokkien speaking community in Southeast Asia, Ē-mn̂g (Amoy or Xiamen) is historically the variant of prestige (close to a 'standard language'), with other major variants from Choâⁿ-chiu/Choân-chiu (Chinchew or Quanzhou in Fujian) and Chiang-chiu (Changchew or Zhangzhou in Fujian). Another Min Nan language, Tiô-chiu (Teochew or Chaozhou in Guangdong) is also widely spoken in these regions.

In Taiwan, however, the Tâi-lâm (Tainan, southern Taiwan) speech is the variant of prestige, and the other major variants are the northern speech, the central speech (near Taichung and the port town of Lo̍k-káng in Changhua County), and the northern (northeastern) coastal speech (dominant in Gî-lân). The distinguishing feature of the coastal speech is the use of the vowel 'uiⁿ' in place of 'ng'. The northern speech is distinguished by the absence of the 8th tone, and some vowel exchanges (for example, 'i' and 'u', 'e' and 'oe'). The central speech has an additional vowel IPA| [ɨ] or IPA| [ø] between 'i' and 'u', which may be represented as 'ö'.

Fluency

Most people in Taiwan can speak both Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese although the degree of fluency varies widely. There are however significant numbers of people in Taiwan (roughly 20 to 30 percent of the population of Taiwan), mainly but not exclusively Hakka and Mainlanders, who cannot speak Taiwanese at all, as well as large numbers of people (roughly 10 to 20 percent of the population), mainly people born before the 1950s, who cannot speak Mandarin at all.Fact|date=September 2008 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 Taiwanese is greater than their ability to speak it.

Which variant is used depends strongly on the context, and in general people will use Mandarin in more formal situations and Taiwanese in more informal situations. Taiwanese tends to get used more in rural areas, while Mandarin is used more in urban settings. Older people tend to use Taiwanese, while younger people tend to use Mandarin. In the broadcast media, soap opera/dramas and variety shows tend to use Taiwanese, while game shows and documentaries tend to use Mandarin. Political news is broadcast in both Taiwanese and Mandarin.

Special literary and art forms

"Chhit-jī-á" (literally, "that which has seven syllables") is a poetic meter where each verse has 7 syllables.

There is a special form of musical/dramatic performance "koa-á-hì": the Taiwanese opera; the subject matter is usually a historical event. A similar form of puppetry, "pò͘-tē-hì" ("Taiwanese puppetry"), is also unique and has been elaborated in the past two decades into impressive televised spectacles.

See Taiwanese cuisine for names of several local dishes.

Conceptualization and history

In the first decades of the 18th century, the language difference between the Chinese Qing imperial bureaucrats and the commoners was recorded by the first Imperial High Commissioner to Taiwan (1722), Huáng Shújǐng, a Beijinger sent by the Kangxi Emperor, during whose reign Taiwan was annexed in 1684:

This set the tone for the uneasy relationship between this language community and the colonial establishments in the next few centuries.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, civil unrest and armed conflicts were frequent in Taiwan. In addition to resistance against the government (both Chinese and Japanese), battles between ethnic groups were also significant: the belligerent usually grouped around the language they use. History recorded battles between the Hakka and the Taiwanese-language speakers; between these and the aborigines; and between those who spoke the Choâⁿ-chiu variant of what became the Taiwanese language and those who spoke the Chiang-chiu variant.

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 variants of Chinese.

The history of Taiwanese and the interaction with Mandarin is complex and at times controversial. Even the name is somewhat controversial. Some dislike the name Taiwanese as they feel that it belittles other variants such as Mandarin, Hakka, and the aboriginal languages which are spoken on Taiwan. Others prefer the name Min-nan or Hokkien as this views Taiwanese as a variant of the speech which is spoken on Fujian province in Mainland China. Others dislike the name Min-nan and Hokkien for precisely the same reason. One can get into similar controversial debates as to whether Taiwanese is a language or a dialect.

Bible translations

As with many other languages, the translations of the Bible 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, with the New Testament "Lán ê Kiù-chú Iâ-so͘ Ki-tok ê Sin-iok" published in 1873 and the Old Testament "Kū-iok ê Sèng Keng" in 1884.

The next translation of the Bible in Taiwanese or Amoy was by the missionary to Taiwan, Thomas Barclay, carried out in Fujian and Taiwan. [cite web|url=http://www.biblesociety-tw.org/native.htm|title=本土聖經|accessdate=2008-07-14|language=traditional Chinese] [cite web|url=http://www32.ocn.ne.jp/~sunliong/lunwen-12j.htm|language=Japanese|title=書評『聖經－－台語漢字本』|accessdate=2008-07-14] 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"). This edition was later transliterated into Han characters and published as ' (聖經台語漢字本) in 1996 [http://tailo.fhl.net/Godspeak/Godspeak26.html] .

The Ko-Tân (Kerygma) Colloquial Taiwanese Version of the New Testament ("Sin-iok") in pe̍h-ōe-jī, also known as the Red-Cover Bible (), was published in 1973 as an ecumenical effort between the Protestant Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Roman Catholic mission Maryknoll. This translation used a more modern vocabulary (somewhat influenced by Mandarin), and reflected the central Taiwan dialect, as the Maryknoll mission was based near Tâi-tiong. It was soon confiscated by the Kuomintang government (which objected to the use of Latin orthography) in 1975.

A translation using the principle of functional equivalence, "" (Today's Taiwanese Romanized Version), containing only the New Testament, again in pe̍h-ōe-jī, was published in 2008 [http://www.peopo.org/chuniok/post/12934] as a collaboration between the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan and the Bible Society in Taiwan. A translation of the Old Testament, following the same principle, is being prepared [http://www.biblesociety-tw.org/translation/Taiwanese.htm] .

Politics

Until the 1980s, the use of Taiwanese, along with all dialects other than Mandarin, was discouraged by the Kuomintang 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. 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.

Although the use of Taiwanese over Mandarin was historically part of the Taiwan independence movement, the linkage between politics and language is not as strong as it once was. Some fluency in Taiwanese is arguably a de facto requirement for political office in Taiwan for both independence and unificationist politicians.Fact|date=September 2008 At the same time even some supporters of Taiwan independence have played down its connection with Taiwanese language in order to gain the support of the Mainlanders and Hakka.

James Soong restricted the use of Taiwanese and other local tongues in broadcasting while serving as Director of the Government Information Office earlier in his career, but later became one of the first Mainlander politicians to use Taiwanese in semi-formal occasions.Since then, politicians opposed to Taiwan independence have used it frequently in rallies even when they are not native speakers of the language and speak it badly. 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 President Chen Shui-bian who uses Mandarin in all official state speeches, but uses Taiwanese in political rallies and some informal state occasions such as New Year greetings, although in the latter casehe never uses Taiwanese exclusively.

In the early 21st century, there are few differences in language usage between the anti-independence leaning Pan-Blue Coalition and the independence leaning Pan-Green Coalition. Both tend to use Taiwanese at political rallies and sometimes in informal interviews and both tend to use Mandarin at formal press conferences and official state functions. Both also tend to use more Mandarin in northern Taiwan and more Taiwanese in southern Taiwan. However at official party gatherings (as opposed to both Mandarin-leaning state functions and Taiwanese-leaning party rallies), the DPP tends to use Taiwanese while KMT and PFP tend to use Mandarin. The Taiwan Solidarity Union, which advocates a strong line on Taiwan independence, tends to use Taiwanese even in formal press conferences. In speaking, politicians will frequently code switch. In writing, almost everyone uses vernacular Mandarin which is farther from Taiwanese, and the use of semi-alphabetic writing or even colloquial Taiwanese characters is rare.

Despite these commonalities, there are still different attitudes toward the relationship between Taiwanese and Mandarin. In general, while supporters of Chinese reunification believe that all languages used on Taiwan should be respected, they tend to believe that Mandarin should have a preferred status as the common working language between different groups. Supporters of Taiwan independence tend to believe that either Taiwanese should be preferred or that no language should be preferred.

In 2002, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a party with about 10 % of the Legislative Yuan seats at the time, suggested making Taiwanese 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 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 it appears very unlikely to pass.

In 2003, there was a controversy when parts of the civil service examination for judges were written in characters used only in Taiwanese. 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 Hakka and aborigines.

ee also

*
*

References

Books and other material

(As English language material on Taiwanese learning is limited, Japanese and German books are also listed here.)
* Su-chu Wu, Bodman, Nicholas C.: Spoken Taiwanese with cassette(s), 1980/2001, ISBN 0-87950-461-7 or ISBN 0-87950-460-9 or ISBN 0-87950-462-5
* Campbell, William: Ē-mn̂g-im Sin Jī-tián (Dictionary of the Amoy Vernacular). Tainan, Taiwan: Tâi-oân Kàu-hoē Kong-pò-siā (Taiwan Church Press, Presbyterian Church in Taiwan). June 1993 (First published July 1913).
* Iâu Chèng-to: Cheng-soán Pe̍h-oē-jī (Concise Colloquial Writing). Tainan, Taiwan: Jîn-kong (an imprint of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan). 1992.
* Tân, K. T: A Chinese-English Dictionary: Taiwan Dialect. Taipei: Southern Materials Center. 1978.
* Klöter, Henning. Written Taiwanese. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005. ISBN 3-447-05093-4.
* Maryknoll Language Service Center: English-Amoy Dictionary. Taichung, Taiwan: Maryknoll Fathers. 1979.
* Tiuⁿ Jū-hông: Principles of Pe̍h-oē-jī or the Taiwanese Orthography: an introduction to its sound-symbol correspondences and related issues. Taipei: Crane Publishing, 2001. ISBN 957-2053-07-8
* Wi-vun Taiffalo Chiung: [http://www.twl.ncku.edu.tw/~uibun/chuliau/lunsoat/english/tchange/abstract.htm Tone Change in Taiwanese: Age and Geographic Factors] .
* 樋口 靖: 台湾語会話, 2000, ISBN 4-497-20004-3 (Good and yet concise introduction to the Taiwanese language in Japanese; CD: ISBN 4-497-20006-X)
* 趙 怡華: はじめての台湾語, 2003, ISBN 4-7569-0665-6 (Introduction to Taiwanese [and Mandarin] ; in Japanese).
* 鄭 正浩: 台湾語基本単語2000, 1996, ISBN 4876156972 (Basic vocabulary in Taiwanese 2000; in Japanese).
* 趙 怡華, 陳 豐惠, たかお かおり, 2006, 絵でわかる台湾語会話. ISBN 978-4756909916 (Conversations in Taiwanese [and Mandarin] with illustrations; in Japanese).
* Katharina Sommer, Xie Shu-Kai: Taiwanisch Wort für Wort, 2004, ISBN 3-89416-348-8 (Taiwanese for travellers, in German. CD: ISBN 3-8317-6094-2)
* [http://lomaji.com/poj/faq/ITASA_2001_Resources.pdf Taiwanese learning resources] (a good bibliography in English) [http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:yZ3bMOYVUNUJ:lomaji.com/poj/faq/ITASA_2001_Resources.pdf+taiwanese+learning+resources&hl=zh-TW (Google cache as a web page)]

External links

* [http://tailingua.com/ An introduction to the Taiwanese language for English speakers]
* [http://taiwanesegrammar.wordpress.com/ Intermediate Taiwanese grammar (as a blog)]
* [http://taiwanesevocabulary.wordpress.com/ Taiwanese vocabulary: word of the day (blog)]
* [http://edu.ocac.gov.tw/lang/taiwanese/ Taiwanese teaching material] : Nursery rhymes and songs in Han characters and romanization w/ recordings in MP3
* [http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/taiwanese/index.php Learn Taiwanese] by James Campbell. The orthography used appears to be slightly modified pe̍h-oē-jī.
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nan Ethnologue Report For Chinese Min-Nan] (15th edition); [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=CFR Ethnologue Report For Chinese Min-Nan] (14th edition). This report uses a classification which considers Taiwanese a dialect of Min-Nan, which is classified as a separate language from Mandarin. This view of Taiwanese is controversial for the political reasons mentioned above.
* [http://lmj.tw/ Babuza Chu] . Medical knowledge published in Taiwanese by Babuza.
* [http://www.dmoz.org/World/Taiwanese/ Open Directory (dmoz): World: Taiwanese]
* [http://travlang.com/languages/cgi-bin/langchoice.cgi?page=main&lang1=english&lang2=holooe Travlang (language resources for travellers): Hō-ló-oē]
* [http://daiwanway.dynip.com/ Daiwanway] : Tutorial, dictionary, and stories in Taiwanese. Uses a unique romanization system, different from Pe̍h-oē-jī. Includes sound files. The original appears to be offline (last checked 14th November 2007) but is available as a [http://web.archive.org/web/20070429232228/http://daiwanway.dynip.com/ cached version] via the Wayback Machine.
* [http://pinyin.info/readings/mair/taiwanese.html How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language] , by Victor H. Mair.
* [http://203.64.42.21/iug/ungian/SoannTeng/chil/taihoa.asp Taiwanese-Mandarin on-line dictionary]
* [http://nlg.csie.ntu.edu.tw/systems/TWLLMT/index.html Taiwanese-Hakka-Mandarin on-line]
* [http://staff.whsh.tc.edu.tw/~huanyin 古雅臺語人] zh icon Taiwanese resources