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Archive 1

Move

Any objections against moving this to Taiwanese (linguistics)? --Jiang 05:03, 4 November 2003 (UTC)

Nope. --Menchi 05:56, 4 November 2003 (UTC)

Prologue

>What is wrong with using unicode to represent folk characters, with, >er, folk characters?

Folk characters are well known to be clumsy, defying the "orthodox" method of Hanzi formation---the combination of ideographic particle with syllabic particle, or the combination of ideographic particles. Vietnamese Chu Nom, and Japanese "furikana" in a way inherit the spirit of this orthodox ideographic method. Cantonese folk characters have degenerated into a purely syllabic nature and, what's worse, a set of uncategorized, unstandardized syllables. Moreover, Cantonese folk characters are cut off from other dialect zones, confined to the Yue dialect area and are cut off from traditional Chinese literature. A standardized written Cantonese has to contain MOSTLY Hanzis that are common to the two main Chinese literary forms: Archaic Wenyan and Modern Baihua. A mixed Latin-Hanzi script, though idiosyncratic and unprecedented, will be much easier for non-Cantonese to pick up due to the systemic nature of the Latin alphabet.

>I appreciate that hanzi-unfriendly environments need solutions such >as romanisation but this issue will surely become less of a problem as >the world's computers slowly adopt unicode?

I guess alphabetic scripts will continue to have an "edge" over Hanzi scripts, and standard Hanzi scripts will continue to have an edge over unstandardized, locally-confined, complex syllabic scripts. Simply put, I want a standard written Cantonese language that can look almost identical to a decent Modern Standard Chinese in an academic journal, but can be transmitted in Latinized form among mobile phones.


>Who is "we"?

Narrowly, reformers of the literary Cantonese language who want to see it becoming one of the two main standards in the Chinese Linguistic Family, and a major world language capable of absorbing new ideas and developing independent of the "Northern Variety". Broadly, everyone who sees the need to reform and knows what has to be done about it.


>Well, you can always mix latin text with Hanzi for loanwords. >What inadequecies do you mean?

Hint: Japanese has abolished its post-Meiji system of literally translating foreign loanwords to Hanzi compound words and adopted a "Katakana" based transliteration method after WWII. Korean and Vietnamese also adopted more accurate transliteration systems to Hangul and Quoc Ngu. In terms of absorbing international academic and technological terms, Chinese(Taiwan and Hong Kong varieties included) lags considerably behind its "Hanzi Zone" neighbors. This places a severe limit especially on the fledgling modern intellectual arena of contemporary China and Taiwan. China is undergoing a major period of transformation. I am talking about something happening deep inside the Chinese mind. Will China give birth to the kind of militant ethocentrism we see in pre-WWII Japan or contemporary Islamic and Hindu worlds? Language isn't the only factor. But it's too important to overlook.

Curious, since there is a recent New York Times article that argues the opposite, that Japanese katakana actually serves to isolate Japan from foreign influences by clearly separating what is Japanese from what is foreign, while the Chinese habit of turning everything into characters has the effect of sinify foreign ideas and concepts and shows China is being more outward looking than Japan.

Roadrunner 09:37, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

> I don't even like seeing "D" being used instead of dik1.

It should be "dek1" actually, according to the phonetic system of Cantonese. When you say "dek1" you are actually pronouncing a "short-closed" e instead of a "short-open" i. There are no "short-opens" in Cantonese as in English.

The reason why Anglophones "get" Sydney Lau and Yale is because these two system assumes "short-closed" o,e to be "short-open" u,i, which happen to be the property of Germanic languages like English and German.

However, a Spaniard, or especially a Greek, won't be so lucky with Lau and Yale. You'd hear them pronouncing "fok1" and "dek1" as if they were "fuuuuuuuuuuuuk1" and "diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiik1"

Of course, they have audio files to assist them but, to match an unsystematic transliteration with correct audio files would be like bringing home someone else's baby from the maternity ward--- at first they are babies all the same. The realization comes much later. I believe the Quoc Ngu-using Vietnamese have learned this mistake.



removed the reference to Taiwan Mandarin. I've never heard Taiwanese being used to refer to Taiwan Mandarin either in Chinese or English.

I have, but only by people ignorant of the fact that (1) there are actually several different languages spoken in Taiwan, and that (2) Mandarin is a relatively recent import to the island. (Can you say Chiang Kai-Shek? *grin*)
Perhaps we could put in something like "Mandarin is the official language of Taiwan, but is not normally referred to as the "Taiwanese language."? I do think linking to Mandarin is relevant to the article. Pgdudda

This page is too much about sociolinguistics and too little on the lower levels of Taiwanese language (phonetics, syntactics, etc.). I put lots of references in, but anyone want to write up? --Kaihsu 15:39 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)

Is this phrase, "Taiwanese (dialect of) Mandarin (Chinese)" referring to the accent of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan? If so, then can it be called a "dialect"? --Jiang 03:08 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

In addition to pronunciation, the vocabulary differ slightly too. Much like British English-North American English differences in my thinking. If it has an article (and it deserves one), it could be Taiwanese Mandarin Chinese. --Menchi 03:25 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The example in the section of "Vocabulary" is not exactly correct. In fact, "chau" in Cantonese is "to run" rather than "to walk".

"most Taiwanese words have cognates in other Chinese dialects. False friends do exist; for example, cháu means "to run" in Taiwanese, rather than the meaning of its cognate zǒu ("to walk") in Mandarin." --RandGen 11:45, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Alternative meanings

They should be split into their own articles per convention. Anyone up to the task of expanding them? --Jiang 01:16, 8 July 2004 (UTC)

the Holo language in taiwan(taiwanese) is strongly influenced by japanese due to Japan's rule for more than half an century. there are many words borrowed from japanese. It is like modern english after norman's rule which is different from old language(I mean the language anglo-saxons brought from Continent). --User:75.32.36.25

Changed first sentence, since the subethnic identity on Taiwan is not mainly language-based (i.e. someone whose parents are Holo is generally considered Holo even they speak Taiwanese badly, and someone whose parents are Hakka are generally considered Hakka even they speak Taiwanese well)... This is different from the situation is say Quebec.

Roadrunner 02:25, 24 August 2004 (UTC)

Suggest adding Sample Audio

The following audio sample used to be at Mandarin (linguistics): || Kin-á-jit || hit-ê || cha-bóu gín-á || lâi || góan || tau || || khòaⁿ || góa. ||rowspan="2" valign="top"|listen Oniows 11:09, 5 June 2005 (UTC)

Hokkien

I clicked a link to Hokkien_(dialect) and came to this page. Shouldn't the Hokkien dialect have its own page instead of redirecting to here? Taiwanese is a specific dialect of Hokkien, but there are others, including the dialects spoken in Xiamen, Singapore, and Penang. I can imagine there are Hokkien speakers in China and Southeast Asia who have never stepped a foot in Taiwan and would dispute their language being called Taiwanese. I propose having Hokkien_(dialect) redirect to Min Nan or be a seperate article instead of redirecting to Taiwanese.--Yuje 15:09, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Should it be pointed to Min or Min Nan? — Instantnood 20:36, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
Shoudl be Min Nan. As far as I know, Hokkien doesn't refer to the Min Bei speakers. --Yuje 04:44, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
I know that.. :-P but the word Hokkien is actually the same word as Fujian.. — Instantnood 07:16, Jun 20, 2005 (UTC)
As a Hokkien speaker myself, I agree with Yuje. Hokkien is just another reference to Min Nan, despite the fact that the word Hokkien itself means Fujian..in Hokkien/Min Nan! I would therefore agree to that change, all the more because Hokkien in Southeast Asia is largely a cultural extension of Fujian, and not Taiwan. Meanwhile, I would also suggest that Min Nan be renamed as Min Nan (linguistics)?--Huaiwei 14:21, 23 June 2005 (UTC)

Taiwanese is actually the term used by Taiwanese to describe their own variant of Minnanhua. Hokkien is a term used by South East Asian Chinese (Singaporean, Malaysian, Indonesian) to describe Minnanhua. It is not used elsewhere. Basically, Taiwanese is so closed to Minnan that I don't think there should be a seperate article for it unless the difference is greater. Then, contributors should add sufficient differences between Taiwanese and Minnan on the mainland. Visik

Removed text

"Taiwanese is also spoken fluently by people who immigrated to Taiwan prior to the mass influx of Kuomingtang after their humiliating defeat to communist China."

Not only is this sentence partially redundant and ungrammatical, it is not necessarily true. The Holos are said to speak the dialect fluently, but the other groups of native Taiwanese, the Hakkas and aboriginals, do not. This makes this sentence essentially pointless. --Jiang 17:26, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I took a stab at adding IPA symbols to the Consonants section, using Summary of pronunciation of Church Romanization according to International Phonetic Alphabet (listed in external links) as a guide. But I could not find the symbol it used for l, and it gave a different place of articulation for j. ian 16:37, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

the Vocabulary of Taiwanese

The article says:

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-bó· (woman, sometimes considered vulgar) vs. lú-jîn (女人, woman, literary); chi-bai (vagina, pussy) vs. im-tō (陰道, vagina).

Are these examples really cognateless? I don't speak Taiwanese so I don't know for sure, but lâng seems to be the 白讀 vernacular reading of 人, bó· seems to be 母 (I don't know what cha might be), and chi-bai has an obvious (and equally offensive) cognate in Mandarin that means the same thing. Is this really a "cognateless/pan-Chinese" divide comparable to the Germanic/Romance divide of English, or is it really an extension of the 白讀/文讀 divide, similar to the Latin/French divide in French vocabulary? -- [[User:Ran|ran (talk)]] 03:01, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)


I know that cha-bó· is not a cognate, but I thought lâng (from 郎) and chi-bai (膣屄) were.

lâng I think is from 儂. ian 21:03, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

This article was featured on the main page. Where can I find the discussion that identify this article as a featured article? Thanks. — Instantnood 20:42, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

There is a link in the section Taiwanese_(linguistics)#Regional_variations that appears as Tainan in the context "In Taiwan, however, the Tâi-lâm (Tainan, southern Taiwan) speech is the variant of prestige". Could someone note whether this link should be disambiguated to Tainan City or Tainan County or to another entity; I would suggest the link be pipe-disambiguated rather than replaced. Thanks. Regards, Courtland 00:58, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Move

And calling "Taiwanese" a language is controversal. Would moving it to Taiwanese Chinese (like all the other Chinese dialects) or Taiwanese dialect (to avoid the word "Chinese") be better? --Jiang 03:08 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Is Holo-oe a language, a dialect, a variant? The opinion differs, but just because in Mandarin, it's called "yu", it doesn't necessarily mean that it's considered so in linguistics, since Hui Chinese is called "yu" in Chinese too, but many don't even see it as a dialect. So translating the name literally isn't a good idea here.
The 1st sentence of the article says it's "variant of Hokkien" [emphasis added]. Hokkien, in term, is a division of the Min Chinese language/dialect. So it's 3 belows below a "language proper" (or at least, the normal definition of a language). Maybe Taiwanese Chinese works (although it looks extremely, extremely confusing like the "TW Chinese people"), but Taiwanese language definitely invites the stares of many, many linguists and amateurs. --Menchi 03:25 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I vote for keeping it Taiwanese language. It's a literal translation of Tai-yu. I don't think most unificationists (of which I happen to be one) object to "Taiwanese language" (although they would perfer to call it Min-nan), but independencist *would* object to calling it Taiwanese Chinese. --Roadrunner

I would prefer the title goes with the most popular English translation of Taiyu. "Taiwanese language" seems a good choice without worrying about political correctness though it may be linguistically incorrect. Anyhow a google search of checking out which translation is the most popular should do the trick. kt2 04:03 12 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Deleted statement that Taiwanese is seen as a Chinese dialect because it is written with Han characters. Japanese and Korean can also be written with Chinese characters but aren't considered Chinese dialects.

Roadrunner

I have done overall minor fixing of grammar and punctuation. I did not rewrite any sentences that would have an effect on the language-vs.-dialect debate, but the article appears neutral to me in its current form, although I am not well versed in all the nuances of the debate. --Sewing 16:24, 18 Oct 2003 (UTC)

"Taiwanese" is the same as the Min-nan (southern Fujian province) dialect. I know this because I speak it. There's no reason why this article should be separated from Min Nan. Taiwanese is a variant of Fujian (Hokkian) language only in the sense that some pronunciation and word usage is different (just like British English and American English). But fundamentally both are the same language and should be under one single title. AquaExecution

Actually, British English and American English have separate entries in Wikipedia. I don't see why Taiwanese and Min nan should be any different. 218.160.32.132 14:46, 28 January 2006 (UTC) 

   Please note that they are under British "English" and American "English". Even
   the proudest Americans call their own language "English" rather than "American". 
   
   Accordingly, it would be more appropriate  and technically correct for this
   article to be under "Taiwanese Minnan".

New Proposal for a new Romanization system called the Goj System.

Note the following Changes from the POJ system. 1) ch ---> z 2) chh ---> x 3) kh ---> k 4) k ---> q 5) t ---> d (this would make it easier to learn English, because most english speakers pronounce t as in toy and d as in dog, but if you pronounce t to sound like a d, you are going to confuse students who are learning English. 6) p ---> v 7) ph ---> p 8) th ---> t

Notice, these changes will make the pronunciation more accurate and more similar to English pronunciation. Also, instead of having to use three letters to represent chh, you only need to use one letter x. Only one consonant is necessary for every sound.

The vowels are as follows:

A (mama) I (see) U (Sue) E (hay) O (row)

The nasal sound would be represented by the letter j, which is shaped like a nose. For example, the word nose would be spelled: pij.

The nasal sounds would be as follows:

aj, ij, --, ej, oj

"clothes" - saj "noodles" - mij "squeeze" - dej "surname Wu" - goj

Note, there is no nasal sound for uj. Therefore the uj would be used to denote the sound (uh), such as the word 'no' -- buj or the word to 'learn' -- uj.

The nasal sound can also be combined with other vowels. For example, the word "to wear" would be spelled 'xiejn', which is quite easy to type and to learn. "Please sit down" would be written 'xiaj ze" instead of 'chhiaN che'. Note that the similarity of ch with chh makes it difficult to quickly read the words, where as the difference between x and z is stark and easy to recognize immediately without the brain having to take a moment to figure out how to pronounce 'chh' or how to pronounce 'ch'. Also note that you only needed to use 6 letters instead of 9 letters to express the same phrase, making it much easier to write Taiwanese.

For some northern accents that believe there is a nasal u, it is actually a nasal i, with a u ending. For example, in the South, the pronunciation for sheep is ioj, but in the north, people say iju - a nasal i plus a u at the end.

The advantage of using the j to denote the nasal sound is that it is very visible and easily recognizable and can be typed easily whereas using a N or an elevated n makes it difficult to type.

In summary, the new system would allow Taiwanese to be pronounced more accurately. Tâi-oân-oē would thus be written as Dâi-uân-uē, pronouncing the d like 'dog' in english rather than the t as in 'table'. Also, note that the correct pronunciation of the word "Taiwanese" requires the pronunciation of the verb u more clearly rather than the verb o, which should be pronounced more like "zero" or "row" rather than "you".

Vanguard321 05:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Interpretation of short tone ending with h

A possible explanation for the sandhi exceptions for tones 4-h and 8-h: they are actually not seen as short tones. If tone 4-h is spoken as tone 3, this is consistent with its sandhi tone 2. I have heard many people say tone 8-h as tone 2. (However the sandhi for 8-h is tone 3.) I would like to point out that even without sandhi, the short tone 4-h appears to have merged with long tone 3. Oniows 20:32, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Creation of Amoy (linguistics) page

I have created the Amoy (linguistics) page because I think we need a page that focuses specifically on the language/dialect common to Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Taiwan (where it is known as Taiwanese), and Southeast Asia (where it is known as Hokkien). I intend to put the essentials about the language/dialect on that page. Min Nan is not the appropriate page to talk about those things specifically, because Min Nan actually represents a family of languages/dialects which are not mutually intelligible. For example, Teochew is only 50.4% mutually intelligible with Amoy, despite the fact that they are both in the Min Nan family.[1] The Taiwanese (linguistics) page should stay, but be more narrowly focused on the aspects specific to Amoy as it is used in Taiwan. I think the Taiwanese (linguistics) article should not include the basic information about the language (which will be in the Amoy article instead), but should do more to flesh out at least these two areas:

  1. how Taiwanese accents compare to the Quanzhou, Xiamen and Zhangzhou accents. In other words, a description of the geographic distribution of accents. Taipei tends to follow Quanzhou and Xiamen accents, while Tainan usually follows Zhangzhou accents. But there are some exceptions to this, and these should be highlighted in the article.
  2. vocabulary differences, which should include information about: Taiwan word usage (ex. Taiwan uses tiān-náu vs. kè-sǹg-ki for computer), Japanese loanwords (ex. hú-ló-keng bathroom, from furo)

In other words, I think the Penang Hokkien article is a good model for the Taiwanese (linguistics) page. Hopefully, these modifications will be to everyone's liking. I will be slowly working on adding information over time, but am hopeful that other fluent speakers will help out. -- A-cai 07:25, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Note that this article achieved featured status around the same time when the article on Penang Hokkien was created. In fact, the latter was based on this article. Feel free to add new, verified information, but please do not radically reorganize or delete things from this featured article before extensive discussion. – Kaihsu 14:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, I don't want to step on anyone's toes. Basically, I would like to consolidate information and make sure that it is located in the best place. I agree that there should be an extensive discussion about what to keep and what to delete or move. Unfortunately, there has not been a great deal of interest so far. That being the case, rather than slash and burn the Taiwanese article, I've instead mainly focused on the creation of the Amoy (linguistics) article. I also would eventually like to create separate articles for Quanzhou (linguistics) and Zhangzhou (linguistics). I welcome any help or suggestions, but am not holding my breath, or I would have passed out by now :-) -- A-cai 22:47, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

IPA for vowels and hanging references

We need IPA annotations for the vowels; also, the references for PSDB and Pumindian are hanging. – Kaihsu 10:55, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Now there is some IPA marking around. I wonder if they are accurate. I will try to check later. – Kaihsu 10:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
In Template:POJtable, I relied primarily on three books for IPA:
  • 閩南語辭典 (Dictionary of Min Nan) ISBN 9578447523
  • 國臺對照活用辭典 (Mandarin Taiwanese Comparative Dictionary of living usage) ISBN 9573240882
  • 台語發音拼音基礎 (Primer of Taiwanese Pronunciation and Spelling) ISBN 9578447493
However, these three books make use of some symbols that are not included in standard IPA, or are outdated. In those cases, I have opted for the standard version. I believe that, on the whole (barring typos), the IPA is accurate. The zhuyin is also based on 國臺對照活用辭典 ISBN 9573240882.
Here's some information on Pumindian. Hopefully someone will put it in the appropriate location. 普闽典 is short for 普通话闽南方言词典 (Dictionary of Mandarin and the Min Nan Dialect), originally published by Xiamen University in 1982. As far as I know, it is based on Hanyu Pinyin, and is not generally used any where else.
The Mandarin article about PSDB (普實台文) seems pretty detailed. Maybe some of it could be used as a basis for an English article, but I'm not sure how many people would be interested in such an article. -- A-cai 15:15, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Update on Pumindian

I recently found out that 普通话闽南方言词典 (Dictionary of Mandarin and the Min Nan Dialect) was reprinted in Taiwan by Taili Publishers (台笠) in 1993 (they received permission from Fujian People's Publisher). It is currently available for purchase on-line at this web-site. I now own a copy, and would say that it is an excellent addition to the library of anyone seriously interested in Taiwanese. However, be warned that it is in Simplified Chinese script (traditional version of each new entry is given in parens) and goes by Hanyu Pinyin sort order. The back of the dictionary has an index according to Pumindian order (similar finals are grouped together). -- A-cai 14:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Primary spoken language of 70% of people in Taiwan?

I find this statistic very hard to believe, where is this number from? The closes I can find is an article that suggests 70% or more of people in Taiwan can speak Taiwanese [2], but nothing to substantiate the claim that it is the primary spoken language of those people. --BenjaminTsai Talk 00:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

i think 70% or more can speak minnanyu, but officially they use chinese, reduces the chance of talking to someone who doesn't know minnanyu by accident. in asean, we speak dialect only after we recognising the other person know the dialect, i feel more closer/friendlier to speak in dialect. Akinkhoo 05:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
From my experience it seems to vary depending on which part of the country you are in. In Taipei, Mandarin is generally used in public for dealing with short conversations with store clerks, waiters, waitresses, information booths, etc.. In a longer situation, like a cab ride, it is not unusual to switch to Taiwanese. Age seems to play a role as well, with conversations with older people being more likely to change to Taiwanese. And amoung family and friends people often use Taiwanese. Moving south, I hear more Taiwanese spoken in situations where Mandarin would be used in Taipei.Readin 13:14, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Tones

There are discrepancies in the tones, esp. #3. Perhaps this is dialectal? But compare the red-line schematic I found here with the blue-line schematic I found on German wikipedia which matches the verbal description better. However, the 3rd of the large tables below is closer to the red-line schematic (except for tone 6, which has to be wrong). kwami (talk) 08:07, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Need Taiwanese assistance

Need Hokkien/Taiwanese name for pork ball (and gongwan tang, or pork ball soup). Please add to the Pork ball article, thank you. Badagnani (talk) 01:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

done. A-cai (talk) 00:08, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Sinitic Languages

Isn't the term "Sinitic Languages" the more accurate term rather than "Chinese Languages? 218.170.105.207 (talk) 13:24, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree. – Kaihsu (talk) 18:02, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Literary Taiwanese

This information was recently removed. Was it inaccurate? If accurate it certainly belongs in the article. It wasn't sourced, but neither is any of the text around it.

The literary version, which was originally developed in the 10th century in Fujian and based on Middle Chinese, was brought to Taiwan by the immigrants. Literary Taiwanese was used at one time for formal writing, but is now largely extinct.

Readin (talk) 15:08, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't think there is (and have never heard of) such a thing as literary Taiwanese. I am a native speaker of both Taiwanese and Mandarin, and am reasonably literate in classical Chinese. The so-called literary Taiwanese might be classical Chinese read as Han characters in Taiwanese, similar to kanbun in Japan. It is not a language in its own right, because as such it is identical to classical Chinese. – Kaihsu (talk) 21:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Kaihsu, I agree that the sentence perhaps exagerates the facts a bit. However, Literary Taiwanese did exist. Please take a look at 台語文 on Mandarin Wikipedia. It refers to 荔鏡記 (written in 1566, during the Ming Dynasty) as having been the earliest known work to have been written in vernacular Min Nan. -- A-cai (talk) 13:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

In that case, can we reformulate the statement so it becomes more accurate? Cheers. – Kaihsu (talk) 15:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I have made an attempt at such. – Kaihsu (talk) 18:03, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Kaihsu, a valiant first attempt! I think you have captured the essential facts. Some of the grammar is a little awkward, but we can work out those kinks over time. My one substantive comment would be the part about Middle Chinese:
A literary form of Min Nan once flourished in Fujian and based on Middle Chinese, and was brought to Taiwan by early emigrants. A major work therein is the scripts for a series of plays, Nāi-kèng-kì, published during the Ming Dynasty in 1566. This form of language was used at one time for writing, but is now largely extinct.
I'm not sure this part is necessary, since all modern forms of spoken and written Chinese are essentially descendants of Middle Chinese (if I'm not mistaken). Here is a proposed modification to your original:
A literary form of Min Nan once flourished in Fujian and based on Middle Chinese, and was later brought to Taiwan by early emigrants. A major work therein is the scripts for a series of plays, Nāi-kèng-kì, 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 was used at one time for writing, but is now largely extinct.
My version is only a suggestion. Thoughts? -- A-cai (talk) 21:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Revised as suggested. – Kaihsu (talk) 10:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

chinese characters for non-charactered words

First, in certain contexts, 走 can mean to go quickly in standard Mandarin, and in other Chinese languages. Descriptively, though, only 跑 means to run. Is 走 the descriptive version of run in minnan?

lâng (person, concrete) is 人. cha-bó͘ (woman) is 家婆家妹 ka, Japanese loanword, is 嘅, or 個, isn't it? A question word in Japanese, a standard possessive in several Souther Chinese languages used exactly like 的 in standard Mandarin, it topicalizes its complement for either questions or assertions. Goá phō lí is 我抱你, "i hold you" Goá kā lí phō is (是)我個抱你 "it's me holding you" Lí hō͘ goá phō is 你好過抱, "you're held", "don't worry, I've got you" Goá kā chúi hō͘ lí lim, "I've got water for you to drink", is (是)我個,水好你飲 Kin-á-jit hit-ê cha-bó͘ gín-á lâi góan tau khòaⁿ góa, "Today that girl came to my house to see me", is 今日依(nonstandard, maybe 而)???家婆見來觀到看過...or maybe 今呀日, 依???(whatever that is)家婆見呀, 來觀到看過. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.120.85.210 (talk) 20:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

In answer to your first question, 走 (cháu) means to run in Min Nan. The Mandarin equivalent would be 跑.
As for the other questions, I will attempt to give some sort of answer. The kā in the sentence "Goá kā lí phō" is a function word that most closely resembles the 把 (bǎ) pattern in Mandarin. There is no direct English equivlant to the bǎ pattern. Roughly, it identifies the object of a sentence. The Min Nan pattern is similar (subject + kā + object + verb). So in the sentence, Goá kā chúi hō͘ lí lim, Goá (subject: I) + kā + chúi (object: water) + hō͘ (verb: give) + lí (modifier: you) + lim (modifier: to drink). The Mandarin equivalent would be 我把水(交)给你喝.
cha-bó͘ is usually rendered as 查某.
Finally, the last sentence, Kin-á-jit hit-ê cha-bó͘ gín-á lâi góan tau khòaⁿ góa, should be 今仔日彼個查某囝仔來阮兜看我.
I have no idea whether the above answers your question, but hopefully it helps. -- A-cai (talk) 04:13, 11 May 2008 (UTC)


It absolutely does, and thanks lots. In fact, it's exactly what I think is missing from the article--a native's writing in Chinese (I am assuming you're native), which I think has loads of encyclopedic value.
I know the kā pattern looks like the 把 pattern, but phonologically it's really different. So I don't think it's the same word. I'm not a native speaker, so my thoughts may be very unintuitive and wrong, but maybe 將? Either way, it's academic. Oh, and lim sui is definitely phonologically 飲, which simply means 喝 the same way 講 simply means 說.
Adding a Taiwanese's self-generated Chinese character translations for some basic words and as gloss for some example sentences would definitely help someone like me, who knows a bit of Chinese and wants to understand Chinese languages as they interact with, borrow, and grow from one another. <original poster>208.120.85.210 (talk) 05:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Have you taken a look at the Amoy (linguistics) article? I've put a lot of the grammar comparison stuff in there instead of here, for reasons that I explained in an earlier post (ref: a few posts back). Briefly, words in Min Nan are hard to pinpoint in terms of the original Chinese character. Most Chinese dialects are not standardized to the degree that Mandarin is standardized in terms of writing (even Mandarin writing wasn't standardized until Modern times). However, 台灣話大詞典 (ISBN 9573240785) lists 共 for kā. Also, you're correct that kā does have some subtle differences with 把. But conceptually, they are very similar. Unfortunately, there has not been a lot of in depth studies written in English with respect to Min Nan syntax. If you can speak Mandarin, and really want to go off the deep end, I recommend Papers on Southern Min Syntax (ISBN 9571509485). It is the most comprehensive work on the subject of Min Nan syntax that I have found. Good luck finding it :) -- A-cai (talk) 06:22, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
I also speak some Cantonese, understand a bit of Hakka and a touch of Teochew, and can read written Cantonese. I remember reading somewhere that the linguistic origins of Taiwanese are tough to trace, but there's a lot of evidence here and it's just a shame there's no good framework for expounding it. I'll read through Amoy, and start some research with "Papers". Thanks for your help and attention! <original poster>208.120.85.210 (talk) 15:20, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Written Taiwanese

Many Informations about this Subject and Taiwanese in general you find in the PHD Thesis (Leiden University) of a friend of mine: Henning Klöter. Written Taiwanese. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005. ISBN 3-447-05093-4 78,00 € [D] At the moment he's teaching at Shida in Taipei in the Guoji Hanxue Yanjiusuo. - (Heinz Lohmann 27. Juli 2008 08:35:51 CST) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.112.6.210 (talk) 00:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. For those who are not familiar with Taiwan, The English name for Shida is National Taiwan Normal University. -- A-cai (talk) 00:47, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Unclear passage

The current version of the article states the following:

Min is the only branch of Chinese that cannot be directly derived from Middle Chinese.[1]

  1. ^ 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

I found this statement to be suspect, because the majority of Taiwanese words can easily be traced to Middle Chinese. In particular, most Taiwanese compound words derive directly from Middle Chinese, both lexically and phonetically. That is why I placed a {{fact}} tag after the statement. Kaihsu was gracious enough to find a citation, but the citation does not appear to shed any light on the issue.

I think I understand what the author of the statement was attempting to say. According to zh:闽南语#歷史, the origins of the Min dialect can be traced to end of the Three Kingdoms period, when a large number of refugees flooded into what is now Fujian Province. In Amoy (linguistics)#Literary versus vernacular readings, I had begun to explain that words from this period most likely form the basis of what we now think of as Min Nan vernacular readings (pe̍h-ōe-im). Later on, during the 7th and 10th centuries, there was another significant migration of people from the Central Plain into the Fujian area (see: Chen Yuanguang). The Middle Chinese that these people brought with them has probably formed the basis for what we now think of as Min Nan literary readings (bûn-im). If the author of the statement had intended to say that Min is the only branch of Chinese that preserves phonetic elements which predate Middle Chinese, I might tend to concede the point. However, I would still want a more relevant citation than the one provided. -- A-cai (talk) 06:40, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I added the citation in some haste. Please do feel free to elaborate in the article if you could do so, or add more appropriate citations. – Kaihsu (talk) 22:45, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for new Hanji-based Taiwanese Wikipedia

Please leave comments at [3].

122.109.171.138 (talk) 04:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

title

As part of a move to get rid of the ridiculous "(linguistics)" tags in the Chinese language articles, I moved "Taiwanese (linguistics)" back to "Taiwanese dialect". However, in this case I have reservations because, although linguistically Taiwanese is simply a dialect of Hokkien, it has official support that few other Chinese dialects have. There's also the potential confusion with Taiwanese Mandarin. We might want a title to reflect the status of Taiwanese as being more important politically than other Hokkien dialects. Any suggestions? kwami (talk) 23:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Why do you call the "linguistics" tags "ridiculous"? To me they seem like a good NPOV compromise between those who consider the variations "dialects" (for political and written language reasons) and those who consider the variations "languages" (as so many are mutually unintelligible). How many pages did you change without discussing first? Readin (talk) 03:02, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

– Kaihsu (talk) 21:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Although there was a broad consensus to get rid of the '(linguistics)' tag at the above discussion, there was some disagreement as to what should replace it in this case. There are several possibilities besides "Taiwanese" which fit the naming conventions equally well, such as "Taiwan(ese) Hokkien/Hoklo". If people feel strongly about this, I think it's a debate for this page, since it wouldn't affect the overall organization of the Chinese language articles. kwami (talk) 00:31, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

title of the article

The language is known commonly in Taiwan as "Taiwanese Min Nan", not "Taiwanese Hokkien". "Taiwanese Min Nan" is also the official name of the language. The then DPP government named it that way and the current KMT government hasn't changed it. I propose that we rename to article to "Taiwanese Min Nan" to better reflect its actual name.--pyl (talk) 05:09, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Two words or three? kwami (talk) 06:44, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

"Taiwanese Min Nan" (台灣閩南語)--pyl (talk) 10:00, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Unless there is some reliable source to say that "Taiwanese" by itself is controversial, we should use the common name, which is simply "Taiwanese". Readin (talk) 13:42, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
The article "Taiwanese" which was about the language got changed into a disambiguation page, while the language was moved to "Taiwanese Hokkien".
"Taiwanese Hokkien" is not what the language is called in Taiwan and I have no idea who made up that name. As I said, the language is commonly and officially known as "Taiwanese Min Nan". That's the name by which textbooks call it, as the name is approved by the Department of Education. "Taiwanese" is acceptable in day to day use and there is no controversial surrounding this name.
I don't mind either "Taiwanese" or "Taiwanese Min Nan", but "Taiwanese Hokkien" is incorrect.--pyl (talk) 14:05, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
[4] is a document from the Department of Education. You will note that when it says "Taiwanese Min Nan" (台灣閩南語) in Chinese, the English translation is "Minnan language" or "Minnan dialect". It shows that Hokkien is not a term that the people in Taiwan use to refer to the language.--pyl (talk) 14:51, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Since 台灣 is being treated as a single word, I suggest we treat 閩南 that way too, and parse this as "Taiwanese Minnan", reflecting the govt English translation "Minnan". If "Min Nan" is a kind of Min, then "Taiwanese Minnan" is a kind of Minnan. Otherwise we have a phrase with the head in the middle, which could be confusing.
Yes, the language is called "Taiwanese" in English, but then so are the people, and I have no objection to moving the article to a phrase that disambiguates it. That's also useful in informing readers off the bat that we are dealing with a form of a mainland language, rather than something unique to Taiwan. On the other hand, I don't object to leaving it at "Taiwanese" and using a redirect. kwami (talk) 17:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I just moved this talk page to 'Taiwanese Hokkien'. This is not to favor any particular title, but merely to keep it with its article. They should have been moved together to begin with. kwami (talk) 18:14, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I know Google doesn't count for much, but I'm getting 112k hits for "臺灣福建" and 114k hits for "台灣福建", as opposed to 56k hits for "臺灣閩南" and 59k hits for "台灣閩南"—a 2:1 ratio. I think we can conclude that 臺灣福建 is a term that Taiwanese use to refer to their language, but of course we should also take into consideration government nomenclature. kwami (talk) 18:30, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
How many hits do you get for "Taiwan hwa" and "Tai oo" (in character form of course)? Readin (talk) 18:46, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I ran "台語" through google and got 8.1 million hits, which swamps 臺灣福建,台灣福建, 臺灣閩南 and 台灣閩南 combined. "臺語" got 4 million hits. Readin (talk) 18:50, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
So we should call it "Tai language"! (Just kidding)
64k "臺灣話", 165k "台灣話", 51k "臺灣語", 70k "台灣語", 4.1M "臺語", 8.0M "台語".
The question is whether Taiwanese Hokkien or Taiwanese Minnan is more appropriate. I think everyone would agree "Taiwanese" is by far the most common term, and as I've said, I don't oppose that. But then, this is an encyclopedia, where precision is valued. Nearly everyone calls the language we're using now "English", yet the wiki article is not English (which is a redirect page), but "English language", which is much more uncommon in normal discourse. kwami (talk) 18:59, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Precision is valued in explanations. However in naming conventions, the convention is to use the common name. Thus the article on Virginia is not titled "Commonwealth of Virginia" and the article on Babe Ruth is not called "George Herman Ruth, Jr."
However I think this article was named "Taiwanese Minnan" as a disambiguation for the other uses of the term "Taiwanese". The section above this has a reference that should be looked at before renaming the article. If I remember correctly the arguments for using "Minnan" were pretty convincing.Readin (talk) 19:30, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Since this is more a matter of opinion that of fact, shall we just run a poll? I abstain, as it doesn't matter much to me which we use, though I really dislike the spelling "Taiwanese Min Nan" and would prefer "Taiwanese Minnan" if that's the name we decide to go with. kwami (talk) 20:02, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Transhumanist, who originally requested that the article be moved to Taiwanese Hokkien, just wrote me on my talk page to say he doesn't care which is used. Since no-one is sticking up for the current title, I'll go ahead and move us to "Taiwanese Minnan". kwami (talk) 20:39, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I just got a chance to read the discussion again. Just to clarify, "臺灣福建" is incorrect in Chinese. The results you received are likely to be about the provinces of Taiwan and Fujian. The correct terminology in Chinese is "臺灣福建話". I typed "臺灣福建話"(with quotes) into Google and I got 575 results, but only a couple are real results. They are titles of books which were published in 1959, 1977 and 1992, well before "Taiwanese Minnan" was used by the then DPP government to unify the name. I don't think based on the google results that we find, it is sufficient to say "Taiwanese Ninnan or Taiwanese Hokkien" in the first paragraph of the article, as people who hold the POV for Taiwanese Hokkien are extremely small.
I also fixed the Chinese in the first paragrah. In English you can just call the language "Taiwanese Minnan", but in Chinese you must call it "Taiwanese Minnan language", otherwise it wouldn't make sense. Hope that helps.--pyl (talk) 02:29, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Just thought this is related, I typed "臺灣閩南語" (with quotes) in Google and I got 48,600 results. And most of the results are from official, reputable websites, such as the Department of Education, dictionaries, language teaching materials. Similarly, "臺灣閩南語" is correct Chinese "臺灣閩南" is incorrect. You must call the language in Chinese "Taiwanese Minnan language", not just "Taiwanese Minnan" in order to make sense. So in google, it is actually 575 for "Taiwanese Hokkien" vs 48,600 for "Taiwanese Minnan".--pyl (talk) 03:12, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes it does. There are a few cases of of it in English, however, as here.[5] Not much, but since that is an accurate descriptive term, do you mind keeping "Taiwanese Hokkien" in English? kwami (talk) 03:19, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
The source cited is the name of a subject in a discussion forum. And the author is from South East Asia where the term "Hokkien" is primarily used. He also said "Hokkien (Minnan)", which suggests to me that this author is aware of the fact that "Hokkien" isn't a used term in Taiwan. Also, he was saying "Taiwanese Hokkien TV Programmes" which, I suspect, was about "Taiwanese TV Programmes in Hokkien".
If you think it is proper to use "Taiwanese Hokkien". I don't mind if you want to mention it somewhere in the article, but I think it can be misleading to mention it as "Taiwanese Ninnan or Taiwanese Hokkien" in the first paragraph.--pyl (talk) 03:31, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. We make it clear enough that it's Hokkien. kwami (talk) 03:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

"We inclusive" vs. "We exclusive" distinction common among Sino-Tibetan languages?

I disagree with the statement that "we inclusive" and "we exclusive" is a commonly made distintion in Sino-Tibetan languages. It is a distinction not made in many Sinitic dialects/languages of southern China and also not made in the language of the classical period ("Old Chinese"). Mandarin and Minnan are more exceptions than the rule. Ymwang42 (talk) 19:39, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Title and Content

Is this article "really" about Taiyu? It includes much, much more, including culture and language use in Taiwan--perhaps it should be split into another article called Language in Taiwan as well as Taiwan(ese) culture. Plus, it needs some copyediting Dpr 09:44, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think most of the content is relevant. For example, the politics section is about the role of Taiwanese, specifically, and not languages in general. The "art forms" section can go though, since it was just added as an excuse to have the article featured on the main page. Culture of Taiwan could use some expanding. --Jiang 09:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The image of the puppets was an excuse to get on the front page, but not the cultural section itself. The section itself actually describe cultural activities that are unique to and dependent on the tongue. – Kaihsu 15:03, July 27, 2005 (UTC)


it is wrong to politicized a language which is not only spoken by those in taiwan. it is as stupid as turning american-english into "americanish", I have issues with the redirection and the language being marked as 'Taiwanese' without Hokkien or Minnanyu marked to them in certain articles, there should be an explanation here that the language is not a language from Taiwan but a language used in Taiwan. Akinkhoo (talk) 22:39, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Dialect issue...(I know, sigh)

In the very first sentence, Taiwanese is labeled as "a dialect of Min Nan Chinese". Nothing wrong with that statement, except the page itself later on proves that the statement contains POV. In the second paragraph, the page states: "As with most "language or dialect?" distinctions, how one describes Taiwanese depends largely on one's political views".
The statement about the political sensitivity of categorizing Taiwanese as a dialect or language is certainly true...so that means Wikipedia is taking a political standpoint by stating that Taiwanese "is a dialect". I propose that dialect be replaced with "dialect/language", but that sounds awkward. Any better suggestions? =) Jumping cheese Cont@ct 05:20, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

even if it is a language, it is the entire Min Nan that is a language, so it still wouldn't be "Taiwanese". as not only Taiwan people speak this dialect/language, doing so would simply be cultural hijacking! calling it "taiwanese language" is simply flaw, if it is a language if should be called Hokkienese. like Cantonese, you don't call it hongkongese do you? it should be named after the place of orginate. Akinkhoo (talk) 22:48, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

How many people speak Taiwanese?

"Taiwanese (pe̍h-oē-jī: Tâi-oân-oē or Tâi-gí; Traditional Chinese: 台語, 台灣話; pinyin: Táiyǔ, Táiwānhuà) is a dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken by about 70% of Taiwan's population"


I'm not sure how correct this is, but, from my understanding and from what my Taiwanese friends and family tell me, the new generation (teens to mid twenties, I believe?) typically don't speak Taiwanese anymore. It's come down to the point that most of the kids these days only understand it, but can't speak it. Or people who can speak fluently only speak it to older people who speak Taiwanese. So. I'm not sure about that statistic about 70% of the Taiwanese population speak Taiwanese is correct. Or rather. I guess it's close enough to correct, but . . . perhaps some mention that culture-wise, Taiwanese, as a language, isn't as pertinent to the new generation as it is towards the older generation would be appreciated.

Or. Perhaps this is more opinion than actual fact. But that's why it's posted on the discussion page. :D
(Deadcandy 08:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC))

All my cousins in Taiwan knows Taiwanese...but that's only my cousins. I'm not sure about the general public though. Interesting point you bring up. Jumping cheese Cont@ct 09:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
It varies regionally, doesn't it? I'm in Taizhong right now, and though I haven't really talked to any younger teens, the older ones seem to use Taiwanese pretty often...

There are a variety of factors involved. I know a lot teens and college students who speak Taiwanese fluently. However, they prefer to speak in Mandarin most of the time. Many of my cousins still speak in Taiwanese as well (and they're in their twenties). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Katraan (talk • contribs) 00:15, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Written Taiwanese, and issues surrounding standardisation

This may be of interest to a few of you. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Taiwanese Minnan

Taiwanese Minnan is not a language native to Taiwan, therefore it should not be called Taiwanese to distinguish it from the native Taiwanese spoke by the aboriginal Taiwanese people.99.244.189.150 (talk) 03:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
The latter is referred to as Formosan, not Taiwanese. See Formosan languages. There are slight variations between each regional variant of Hokkien, and Taiwanese Hokkien is one of them. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
This article should be moved to Taiwanese Minnan or Taiwanese has this is the majority local language used in Taiwan. The term "Hokkien" is used by Singaporeans and Malaysians to denote people who spoke the various Minnan. Can someone please correct this.Visik (talk) 02:45, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
I haven't been back as there wasn't much of a vote. From what I see glancing over it now, there was 3 for Hokkien (2 if you exclude me), 1 for Minnan, and a couple for 'language'. Again, it doesn't make much of a difference, just not enough input to be significant. kwami (talk) 03:06, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Tone sandhi??

It makes no sense to call this sandhi. Sandhi means changes that happen depending on the surrounding sounds. According to the description in the article, all syllables are affected regardless of their surroundings. That is not sandhi. It would be much easier to describe it as no sandhi, with a tone change on the last syllable.--90.179.235.249 (talk) 00:36, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of POJ "L" and POJ "J"

I used to listen to some Taiwanese songs, and I've caught the pronunciation of words that are supposedly pronounced with the POJ "J" initial to be pronounced as "l". (The initial from 日, pronounced as "r" in Mandarin, is usually expected to become the "j" initial in Hokkien.) This phenomenon was then confirmed through the audio files on Iun Un-gian's site. Furthermore, I've heard the "l" initial pronounced as a "d" sound, as in a voiced alveolar plosive. I understand that this was the actual older pronunciation of some words that begin with l. (Note that Archaic/Middle Chinese nasal initials turned to stops for the most part: m -> b, n -> d, ng -> g; with the d becoming l later on. This is noted in the Philippine Hokkien pronunciation of you "li" as "di", compare Mandarin "ni".) However, words such as 羅, in the audio file, had a distinctive plosive quality to it, which was unusual since it has a MC initial of l (來母). Is this some allophony, or is this some vernacular? I see the table of IPA has a "d" for the initial l in the consonants section of the POJ page, but this is not reflected in the phonology section here. Hmanck (talk) 15:32, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

coda stops

If final glottal stop is not a conflation of -p/-t/-k, and not entering 'tone', where does it come from historically? — kwami (talk) 02:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Surely it comes from the former, i.e. -p, -t, -k changing into -h, with later re-borrowing (hence the whole Early Middle Chinese vs Late Middle Chinese 'rift' amongst the literary pronunciations). Or perhaps weakening of some of the common, colloquial historical entering tone lexemes to -h, but not some of the more literary ones. Those are the two main hypotheses. Surprisingly, I've yet to find a source for them though! I dare say it is one of those phonological features which is still (as yet) unpredictable from Middle Chinese rime tables e.g. 切韻. Michael Ly (talk) 23:51, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

Michael is right, the final glottal stop, for the most part, descends from -p, -t and -k. According to sources, Min Chinese was the first variety to break off from "mainstream Chinese." Sure, other areas had dialects then, but geographical isolation did not allow continuous migration waves from Zhongyuan, such that it would continuously bring the "mainstream Chinese" into the area. The earliest stratum of Chinese in Min and therefore, Hokkien, would come from the Three Kingdoms Period. Instability as a result from the frequent warfare after the collapse of the Han brought many people southwards to areas such as Guangdong and Fujian Provinces. As such, I expect this early stratum to be a later stage of Eastern Han Chinese, as opposed to Early Middle Chinese (Sui Dynasty). This would evolve to be the Quanzhou Hokkien. The next stratum would certainly be of the Middle Chinese variety, and would be the Zhangzhou Hokkien. Amoy and Taiwanese Hokkien would arise as a combination of the two, which may perhaps yield a discrepancy between the vernacular and the literary readings. Further contact with the "mainstream Chinese language" would bring in new readings, especially with the reading of some "p" words as "h" words (labiodentalisation of the labial series in LMC).

My theory of the weakening of coda consonants to glottal stops and nasalized consonants, a feature that is exhibited in Wu and Xiang, may be attributed to the pronunciation of Chinese words by pre-Sinitic populations such as the Baiyue, possibly the Chu and the Miao-yao groups. In other words, the Chinese language could have initially served as a superstratum in these areas. These groups may not have been able to pronounce the coda consonants of Eastern Han Chinese correctly, and therefore had led to the pronunciation of plosive codas as a glottal stop, or nasal codas as nasalized or elongated vowels. If you look at the phonology of modern-day Hmong, you can see there are very weak to non-existent codas (a weak glottal stop, which may be the vestigial feature of plosive codas). 年 and 千, are pronounced, in my knowledge, as open syllables in Hokkien and Shanghainese (Wu). They are pronounced as "nin" and "cheen" in Cantonese, nian (nien) and qian (ch'ien) in Mandarin. It could have been that the nasal component of this group might have weakened to nasalization in the early development of these languages/varieties. Then, there was compensatory lengthening of the vowel nucleus, producing /ni:/ and /chi:/. A parallel development could be seen in the kan'on and go'on readings of Japanese, where words that typically end in "ng" in Modern Mandarin and Cantonese, are pronounced with elongated vowels. (Tokyo compared to Tung-king, or Dongjing). Nasal codas, when not deleted, are nasalized for many words (also noted in Xiang - the name "Xiang" is siɔ̃ or /ɕiæ̃, both which feature nasalised vowels). And some other words with nasal codas would be "confused" with other groups - for example, the "in" and "ing" mergers are common in Min. Rhymes from the Chu language have been partially recovered can be found here: http://www.umass.edu/wsp/results/languages/chu/rhymes.html, here, series that would be pronounced as "in" or "ing" rhymed. It seems to support the theory that a Chu substratum may be present in these languages, which may have triggered the alterations of the pronunciations of nasal (and possibly plosive) codas.

And while some Tibeto-Burmese languages (which apparently are a sub-group of the wider Sino-Tibetan, also the ancestral group of Min, Wu and Xiang) have similar developments (Burmese) and one may say that the reduction and gradual loss of coda consonants is expected of Sino-Tibetan languages, one would have to ask, why did Min, Wu and Xiang undergo this transition, while other Southern Chinese languages (Cantonese Yue, Gan and Hakka) retained (for the most part) their coda consonants?

But it is not to say that Hokkien does not have full coda consonants, as it does. Much of the former applies to its early stratum where we see developments such as (chiah) and (khoaN), eat and see. The second stratum, or the Zhangzhou variety, provided the Middle Chinese (Qieyun) pronunciation, which reintroduced coda consonants such as -p, -t and -k, -m, -n and -ng, where they had remained since, for the most part. I believe that a non-Chinese substratum (Baiyue, Chu or Hmong) could explain the discrepancy as to why words in vernacular Hokkien are pronounced with these weakened codas, and why the next Chinese stratum was pronounced with full codas. How could both strata co-exist to this day with these varying pronunciations? Hmanck (talk) 16:20, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Ongoing Discussion about article name

Please refer to Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Chinese)#Taiwanese_.282.29 for current discussion on this issue. Colipon+(T) 22:58, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I think we arrived at a consensus on "Taiwanese (Minnan)" or "Taiwanese (Min Nan)" at the end of that discusssion. Kwami, do you want to execute this or should I try it? --JWB (talk) 16:05, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I know my comment probably came too late, but since Taiwanese is actually a subset of Min Nan, Min Nan (Taiwanese) makes more sense as far as punctuation rules are concerned. ;) Anyhow, Min Nan is still miles better than "Hokkien", which is actually "Fujian", so Taiwanese Hokkien is "Taiwanese Fujian"!--218.186.9.243 (talk) 21:15, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Here, Hokkien refers to the language, not the province. In this case, a synonym would be Fujianese, not Fujian. Taiwanese is a subset of Hokkien, which is a subset of Minnan, which is then a subset of Min. Min is then a part of the Sinitic languages. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 09:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
I can understand why Hokkien is used. But its a regional term which is used in Malaysia and Singapore. Other places like Taiwan uses Taiwanese or Taiwanese Minnan. This would give Taiwanese more distinct identity than Hokkien as it means Fujian and commonly used in South East Asia. Visik (talk) 02:50, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Over at Wikivoyage, we have a Minnan phrasebook and used to have a Taiwanese phrasebook, but someone moved it to Taiwanese Hokkien phrasebook. There is discussion of whether the two should be merged, mainly on the talk page for the latter.
Would anyone here, especially Minnan/Hokkien/Taiwanese speakers, care to comment or otherwise contribute there? 99.224.165.88 (talk) 01:19, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

台灣福建話

Although Hokkien is commonly known as 福建話 in South East Asia, Taiwanese do not call their Minnan dialect 福建話, but instead call it 台灣話， 台語 or 台灣閩南語. Therefore, I've deleted 台灣福建話 . As Fujian province is separate from Taiwan province, the dialect, though originated from Southern Fujian province, has somewhat localized and developed in Taiwan to become a major branch of Hokkien dialects, known collectively as Taiwanese.

(Yhjow (talk) 07:47, 13 August 2013 (UTC))

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I have just modified 6 external links on Taiwanese Hokkien. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

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"l" sound?

Shouldn't Taiwanese Hokkien "l" more like Dental and alveolar flaps (like Japanese r sound) than Dental, alveolar and postalveolar lateral approximants (like English l sound)? Caferatte89 (talk) 12:25, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 20:22, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 18 November 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus. (non-admin closure) Cwmhiraeth (talk) 13:37, 26 November 2019 (UTC)


Taiwanese Hokkien → Taiwan Minnan – Official term. Ythlev (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

  • The usual English-language term for this language is "Taiwanese", though this may need disambiguation, e.g. by the family to which it belongs, "Southern Min". Some examples:
    • In the relevant chapter of The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, Miao-Ling Hsieh calls it "Taiwanese" and (for disambiguation in the Taiwan context) "Taiwan Southern Min".
    • In Southern Min (Hokkien) as a Migrating Language, Picus Sizhi Ding calls it "Taiwanese" in the introduction and "Southern Min" in the Taiwan chapter.
    • In Southern Mǐn: Comparative Phonology and Subgrouping, Bit-Chee Kwok calls it "Taiwanese SM" (for Southern Min).
    so I would suggest Taiwanese Southern Min. Kanguole 00:25, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
    I don't think it's possible to accurately measure which name is the most common, but the proposed is official and also WP:CONCISE. Ythlev (talk) 02:27, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
    The article title policy relies on usage in reliable English-language sources rather than official status. In this case, Taiwanese Southern Min (abbreviated TSM) is much more common in the English-language literature on this language than Taiwan Minnan (and many of the search results for the latter are in Chinese). Kanguole 08:55, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
    Very well then. Ythlev (talk) 00:38, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose We need evidence that Taiwan Minnan or Taiwan Southern Min is commonly used. In fact Ngram does not give results for the other terms and only shows results from Taiwanese Hokkien - [6]. Maybe it doesn't search enough books, or that there other terms are more commonly used in scholarly journals, but still, the lack of the results do suggests their usage is not that common. However it does give results for Taiwan Hokkien, just not many recently [7]0 Hzh (talk) 22:24, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Dubious-discuss

The government of Taiwan and the scholars cited call it a language. Alternate opinions can be shared in the belly of the article. Geographyinitiative (talk) 14:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

No they don't. They call Hokkien a language. You still haven't answered my question. Why is American English a variety of English but Taiwanese Hokkien a distinct language? Ythlev (talk) 19:10, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
Holo (Taiwanese) is placed on equal footing to Mandarin (Chinese), Hakka and Austronesian languages, not in the category of a dialect or a variety of some kind, but in the category of a language. Geographyinitiative (talk) 21:17, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
I'm not saying the perspective you are representing on this issue should not be included in the article (with appropriate references). There is discussion on the Norwegian language page about its close similarity to Danish.
I'm saying that I've got some references that say this is a language. It's a tense subject because to call Taiwanese Hokkien a language implies that the governments of the PRC and ROC have at times been on an extermination campaign against the native languages of their own peoples in the 20th century, but nonetheless Taiwanese Hokkien is definitely a language. Of course, in the eyes of the exterminators, they don't want you to accept that, so they have people come up with ways to pretend it is not a language, and Wikipedia needs to know about those theories, just as we have a page for Scientific racism. Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:33, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
Your understanding of languages is completely off. Take a look at Taiwanese Mandarin. It is a variety of Mandarin. Whether it is a dialect or language has nothing to do with "status" or "extermination campaign". Hokkien is the language, Taiwanese Hokkien is a variety of it. Ythlev (talk) 10:08, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:

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Resource, possible source?

Would this video be considered a good source? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYibSopMNtQ Ergzay (talk) 20:49, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the "Sociolinguistics and gender" section

It doesn't make sense for a language to be "masculine" or "feminine". It's just a language — a way of communication. In addition to that, there is citations that say that Tâi-gí is seen as "more masculine." That section has been there since February 2011. It should be removed. AmberWing1352 (talk) 05:54, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

I think what that section intends to say is that speaking Tâi-gí instead of Guóyǔ is associated with having a masculine personality. As the section mentions, this is why some people view it as "unladylike" for young women to speak Tâi-gí—because some people view it as a manly trait. The section isn't saying the language itself is masculine (unless you're talking about grammar, languages don't have gender); it's saying that some people in Taiwanese society view the use of the language as connoting a masculine character. Manong Kimi (talk) 02:53, 6 April 2022 (UTC) Manong Kimi

Recent changes

Moved from Taiwanese Hokkien
 – Kanguole 11:52, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

An IP user changed some Han characters in the article as well as some information at the Tones section but did not mention their source nor provide any explanation. They also claimed without providing any source at the Han characters subsection of the Scripts and orthographies section that "these "recommended Han characters" are totally different from old Taiwanese Han characters". Besides these, they replaced "Chinese" with "Sinitic" in some cases, and omitted some information. Another IP user made changes to the value of the language infobox's script parameter, changed "Taiwanese" to "Taiwanwe" throughout the article, changed the Mandarin romanisations of some nouns to their lesser-known Hokkien romanisations, and removed the glotto and glottoname parameters from the language infobox. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NameName233 (talk • contribs) 11:10, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

These changes have been undone. Therefore, I shall remove the Expert needed tag from the article. NameName233 (talk) 08:17, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Tone 6

This edit from Oct 2020 claims tone 6 (yang rising) has merged with tone 7 (yang departing) rather than with tone 2 (yin rising). This is contrary to the popular consensus that tone 6 has merged with tone 2 (for which there is no shortage of affirming sources), so I looked into the unsourced claim and found one official source (Traditional Chinese) asserting it, though without elaborating.

I was unable to find a reliable source explaining the discrepancy. I could only find one 2021 comment on a blog article (Traditional Chinese) asserting a reason for the contrarian view. This Quanzhou dictionary (Traditional Chinese) sorts tones with a different numbering system but contains a table at the end listing characters under the traditional tone names. It seems to suggest that a 6/7 merger in Zhangzhou/Xiamen/Taiwanese Hokkien from Quanzhou's POV is indeed a thing.

Most authoritative sources on Taiwanese Hokkien hold to the 2/6 merger. On the other hand, twblg.dict.edu.tw is also an authoritative source, so probably both perspectives should be in the article. However, the discrepancy could use an explanation, but without a good source saying it, that might be original research. --Euniana/Talk 06:40, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Chiung (2001), already a reference in the article: 'Tone Change in Taiwanese: age and geographic factors': It has been observed that tone 6 had merged with tone 2 or tone 7 (Ang 1985:2-3), therefore there are today only seven tones left[.]
In the Four tones (Middle Chinese) article, there is a reference to a now dead link to how the colloquial/literary split affected Middle Chinese voiced obstruents in Zhangzhou and Xiamen, but affected sonorants in Quanzhou. Still working on that.
There is a good summary at the end of 林宝卿 (2019) 关于《闽南方言拼音方案》的修改意见, that strongly supports 陽上歸陽去 for Xiamen and also for Taipei and Tainan, distinguishing these from Quanzhou; but it doesn't mention any colloquial / literary split.
There is also this 2009 Master's thesis from 鄭文海 on 陽上第六聲字調在台語演變的探究, but I have no access to this. Michael Ly (talk) 11:06, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

language naming inconsistencies

I am not here to advocate for anything except consistency.

There are language naming inconsistencies between this article, categories, templates and MediaWiki:

Of the above, we can do nothing about MediaWiki. 'Taiwanese Hokkien' appears to be the preferred en.wiki article title given that there have been multiple discussions. Template renderings are dependent on the definition of the language code supplied to them so, for templates, we can standardize on nan and / or zh-min-nan, zh-min-nan-TW, or nan-TW and modify the templates and categories as necessary.

  • {{nan icon}}, {{link language}}, {{in lang}}, {{lang}}, and {{lang-nan}} all rely on Module:Lang which overrides the IANA / ISO 639 code-to-name definition (Min Nan Chinese) in Module:Language/data/wp languages (Taiwanese Hokkien) – the provenance of that module is unknown
    • if nan is the sole preferred code, no action is required
    • whichever of zh-min-nan, zh-min-nan-TW, or nan-TW is preferred, Module:Lang/data is modified to override the IANA / ISO 639 / Module:Language/data/wp languages code-to-name definitions
    • if it is desirable to retain nan for use when 'Min Nan Chinese' is more appropriate, the override at Module:Language/data/wp languages is disabled and Module:Lang/data is modified to map one of zh-min-nan, zh-min-nan-TW, or nan-TW to 'Taiwanese Hokkien'
    • regardless of preferred code / IETF tag, {{nan icon}}, though deprecated, is modified to remove |cat-lang=Min-nan as redundant or wrong
    • categorization will change to match the preferred language code / IETF tag / language name
  • the cs1|2 template suite relies on the MediaWiki language name table. However, cs1|2 is capable of overriding MediaWiki code-to-name / IETF tag definitions
    • whichever of nan, zh-min-nan, zh-min-nan-TW, or nan-TW is preferred, Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration is modified to override the MediaWiki code-to-name definition to refer to 'Taiwanese Hokkien'
    • if it is desirable to retain nan for use when 'Min Nan Chinese' is more appropriate, Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration is modified to map one of zh-min-nan, zh-min-nan-TW, or nan-TW to 'Taiwanese Hokkien'

Consistency matters. Article name should match category names should match template renderings. So the question is:

  • which language code and / or IETF tag: nan and / or zh-min-nan, zh-min-nan-TW, or nan-TW?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:55, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

A month on, and there having been no comment, these decisions:

nan – reserved for Min Nan Chinese per IANA and ISO 639-3
nan-TW – created for Taiwanese Hokkien

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:28, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk It looks like ISO change request 2021-045 would resolve such concerns? Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:14, 20 September 2022 (UTC)
Perhaps. I guess we'll have to wait while the bureaucratic gears to grind ... Thanks for the notice.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:04, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

Move this article under Min Nan

"Taiwanese" is essentially the same dialect as the Min Nan dialect spoken in southern Fujian province. There are only few minor differences the spoken accents, but it should be considered the same language (just like British English and American English). The reason why there are two different names for the same language is because of the political status between People's Republic of China and Republic of China. However, since this is an article on a language, there is no reason why it should be influenced by politics. I suggest combining both articles and call it Min Nan, because of the origin of this language. AquaExecution — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.69.255.205 (talk) 06:04:16, 10 April 2005 (UTC)

Not a different language from Min-nan

Deleted the comment exaggerating the minor variation between Minnan in Taiwan and Minnan in Southern Fujian because of a few Japanese loanwords to the effect of the revolutionary discrepancy between modern English and old Anglo-saxon speech due to the influence of the Normans. --—Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.121.215.56 (talk) 19:39:57, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Taiwanese should be described in the Min-nan article. Visik — Preceding unsigned comment added by Visik (talk • contribs) 05:22:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

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