Talk:Taiwanese Southern Min Recommended Characters

Unclear start to the article as well as unclear content throughout

The article is unclear in a few ways. First, in the opening paragraph it fails to explain why the Mandarin character set is inadequate for representing Hokkien, and doesn't give basic info on whether the Mandarin characters which are borrowed in the standard Written Taiwanese Hokkien system are borrowed on a phonetic or semantic basis, or both. A very brief background on this seems to me to be necessary for readers to understand why 700 additional characters had to be assigned.

In the next section the grammar after each topic then colon differs between each section; the first has a noun clause, no verb; the 2nd is in imperative, as a rule or instruction, containing a verb but failing to clarify that this is how the set WAS chosen; it looks more like how one SHOULD choose a character. Then the third is in passive, 'can be used', which again does not look like a reason for why characters in the standard set WERE chosen.

ALso, in the first section it's not explicitly clear what is meant by 'consistent' in e.g. "Some Taiwanese Hokkien characters are consistent with ancient Chinese". It's not clear that 箸 was used classically for chopsticks, and not clear whether it was chosen since it is one character rather than the two of modern Mandarin, and Hakka uses one not two syllables, 箸 was chosen, or was it that 箸 of classical Mandarin not only means chopsticks but is *also* phonetically close to Hokkien pronunciation? And why was 食 rather than 吃 chosen; they both obviously can mean 'eat'; was the Mandarin or historical pronunciation of the former closer to Hokkien pronunciation?

"Uncertain" is unclear, in "If the root character is uncertain". Uncertain in what way? Example? In the next section ", for example 戇 (gōng), 挖 (óo/ué)." is unclear. Is this a Chinese style list, failing to add an 'and' between two examples, or an English-style comma equating the two, and what is the "Taiwanese Hokkien morpheme" in these or these chases? In the next, when meanings are given, it's not explicitly clear that whether the meanings and pronunciations given are of Mandarin or Hakka words. Sentences like the one starting "for example (mā, "also")....could be for instance "for example, the Hokkien mā, "also" borrows the Chinese 嘛 (in Mandarin, [pronunciation here] meaning [meaning goes here]". That pattern would be clearer for readers, especially for those not as familiar with Chinese.

In the next section, "the more commonly used characters should be used rather than the orthodox characters, for example 你 (lí, "you"; equivalent root character 汝), 人 (lâng, "person"; equivalent root character 儂)" is confusing. One assumes from reading it that 汝 is the classical character for 'you', but in the second example, it implies that 儂 is the character closest in meaning and pronunciation to ancient definitions, whereas in fact 人 is almost identical to the earliest known glyph for person, in the oracle bones and oldest bronze inscriptions.

The overall content needs clarification and probably a slight expansion to accomplish this. Dragonbones (talk) 01:56, 18 August 2022 (UTC)