Another Taiwanese Tutorial/Introduction
Under construction
Short explanation and history
Taiwanese (Tâi-gí), also known as "Taiwanese Hokkien" or "Taiwanese Min Nan" (Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), is a Sinitic vernacular spoken by Hoklo people in Taiwan that is considered to belongs to Hokkien, a language originated from Southern Fujian (Min Nan), China, linguistically. It is closed to Hokkien in Min Nan, Philippine, Malaysia, and Singapore, and even Teochewese in Guangdong Province and Southeast Asia. Like Hakka, the third biggest language in Taiwan and Mandarin which is the most widely spoken language in Taiwan, Taiwanese belongs to Sinitic languages.
Nevertheless, it's started from Old Min language, a ancient Sinitic language from Fujian which is isolated because of too many hills to apart it from the frequent communication in other provinces in China and has Minyue-language (Bân-ua̍t-gí)'s substrates, hence it have many pronunciations borrowed/changed from different historical pronunciation of Old Chinese, hence the language is very diffrent from Cantonese, Mandarin, and Shanghaiese, and have different readings of a Chinese Character (written as CJKV, a acronym of Chinese-Japanese-Korean-Vietnamese below), which can be distinguished as literal and colloquial reading, just like there are go'on and kan'on readings for some Japanese CJKVs. Even there are some words with the substrate language or unclear etymologies, and obsolete characters in any other Sinitic languages, the learner's may be puzzled in the language pronunciation, so learning it by heart matters.
It is spoken on the coast side of Taiwan, especially on the plains in the west side widely after imported since the Nederland conquered Southern Taiwan and developed in Taiwan along with Koxinga's Sino-regime conquered it and the diaspora of people from Southern China entering Taiwan for more than 300 years, during the period, many lowland Formosan natives and some Hakka people converted to be Hoklo people. During the Japanese period, even though the colonial government attempted to force Taiwanese to spoken Japanese, the language were not shifted and had got lots of loanwords. It is the widely spoken language in Taiwan beside Standard Mandarin, which were not imported in Taiwan until 1945, but Mandarin is the dominating language after the Mandarin-only and Taiwanese local languages-surpressing policies, executed under the martial-law period before.
Even though its status is being replaced with Mandarin, it is still the native language of most Taiwanese senior citizens and many middle adults and still has more than 15 million speakers. It also influences on Mandarin's Taiwanese dialect strongly, and the language revival movement including the flourishing of literature work, podcasts, etc. continues. Hence, it's worth to learn for those who are interested in Taiwanese culture.
Orthographies
During the lacking of writing education in post-war before the language are educated in Taiwanese school or the unification of the language's is not convergent very well, there is a myth so-called "Taiwanese has no orthography" and most Taiwanese speaking people unable to write it and have to using the Mandarin loan or pronouncing-similar characters to write it irregularly, and it may be complicated for those have no abilities of the both languages.
However, there are many orthographies and their variants during the literature development of the language. It's recommended for the learner to learn the romanization first and try to learn the CJKVs from frequent ones to obsolete ones gradually. To learn the characters, recognize them first, then try to learn the stoke and basic component, finally the character with simple shape to complicated ones.
Chinese characters
Just like the Chinese Character (or CJKV character, written as CJKV below) is used to written some old languages surrounding Sinophone world, eg. Old Japanese, Old Korean, and Vietnamese before creating or importing phonograms, the Sinitic languages is usually written as CJKV. Some of the oldest literatures in Hokkien, like Tân-sann and Gōo-niû, a romance's drama script, and some scripts of Taiwanese Opera and old ballads used it, the characteristics of these usages even if there were not unified, called Song-booklet Style (kóa-á-chheh hong-keh), is using many CJKVs to indicating the pronunciation instead of its semantics.
As time passed by, the language using different style of CJKVs of even the characters which is etymologically correct (pún-jī) is progressing, and the usage of CJKVs are not unified. Even though the recommanded orthography for CJKV and the official Mandarin-Taiwanese Min Nan dictionary for the common words were released in the beginning of the 21st century, there aren't only some debates for specific words but there are many loanwords from Japanese, English, and some Austronesian languages of indigenous people, which is improper to written as CJKVs. The book use the standard of Ministry of Education.
Spellings
Like American English, there are many accents in Taiwanese. Taiwanese phonological characteristics are derived from the Quanzhou (Tsuân-tsiu) and Zhangzhou (Tsiang-tsiu) (2 cities in Southern Fujian) vernaculars of Hokkien, and some dialects is similar to Quanzhou accent while others have more Zhangzhou's properties. Along with the unifying of accents, many people are spoken a so-called "Mainstream/Koiné Accent" (Iu-sè-khiunn) which is akin to Kaohsiung accent and locates near the centre of the accent spectrum. As there are few people have the ability to write the language regularly, it's critical to learn the speaking fluently. The accent shown below is from the IPA shown in the Taiwanese Min Nan Romanization (TL)'s Handbook published by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan.
| Quanzhou-tone |
|---|
| Lukang (of older user) |
| Seashore accent (Hsinchu, Taipei, coast line from Taichung-Chiayi) |
| Kaohsiung (close to Kóine accent) |
| Tainan |
| Inland accent (Taichung basin, the hills and the east side of the plants from Changhua/Nantou-Chiayi) |
| Yilan |
| Zhangzhou-tone |
vowels
monophthong
They are 6 monophthongs in Mainstream Taiwanese, while some accents have more, or have phonetic values different.
| TL | English Approximation | IPA | Example | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | "o" in "hot" | [a] | ta [ta˦˦] | dry |
| e | "ay" in "hay" | [e] | ke [ke˦˦] | chicken |
| i | "ey" in "key" | [i] | i [˦˦] | s/he |
| o | "a" in "about", just a schwa | [ə] | to [tə˦˦] | knife |
| oo | "or" in Received Pronunciation | [ɔ] | oo [ɔ˦˦] | dark |
| u | "o" in "who" | [u] | hu [hu˦˦] | bran |
polyphthong
They are 8 diphthongs, 2 triphthongs in Koiné Taiwanese:
| TL | English Approximation | IPA | Example | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ai | "eye" | [ai] | tsai [t͡sai˦˦] | to understand, to know |
| au | "ow" in "how" | [au] | au [au˦˦] | small cup |
| ia | "yar" for RP | [ia] | tsio [t͡sia˦˦] | here |
| io | "york" in "york" for RP | [iɔ] | tsio [t͡sio˦˦] | to invite |
| iu | "you" | [iu] | tshiu [iu˦˦] | beard |
| ua | "wha" in "what" | [ua] | kua [kua˦˦] | song |
| ue | "ue" in "request" | [ue] | kue [kue˦˦] | melon |
| ui | "we" | [ui] | kui [kui˦˦] | whole |
| TL | English Approximation | IPA | Example | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| uai | "why" | [ai] | uai [uai˦˦] | slanted |
| iau | substitute "h" with "y" in "how" | [au] | iau [iau˦˦] | hungry |