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Although the use of Taiwanese Hokkien 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 Hokkien is desirable for political office in Taiwan for both independence and unificationist politicians.
In the capital of Taipei, where there is a high concentration of Mainlander descendants who do not natively speak Hokkien, Mandarin is used in greater frequency and fluency than in other parts of Taiwan. The 2010 Taiwanese census found that in addition to Mandarin, Hokkien was natively spoken by around 70% of the population, and Hakka by 15%. [34]
Unlike Mandarin, Hokkien retains all the final consonants corresponding to those of Middle Chinese. While Mandarin only preserves the [n] and [ŋ] finals, Hokkien also preserves the [m], [p], [t] and [k] finals and has developed the glottal stop [ʔ]. The vowels of Hokkien are listed below: [42]
Traditional Chinese characters are widely used in Taiwan to write Sinitic languages including Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka and Cantonese. The Ministry of Education maintains standards of writing for these languages, publications including the Standard Form of National Characters and the recommended characters for Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka.
The first Chinese language romanization system in Taiwan, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was developed for Taiwanese by Presbyterian missionaries and has been promoted by the indigenous Presbyterian Churches since the 19th century. Pe̍h-ōe-jī is also the first written system of Taiwanese Hokkien; a similar system for Hakka was also
The Taiwanese government hopes to spread its version of Mandarin — along with its values of freedom and democracy — as China's threats against Taiwan become increasingly bellicose.
In Taiwan, as most people at least understand, if not speak, Taiwanese Hokkien, Taiwanese Mandarin has acquired many loanwords from Hokkien. Some of these are directly implanted into Mandarin, as in the case of "蚵仔煎," "oyster omelet," which most Taiwanese people would call by its Hokkien name (ô-á-tsian) rather than its Mandarin one (é ...
Hokkien, a variety of Chinese that forms part of the Southern Min family and is spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Standard Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been ...