Languages of Taiwan

Languages of Taiwan
Taiwanese Sign Language
Keyboard layout	QWERTY with Bopomofo, Cangjie and Dayi

The languages of

The Taiwanese indigenous languages or Formosan languages are the languages of the

The governmental agency Council of Indigenous Peoples maintains the orthography of the writing systems of Formosan languages. Due to the era of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a large number of loanwords from Japanese also appear in Formosan languages. There is also Yilan Creole Japanese as a mixture of Japanese and Atayal.

All Formosan languages are slowly being replaced by culturally dominant Mandarin. In recent decades the government started an aboriginal reappreciation program that included the reintroduction of Formosan mother tongue education in Taiwanese schools. However, the results of this initiative have been disappointing.^[12][13] The television station Taiwan Indigenous Television and radio station Alian 96.3 were created as efforts to revive the indigenous languages. Formosan languages were made an official language in July 2017.^[14][15]

The

Some indigenous people and languages are recognized by

Mandarin is commonly known and officially referred to as the national language (國語; Guóyǔ) in

People who emigrated from mainland China after 1949 (12% of the population) mostly speak Mandarin Chinese.^[18] Mandarin is almost universally spoken and understood.^[19] It was the only officially sanctioned medium of instruction in schools in Taiwan from late 1940s to late 1970s, following the handover of Taiwan to the government of the Republic of China in 1945, until English became a high school subject in the 1980s and local languages became a school subject in the 2000s.

Taiwanese Mandarin (as with

Commonly known as Taiwanese (臺語,

Recent work by scholars such as Ekki Lu, Sakai Toru, and 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 language with the Austronesian and Tai language families; however, such claims are not without controversy. Recently there has been a growing use of Taiwanese Hokkien in the broadcast media.

Accent differences among Taiwanese dialects are relatively small but still exist. The standard accent — Thong-hêng accent (通行腔) is sampled from Kaohsiung city,^[23] while other accents fall into a spectrum between

• Hái-kháu accent (海口腔): representing the accent spoken in
  dialect
  in China, and
• Lāi-po͘ accent (內埔腔): representing the accent spoken in
  dialect
  in China.

Much of Taiwanese Hokkien is mutually intelligible with other dialects of Hokkien as spoken in

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2009)

Hakka (客家語; Hak-kâ-ngî) is mainly spoken in Taiwan by people who have Hakka ancestry. These people are concentrated in several places throughout Taiwan. The majority of Hakka Taiwanese reside in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli. Varieties of Taiwanese Hakka were officially recognized as national languages.^[3] Currently the Hakka language in Taiwan is maintained by the Hakka Affairs Council. This governmental agency also runs Hakka TV and Hakka Radio stations. The government currently recognizes and maintains five Hakka dialects (six, if Sixian and South Sixian are counted independently) in Taiwan.^[24]

Matsu dialect

Matsu dialect (馬祖話, Mā-cū-ngṳ̄) is the language spoken in

Cantonese is one of the Chinese languages in Taiwan. Cantonese is spread by Waishengren who have backgrounds in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau.

Cantonese is mainly spoken by immigrants from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, and Macau. Various Cantonese-speaking communities exist throughout Taiwan, and the use of the language in Taiwan continues to increase.

There are a reported 87,719

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.

For example, most official notices and formal letters are written with a number of stock Classical Chinese expressions (e.g. salutation, closing). Personal letters, on the other hand, are mostly written in the vernacular, but with some Classical phrases, depending on the subject matter, the writer's level of education, etc.

In recent times, following the

Taiwan localization movement and an increasing presence of Taiwanese literature, written Hokkien based on the vocabulary and grammar of Taiwanese Hokkien

is occasionally used in literature and informal communications.

Traditional Chinese characters are also used in Hong Kong and Macau. A small number of characters are written differently in Taiwan; the

standardized character forms used in Hong Kong and Macau. Such differences relate to orthodox and vulgar variants

of Chinese characters.

Latin alphabet and romanization

Main articles: Writing systems of Formosan languages and Chinese language romanization in Taiwan

See also:

Taiwanese Romanization System and Taiwanese Hakka Romanization System

Taiwanese Romanization System for Taiwanese Hokkien, and Taiwanese Hakka Romanization System for Hakka. The textbooks of Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka are written in a mixed script of traditional Chinese characters

and the Latin alphabet.

Hanyu Pinyin

and retained old romanizations that are commonly used. However, in August 2008, the central government announced that Hanyu Pinyin would be the only system of romanization of Standard Mandarin in Taiwan as of January 2009.

Phonetic symbols

Main articles: Bopomofo and Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols

Zhuyin Fuhao, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo after its first four letters, is the

rimes. There is also a system created for Hakka

language.

These phonetic symbols sometimes appear as

method for inputting Chinese text when using a computer. In more recent years, with the advent of smartphones, it has become increasingly common to see Zhuyin used in written slang terms instead of typing full characters – for example ㄅㄅ replacing 拜拜 (bye bye). It is also used to give phrases a different tone, like using ㄘ for 吃

(to eat) to indicate a childlike tone in the writing.

The sole purpose of Zhuyin in elementary education is to teach standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts were given in annotated form. Around grade four, the presence of Zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds. Even among adults, it is almost universally used in Taiwan to explain the pronunciation of a certain character being referred to by others.

Sign language