However, Bopomofo never appear on signs, websites, and so on, like pinyin does in China. Because Taiwan has sporadically used and at different points officially adopted a few other pinyin systems in the past notably Wade-Giles, Tongyong pinyin and Hanyu pinyin , words written using these systems do sometimes appear on public signs, often incorrectly, and the average Taiwanese person does not have a clear understanding of how to read or properly use them.
For many Taiwanese, though, it is simply a matter of habit, as they grew up learning Chinese with Bopomofo, and spelling their names using the Wade-Giles system this is why the same surname would be spelled Xu in China or Hsu in Taiwan. Learning a new system is annoying and few want to bother. Also, most textbooks and online Chinese dictionaries use pinyin. For most of us, this preference has nothing to do with the politics of Taiwan and China.
Hakka, like Taiwanese, has roots in China and makes use of traditional Chinese characters. Hakka also has a Latin script developed by Western missionaries. The aboriginal people of Taiwan did not have writing systems. Some missionaries developed Latin scripts for various Formosan aboriginal languages. In , the Taiwanese government developed an official alphabet for the 16 officially recognized aboriginal tribes of Taiwan.
Several orthographies have been proposed for writing the Taiwanese language using the Roman alphabet. These are largely the domain of linguists and academics; none are well known or used by the general population in Taiwan. The Taiwanese government has attempted to reconcile the differences between these systems under one common system, but it has yet to be universally adopted.
Taiwanese is considered to have eight tones there are some overlaps, though, and some consider it to be only five. There are also complex tone sandhi tone-changing rules. Consonant sounds can appear and the beginning or end of words, and vowel sounds can have distinct nasal or non-nasal forms.
Without a doubt, when people in Taiwan speak Mandarin, they have an accent that is quite different from that of Standard Mandarin. While Standard Chinese is supposed to be uniform, and is based on the Beijing dialect, the way people speak it varies in every region of China, due to the influence of local dialects, and Taiwan is no exception.
As someone who began studying Chinese in China and using a lot of China-made textbooks and podcasts, such as the excellent Chinesepod. In Taiwanese Mandarin, sounds like shi, chi, and zhi are often softened to the point that they sound more like the way si, ci, and zi are pronounced in the Mainland. As someone who learned Chinese using pinyin, this really threw me off when I moved to Taiwan. Every time I learned a new word with one of these sounds, I would have to subsequently look it up online to confirmed what the correct pinyin was.
Taiwanese Mandarin speakers also sometimes use different tones for the same words that the ones used in China. On top of this, many Taiwanese Mandarin speakers sprinkle their speech with words from Taiwanese Hokkien.
Moreover, even when using Mandarin words only, some of the word choices are often different in Taiwan, even for the most basic and common things. Also, these words likely vary across China, too; they were just the ones commonly used in the Chinese city I used to live in.
Besides this, Taiwanese Mandarin also has some loan words from Japanese, many of which were first incorporated into Taiwanese Hokkien. An example is kanpai cheers, which is heard just as often in Taiwan as the Mandarin ganbei. Because Taiwanese television shows and pop stars are well known across China, people in China are familiar with and can pinpoint a Taiwanese accent when they meet someone from Taiwan. There are different accents in every part of China, and people in China mostly consider Taiwan to be one part of China.
Taiwanese are quite familiar with Beijing Mandarin from Chinese historical dramas which are hugely popular in Taiwan and able to copy it very well. They tend to find it abrasive and even comical.
Are you interested in learning how to speak Taiwanese? Fortunately, there are some good resources out there. Glossika offers an online Taiwanese Hokkien course , while Taiwanese Grammar and Spoken Hokkien are extremely useful guides. Also check out the Bite-Size Taiwanese podcast.
This is a subjective question, but in my opinion, learning Mandarin is far more useful. Mandarin spoken and understood by the vast majority of Chinese speakers in the world. For living in or traveling around Taiwan, Mandarin is also more useful. Almost everyone you have to deal with will be able to speak it, while the same could not be said about Taiwanese.
Moreover, there are more resources, apps, courses, and textbooks for learning Mandarin. Sure, Taiwanese people especially in the countryside love to ask whether I can speak Taiwanese, and when I provide the obvious answer, they explode with laughter and start making fun of me in Taiwanese.
Particularly if you plan to visit or live in Southern Taiwan, or anywhere in the countryside, Taiwanese could prove to be more useful to you.
Ideally, it would make sense to pick up some Taiwanese alongside Mandarin. If you really want to impress locals, then learn even just a little Taiwanese. Taiwanese people already overly praise foreigners who learn even the slightest bit of Mandarin.
If you go the extra mile and pick up some Taiwanese, I guarantee the locals with love you for it. Finally, considering that Taiwanese is a potentially endangered language, I would by no means discourage anyone who is interested from learning it. The more people who speak Taiwanese, the more likely the language is to survive. But ultimately, the fate of the Taiwanese language will lie in the hands of Taiwanese themselves.
Slowly, Hakka is disappearing in Taiwan, supplanted by the twin threats of Mandarin and Taiwanese, however. The Japanese ruled Taiwan for several decades after China ceded the island to Japan in As a result, sustained efforts to introduce Japanese to the population continued until Today, there are still large numbers of older people in Taiwan who speak some amount of Japanese.
Other indigenous languages still survive in Taiwan, but generally in very small localized populations that continue to shrink every year. Almost everyone speaks Mandarin and Taiwanese in addition to their traditional languages, and as a result the motivation to continue to speak and teach these local languages diminishes every year.
Everything Translation Languages Spoken in Taiwan. Mandarin Mandarin Chinese has been the official language of Taiwan since , and is the most spoken language in the country.
Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka were the primary local languages displaced by Mandarin. Hakka Hakka Chinese is still spoken by a small population in Taiwan. Japanese The Japanese ruled Taiwan for several decades after China ceded the island to Japan in Standard Mandarin is the most common language used in Taipei, where a majority of the population are mainlanders and do not identify with Taiwanese ancestry.
Taiwanese Hokkien is the primary language used in public and is visible in the transport system. Hokkien is especially significant outside Taipei. The language developed as the Southern Min dialect of Fujian and is the most popular Chinese dialect for Chinese living in other countries.
After continuous suppression during the Japanese and Chinese occupations, Hokkien re-emerged with the surge in democracy during the s. The young population in Taiwan is growing up bilingual, with a command of both Taiwanese and Mandarin.
Taiwanese is also becoming a common tongue in broadcast media. The Hakka language is also a variant of Chinese, spoken by an ethnic group called the Hakka. The group has managed to preserve their languages despite the growing influence of Mandarin and Taiwanese. The Hakka group is mostly concentrated in the regions of Kaohsiung, Hsinchu, and Taoyuan. The aboriginal inhabitants of Taiwan continue to pride in their native tongues.
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