"Taiwanese language" redirects here. For other languages spoken in Taiwan, see Languages of Taiwan. For the indigenous languages of Taiwan, see Formosan languages. For other uses, see Taiwanese language (disambiguation).
Taiwanese Hokkien
臺語 Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú[I]
Native to
Taiwan
Ethnicity
Hoklo Taiwanese
Native speakers
13.5 million (2017)[1]
Language family
Sino-Tibetan
Sinitic
Chinese
Min
Coastal Min
Southern Min
Hokkien
Taiwanese Hokkien
Early forms
Proto-Sino-Tibetan
Old Chinese[a]
Proto-Min
Southern Min
Hokkien
Writing system
Chinese characters (Traditional), Latin (Tâi-lô, Pe̍h-ōe-jī), Kana
Official status
Official language in
Taiwan [b]
Regulated by
Ministry of Education in Taiwan
Language codes
ISO 639-3
nan
Glottolog
taib1242 Taibei Hokkien
Linguasphere
79-AAA-jh
Proportion of residents aged 6 or older using Hokkien at home in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen & Matsu in 2010[10]
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
Taiwanese Minnan
Traditional Chinese
臺灣閩南語
Hokkien POJ
Tâi-oân Bân-lâm-gí / Bân-lâm-gú
Transcriptions
Southern Min
Hokkien POJ
Tâi-oân Bân-lâm-gí / Bân-lâm-gú
Tâi-lô
Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí / Bân-lâm-gú
Taiwanese dialect
Traditional Chinese
臺灣話
Hokkien POJ
Tâi-oân-ōe
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin
Táiwān huà
Bopomofo
ㄊㄞˊ ㄨㄢ ㄏㄨㄚˋ
Wade–Giles
T'ai2-wan1 hua4
Tongyong Pinyin
Táiwan huà
IPA
[tʰǎɪ.wán xwâ]
Wu
Romanization
The-uae-ho
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization
Tòih wāan wá
Jyutping
Toi4 waan1 waa2
IPA
[tʰɔːi˩ waːn˥ waː˧˥]
Southern Min
Hokkien POJ
Tâi-oân-ōe
Tâi-lô
Tâi-uân-uē
Taiwanese
Traditional Chinese
臺語
Hokkien POJ
Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin
Táiyǔ
Bopomofo
ㄊㄞˊ ㄩˇ
Wade–Giles
T'ai2-yü3
Tongyong Pinyin
Tái-yǔ
IPA
[tʰǎɪ.ỳ]
Wu
Romanization
The-nyy
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization
Tòih yúh
Jyutping
Toi4 jyu5
IPA
[tʰɔːi˩ jyː˩˧]
Southern Min
Hokkien POJ
Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú
Tâi-lô
Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú
Taiwanese Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/HOH-kee-en; Chinese: 臺灣話; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-oân-ōe; Tâi-lô: Tâi-uân-uē), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taiuanoe, Taigi, Taigu (Chinese: 臺語; Pe̍h-ōe-jī/Tâi-lô: Tâi-gí / Tâi-gú),[c][11]Taiwanese Minnan (Chinese: 臺灣閩南語), Hoklo and Holo,[12][13] is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan.[14] It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian.[15] It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.
Taiwanese is generally similar to Hokkien spoken in Amoy, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou, as well dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia, such as Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien, Philippine Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, and Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. It is mutually intelligible with the Amoy and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in mainland China, and with Philippine Hokkien to the south in the Philippines, spoken altogether by about 3 million people.[16] The mass popularity of Hokkien entertainment media from Taiwan has given prominence to the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien, especially since the 1980s.
Cite error: There are <ref group=upper-roman> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=upper-roman}} template (see the help page).
^Taiwanese Hokkien at Ethnologue (24th ed., 2021)
^Mei, Tsu-lin (1970), "Tones and prosody in Middle Chinese and the origin of the rising tone", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30: 86–110, doi:10.2307/2718766, JSTOR 2718766
^Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1984), Middle Chinese: A study in Historical Phonology, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, p. 3, ISBN 978-0-7748-0192-8
^Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian (10 July 2023). "Glottolog 4.8 - Min". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. doi:10.5281/zenodo.7398962. Archived from the original on 13 October 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
^"Draft national language development act clears legislative floor". focustaiwan.tw. 25 December 2018.
^"立院三讀《國家語言發展法》 公廣集團可設台語電視台". ltn.com.tw. 25 December 2018.
^"《國家語言發展法》立院三讀！政府得設台語專屬頻道". ltn.com.tw. 25 December 2018.
^大眾運輸工具播音語言平等保障法
^Article 6 of the Standards for Identification of Basic Language Abilities and General Knowledge of the Rights and Duties of Naturalized Citizens Archived 25 July 2017 at the Wayback Machine
^Table 6: Languages used at home for the resident nationals aged 6 years and over by gender and age, 2010 Population and Housing Census Archived 22 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS), ROC (Taiwan).
^"Taigi與台語". Liberty Times. 10 August 2019. Retrieved 10 August 2019.
^Lee, Jack Tsen-Ta (28 April 2015) [2004]. "Hokkien". A Dictionary of Singlish and Singapore English. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
^"TAIWAN SNAPSHOT". Retrieved 15 March 2020. Languages Mandarin (Chinese), Holo (Taiwanese), Hakka, Austronesian languages
^"Taiwan". Ethnologue. Archived from the original on 4 May 2005. Principal languages
^Dreyer, June Teufel (2003). "Taiwan's Evolving Identity". The Evolution of a Taiwanese National Identity(PDF). Asia Program Special Report. Vol. 114. Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Institute for Scholars. pp. 4–10. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
^"Reclassifying ISO 639-3 [nan]: An Empirical Approach to Mutual Intelligibility and Ethnolinguistic Distinctions" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 September 2021.
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urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. TaiwaneseHokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas...
in Amoy, now better known as Xiamen, as well as TaiwaneseHokkien which is spoken in Taiwan. Hokkien is the Min Nan pronunciation for the province of...
(Chinese: 臺語歌), is a popular music genre sung in Hokkien, especially TaiwaneseHokkien and produced mainly in Taiwan and sometimes in Fujian in Mainland China...
"hô-ló (福佬)". 臺日大辭典 [Taiwanese-Japanese Dictionary] (in Japanese and TaiwaneseHokkien). Vol. 2. Taihoku: Governor-General of Taiwan. p. 829. OCLC 25747241...
restricted to some Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of Hokkien, and native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan. POJ remains the Taiwanese script with "the...
(1931–1932). 臺日大辭典. 上卷 [Taiwanese-Japanese Dictionary] (in Japanese and TaiwaneseHokkien). Vol. 1. Taihoku: Governor-General of Taiwan.{{cite book}}: CS1...
especially TaiwaneseHokkien. The system was designed by Professor Chu Chao-hsiang, a member of the National Languages Committee in Taiwan, in 1946. The...
Han Taiwanese,[page needed] Taiwanese Han (Chinese: 臺灣漢人), Taiwanese Han Chinese, or Han Chinese are Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Han ancestry...
distinct from Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien, Singaporean Hokkien and TaiwaneseHokkien. Penang Hokkien is largely a spoken language, however it can...
partially Hoklo. Being Taiwanese of Han origin, their mother tongue is Taiwanese (Tâi-oân-ōe) (Tâi-gí), also known as TaiwaneseHokkien. Due to The Republic...
Southern Min language is Hokkien, which includes Taiwanese. Other varieties of Southern Min have significant differences from Hokkien, some having limited...
Pe̍h-ōe-jī Singapore Hokkien Southern Malaysia Hokkien Speak Hokkien Campaign TaiwaneseHokkienTaiwanese Romanization System Written Hokkien Min is believed...
originating in Taiwan. Taiwanese opera uses a stylised combination of both the literary and colloquial registers of TaiwaneseHokkien. Its earliest form...
language shift to the more dominant Taiwanese Mandarin and TaiwaneseHokkien. The number of Hakka speakers in Taiwan has declined by 1.1% per year, particularly...
Taiwanese Southern Min Recommended Characters is a set of three lists of TaiwaneseHokkien characters, numbering 700 in total, which were published by...
people Hokkien culture Hokkien architecture Written HokkienHokkien media Penang Hokkien Singaporean HokkienTaiwaneseHokkien Medan Hokkien Philippine...
was standardised hundreds of years ago. In Taiwan the measurement units were pronounced in TaiwaneseHokkien and Hakka before World War II and adopted...
Taiwanese Hangul (Hangul: 대끼깐뿐; Chinese: 臺語諺文; pinyin: Táiyǔ Yànwén; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-gí Gān-bûn) is an orthography system for TaiwaneseHokkien (Taiwanese)...
have different pronunciations in TaiwaneseHokkien (îⁿ, goân) and Hakka (yèn, ngièn). The name 仙 in TaiwaneseHokkien and Hakka for cent is likely from...
(Chinese: 閩南語; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm-gú), also called the Hokkien language, Hoklo language, Hokkien-Taiwanese or Min-Nan, belongs to the Min Chinese subgroup of...
Hokkien in Fujian, while a majority of Taiwanese speak a dialect called TaiwaneseHokkien or simply Taiwanese. The majority of Chinese Singaporeans, Chinese...
and Tâi-lô. The Hokkien language (incl. Taiwanese) has two regularly used sets of numerals, a colloquial/vernacular or native Hokkien system and literary...
primarily Hakka and Hokkien. By contrast, Taiwanese indigenous peoples speak unrelated Austronesian languages. Japan annexed Taiwan in 1895 and governed...
Global Information
Taiwan [b]
