Peh-oe-ji is the standard Taiwanese! Not Tadpolenese!

Tai-oan-lang   Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:39 am GMT
Taiwanese:

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) (traditional Chinese: 白話字; pinyin: báihuà zì) is an orthography in the Latin alphabet created and introduced to Fujian and Taiwan by Presbyterian missionaries in the 19th century. POJ is a popular orthography for the Taiwanese language or Hokkien in general. A version called Pha̍k-fa-sṳ exists for Hakka and is particularly well-suited for the Siyen dialect; the counterpart for Min Dong is Bàng-uâ-cê. The counterpart for Teochew is Pêh-uē-jī.

POJ:

Sian-siⁿ kóng, ha̍k-seng tiām-tiām thiaⁿ.

English:
A sensei speaks, students quietly listen.

POJ:

Kin-á-jit hit-ê cha-bó· gín-á lâi góan tau khòaⁿ góa.

English:
Today that girl came to my house to see me.

POJ:

Thài-khong pêng-iú, lín-hó. Lín chia̍h-pá--bē? Ū-êng, to̍h lâi gún chia chē--ȯ̂!

English:
Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time .

In POJ, the traditional list of letters is

a b ch chh e g h i j k kh l m n ng o o͘ p ph s t th (ts) u
Twenty-four in all, including the obsolete ts, which was used to represent the modern ch at some places. The additional necessities are the nasal symbol ⁿ (superscript n; the rare capital form N is used for ALL CAPS text, such as book titles or section headings), and the tonal diacritics. Note, O͘ is not well-supported by fonts and is often typed as either o· (using the interpunct) or ou.

Pe̍h-ōe-jī in its present form has 17 initials, 18 finals and 7 tones.

Initials
b, ch, chh, g, h, j, k, kh, l, m, n, ng, p, ph, s, t, th

Note that unlike their typical interpretation in modern English language, b and g are voiced and unaspirated, whereas p, k, and t are plain unvoiced. ph, kh, and th are unvoiced and aspirated, corresponding closer to p, k, and t in English. This choice of notation may be attributed to the European origin of the first scholars to promote romanization. It is consistent with the use of h's in the Legge romanization and the use of the diacritic ʰ in the International Phonetic Alphabet to signal consonantal aspiration.

Finals
Vowels: a, i, u, e, o, ȯ
Diphthongs: ai, au, ia, iu, io, ui, oa, oe
Triphthongs: iau, oai
Nasals: m, n, ng
The nasals m, n, and ng can be appended to any of the vowels and some of the diphthongs. In addition, m and ng can function as independent syllables by themselves.

The stops h, k, p and t can appear as the last letter in a syllable, in which case they are pronounced as unreleased stops. (The final h in POJ stands for a glottal stop.)

Tones
Tones are expressed by diacritics; checked syllables (i.e. those ending with glottal stops) are followed by the letter h. Where diacritics are not technically available, e.g. on some parts of the internet, tone numbers may be used instead.

a (yinping)
á (shangsheng)
à (yinqu)
ah (yinru)
â (yangping)
ā (yangqu)
a̍h (yangru)
Examples for the seven tones: chhiūⁿ 象 (elephant), pà 豹 (leopard), bé 馬 (horse), ti 豬 (pig), chôa 蛇 (snake), ah 鴨 (duck), lo̍k 鹿 (deer)

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) sī 1 khoán iōng Latin (Lô-má) phèng-im hē-thóng lâi siá Tâi-ôan ê gí-giân ê su-bīn bûn-jī. In-ūi tong-chho· sī thôan-kàu-sū ín--jı̍p-lâi ê, só·-í ia̍h-ū-lâng kā POJ kiò-chò Kàu-hōe Lô-má-jī, he̍k-chiá sī kán-chheng Kàu-lô. Put-jî-kò hiān-tāi ê sú-iōng-chiá bē-chió m̄-sī kàu-tô·, kàu-tô· mā chin chē bē-hiáu POJ.
232323   Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:45 am GMT
Little Tadpole is jealous of different and elegant romanized Taiwanese and Cantonese which have beautiful diacritical mark.

But God doesn't want this bad guy's idea come true because we have read our Bible published in Peh-oe-ji for 500 hundred years, much ancient than Vietnamese,Czech and Polish.

Maybe Little Tadpole can persuade Vietnamese, Czech,Polish people to adopt his artificial romanization system.
33434   Wed Sep 02, 2009 3:55 am GMT
No one except Little Tadpole can doubt Peh-oe-ji as the standard position.

But who is this guy?

No Taiwanese know his artificial system.
No Taiwanese want to learn his system because of too many alphabets(more than Peh-oe-ji) without diacritical mark and it is too complicated than Peh-oe-ji.

Every language except English has their own diacritical mark and special words. For example, in Swedish there are ä,å,etc.
In Vietnamese, it will be much complicated with lots of diacritical mark(I think that Little Tadpole don't know it or try to pretend to be ignorant). For example,
here is a text in Vietnamese:

Tiếng Việt, hay Việt ngữ[2], là ngôn ngữ của người Việt (người Kinh) và là ngôn ngữ chính thức tại Việt Nam. Đây là tiếng mẹ đẻ của khoảng 85% dân cư Việt Nam, cùng với gần ba triệu Việt kiều ở hải ngoại, mà phần lớn là người Mỹ gốc Việt. Tiếng Việt còn là ngôn ngữ thứ hai của các dân tộc thiểu số tại Việt Nam. Mặc dù tiếng Việt có một số từ vựng vay mượn từ tiếng Hán và trước đây dùng chữ Hán để viết, sau đó được cải biên thành chữ Nôm, tiếng Việt được coi là một trong số các ngôn ngữ thuộc hệ ngôn ngữ Nam Á có số người nói nhiều nhất (nhiều hơn một số lần so với các ngôn ngữ khác cùng hệ cộng lại). Ngày nay tiếng Việt dùng bảng chữ cái Latinh, gọi là chữ Quốc Ngữ, cùng các dấu thanh để viết.

So, Vietnamese whose history is not much longer than Taiwanese Peh-oe-ji. Why that fucking Little Tadpole don't persuade Vietnamese to cast away their writing system for adopting his artifical one?
Tionghoa   Wed Sep 02, 2009 4:05 am GMT
Frankly, I think Peh-oe-ji seems a bit more beautiful than Vietnamese, though I've got a very different opinion about Chinese Latinisation with Tai-oan-lang & so on.

No offence to Vietnamese!
Little Tadpole   Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:50 am GMT
Tai-oan-lang: Nobody forces you to read Tadpolenese, my dear. You like Peh-Oe-ji, go ahead and use it, with all my blessing. Why are you so scared of Tadpolenese, and why are you so willing to advertise for Tadpolenese? Come to think about it, you are doing a better job at advertising it than myself. As I said in my website, I don't seek followers. I have zero interest in seeing people using Tadpolenese. I seek leaders. I don't care about anyone in this world following my Tadpolenese. I would love to see, though, someone else coming up with an even better system, because then I can sit back and relax, and enjoy the achievements of brighter minds.

Tadpolenese is a scientific experiment. That's all. It is totally irrelevant who uses it. Tadpolenese is for fun. It's the most advanced Chinese romanization system, ever. Period. Why is that a bad news for you?

Cũng nói cho bạn biết, tôi có thể nói và viết tiếng Việt. Cheers. I do speak and write Vietnamese. So what's your point?
Outsiders   Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:11 pm GMT
To Little Tadpole


Someone just suggests you to reform Vietnamese by your so-called "Tadpolenese" but not Taiwanese or Cantonese etc.
You are offensive to the users of both Taiwanese Peh-oe-ji and Cantonese lomaji users at the post http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t14219.htm

See your words like "For Taiwanese Peh-Oe-ji and Cantonese Yuetyue Lomaji users: can you compete, in readability, in easiness of typing on a keyboard? Please wake up! Throw away your input methods, your special fonts. There is no need for your awkward tone marks or fonts. You guys are falling behind, WAY behind. "


Someone may think their Peh-oe-ji is easy than urs Tadpolenese, but you choose to be offensive to them. So, it's your fault to post article like that!
Outsiders   Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:14 pm GMT
To Little Tadpole


by the way, in your saying, the users of Swedish,Danish,Icelandic, French,German ,Czech,Slovak,Polish,Estonian,Finnish,Turkish,Hungarian,Spanish etc should be falling behind because of their awkward tone or fonts.
Little Tadpole   Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:22 pm GMT
Tadpolenese is the most advanced Chinese romanization scheme, ever.

Why? Because it can change. If you see how it was 15 years ago, compare to today, you'll notice the change. It does not stay static. It never has, it never will. As simple as that.

You guys keep saying things about other languages, but you guys forget one thing: Chinese romanized writing is unreadable. I read and speak Vietnamese, plus a few European languages, so don't come to tell me anything about Vietnamese. Vietnamese is not Chinese. Vietnamese has a good and rich Austroasiatic colloquial layer, and literary Chinese words are just a layer on top of that.

All Chinese (dialect) romanized writings, except for Tadpolenese, are unreadable. This is a unique situation to the Chinese language family. You pretend that this problem is not there, then you live with this problem for the rest of your lives. Tadpolenese is the ONLY romanized system that goes into the roots of the unreadability problem, and SOLVES it, at least a big part of it.

When I said you guys are behind, I am stating the fact: you guys are really behind. You can fill up Wikipedia with millions of articles in Peh-Oe-ji, but it will not make it readable, EVER. Reading Peh-Oe-Ji is a pain. I've spent 2 and a half years writing and reading it. Then one day I had to tell myself, these people are just lying to themselves. It was like the story of Emperor's New Clothes, everyone was lying to themselves, until a little kid came out and stated the obvious.

Then it became clear to me that advocates of Peh-Oe-Ji were not there because of any linguistic reasons. And that's all. I kept moving forward, each day brought new understanding about the richness of the Hoklo language family. I gained more and more insight. Tadpolenese was taken to a totally different level. And I turned back my head, and I see just how primitive other romanization systems are. Chinese romanization is a tough problem, you don't solve a tough problem with a kindergarten tool.
no problem   Thu Sep 03, 2009 3:08 am GMT
The Peh-oe-ji and Tadpolenese all are the forms of writing systems, which are the very different orthographies of Romanized Holo.

Although Peh-oe-ji as a writing system is adopted by the Holo people more than several hundreds, but Mr. Little Tadpole have the human right to design or experiment his orthography.
Tai-oan-lang   Thu Sep 03, 2009 12:21 pm GMT
Little Tadpole Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:22 pm GMT
Tadpolenese is the most advanced Chinese romanization scheme, ever.


"You guys keep saying things about other languages, but you guys forget one thing: Chinese romanized writing is unreadable. I read and speak Vietnamese, plus a few European languages, so don't come to tell me anything about Vietnamese. Vietnamese is not Chinese. Vietnamese has a good and rich Austroasiatic colloquial layer, and literary Chinese words are just a layer on top of that. "

Vietnamese and Taiwanese belong to the same language family which is called "Bai-yue linguistic family"(百越語系) and this has been proved by scholars. Just browse the internet and see what's change in the world!


"All Chinese (dialect) romanized writings, except for Tadpolenese, are unreadable. This is a unique situation to the Chinese language family. You pretend that this problem is not there, then you live with this problem for the rest of your lives. Tadpolenese is the ONLY romanized system that goes into the roots of the unreadability problem, and SOLVES it, at least a big part of it. "

As I say, there is no Chinese language family but Altaic or Baiyue linguistic family which Cantonese,Vietnamese and Taiwanese belong to ,although there are many "loan words" borrowed by Northern Chinese dialect.

"When I said you guys are behind, I am stating the fact: you guys are really behind. You can fill up Wikipedia with millions of articles in Peh-Oe-ji, but it will not make it readable, EVER. Reading Peh-Oe-Ji is a pain. I've spent 2 and a half years writing and reading it. Then one day I had to tell myself, these people are just lying to themselves. It was like the story of Emperor's New Clothes, everyone was lying to themselves, until a little kid came out and stated the obvious. "

It is your problem for talents, not everyone!
wew2   Thu Sep 03, 2009 12:36 pm GMT
吾們台灣林大伯公派下的閩南唐山祖,都是百越民族混血之族群也!
閩南語,廣東語,越南語都是屬於百越語系.
Goodnews   Sat Sep 05, 2009 4:43 am GMT
<< Little Tadpole Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:22 pm GMT

Vietnamese is not Chinese. Vietnamese has a good and rich Austroasiatic colloquial layer, and literary Chinese words are just a layer on top of that.

You can fill up Wikipedia with millions of articles in Peh-Oe-Ji, but it will not make it readable, EVER. Reading Peh-Oe-ji is a pain. I've spent 2 and a half years writing and reading it. >>


There may be four reasons to make you feeling the articles in Peh-oe-ji that unreadable for you and even, is a pain in reading at there.

1. colloquial layer:
The Spoken Holo has a very good and very rich colloquial layer, just because the "Promotion Policy of Mandarinization" and the "Ban Policy of Chinese Dialects or Languages in Education System and Public Media" was held in the past 60 years at China, Taiwan and Singapore that make the younger generations losing the ability of using their native colloquial speaking.

2. readable or unreadable:
If you write down any kind of language in the form of alphabetic writing, you must adopt the more colloquial style that would be readable. If there are some unreadable matters in the articles which would prove your writings that are written in the form of less colloquial style.

3. bilingual vocabulary:
When you write an article, you need also write down a bilingual vocabulary and put it in online for people to chek in; such like Holo-Mandarin, Holo-English, Hoko-Japanese or Holo (alphabet) - Holo (character). Because in articles of Wikipedia or any kinds of encyclopaedia that in there are many new words and knowledges to the Written Holo.

4. native language; ancestors' language of a person,
mother tongue; first spoken language of a person,
first language; first spoken language and first written language of a person.

Your native language may be the Holo, your mother tongue may be a mixture form of Holo and Mandarin, and if your first language is Mandarin, second language is English, then you may have to conclude your personal experience:

"You can fill up Wikipedia with millions of articles in Peh-Oe-ji, but it will not make it readable, EVER. Reading Peh-Oe-ji is a pain. I've spent 2 and a half years writing and reading it."
Goodnews   Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:26 am GMT
I hate to have to educate every single person in the world on an individual basis. But I will do it one more time. I've done it many times before. One more time does not matter.

Read this:
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in
waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht
the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe.

What do you get from here? The grapheme shape of alphabetized words is important, and the shapes of the initial and last parts are important. OK, there you go: tonal spelling is better. Period. Peh-Oe-Ji already suffers a first drawback.

Now let us look at the following paragraph from the song:

Aic dio jiah zaiynial tniac 愛到才知痛
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyEaTvTSu38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeBB-KLUkEo

Aic dioq lyl. sim. gnia'gnia,
sniurl dioq lyl. sim. tniac'tniac,
darlnsirl qual voo fuapdour. jiong galmzeeng. siusuah;
Knuac dioq lyl aic badlaang. dioq cincniurl lyl aic qual,
alnznuah lolng veurl sim'tniac?

What do you see? Let us look at YinQu tone category words:

aic = to love
tniac = to feel the pain
knuac = to see

all are action verbs, all end in -c.

Now let us look at YangShang tone category words:

sniurl = to think
darlnsirl = but
cniurl = like
veurl = does not

What do you see? All are emotional/auxiliary verbs (or prepositions in other cases like dirl, zairl, etc.), all are YangShang tones ending in -rl.

Now let us take a look at tonal-phrase breaking points:

lyl. = you
sim. = heart
fuapdour. = solution
galmzeeng. = feeling
badlaang. = someone else

What do you see? All are nouns, all carry tonal-phrase breaking mark (a period).

Besides from all that, in Tadpolenese -q ending is correlated with final emotional particles. And words like fuapdour introduces homophone buster features going back to Middle Chinese.

Now, please tell me, how is Peh-Oe-Ji ever going to be able to compete with Tadpolenese?

Reverse all the strengths of Tadpolenese above, and you will understand easily why Peh-Oe-Ji is unreadable.

One very simple point is that Hoklo is a stereotonic language with tonal phrase structure. Peh-Oe-Ji writers don't even pay attention to this. They don't even know that using the tonal-phrase breaking mark (.) would increase Peh-Oe-Ji's readability significantly. They have been using this script for 150 years and NONE of them ever learnt/discovered about this fact.

You have to ask yourself: what's wrong with these people?

I will tell you the answer: it's not that they are dumb. It's simply because they have inferiority complex.

That's all. Read again the story of Emperor's New Clothes, and you will understand that all social illnesses in China/East Asia has one and one single source: inferiority complex.

Have a nice day. Now you have finally learned something. Who else has taught you anything here?
Little Tadpole   Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:28 am GMT
Sorry, I was quoting your name but pasted in the wrong place, ha ha. The message above was written by me: Little Tadpole.
Caspian   Sun Sep 06, 2009 11:39 am GMT
Little Tadpole - do you know of any resources for learning Taiwanese using Tadpolenese?
Also, would you be able to e-mail me a slightly more detailed explanation of how Tadpolenese works? I'd be very grateful.

Thanks,
Caspian

menglinhai@gmail.com