Written Hokkien/Hoklo/Taiwanese/Minnan

I just set up an experimental website with some written Hokkien/Hoklo/Taiwanese/Minnan examples. If you have interest in Chinese dialectology and are interested in how it looks like, you can take a look at:

http://www.tadpolenese.com/

Some features of it are:

(1) It uses only 26 letters, hence it can be typed from virtually all keyboards in the world, no special fonts, no special input methods, no special software. In particular, this means the written words become search-engine friendly.

(2) Tones are marked with regular letters.

(3) Some other unique features of this languages are typed out as well, like its unique tonal-phrase structure, and its tone-neutralized suffixes.

(3) I did take into account high-degree compatiblity with Hanyu Pinyin and with English spelling rules. So, within reasonable limits, it should look friendly to people already familiar with either.

What do you mean by "Taiwannese" when you put Hokkien/Hoklo/Taiwanese/Minnan on the same bar?
Please specify what dialect the so-called Taiwannese really mean.

We Chinese in the mainland generally consider the so-called Taiwanese as the a politically motivated term for Min Nan Hua.

How so? Just because you think this way, doesn't mean the rest of the population on the mainland do the same. I can't care less about anything Taiwanese, however hope a language discussion can develop in a llinguistic perspective as intended.

As a Taiwanese, we Taiwanese have never read this Romanization Hokkien. It is only used by about 100 to 1000 people, especially by foreigners(Americans). So,it's not recognized by we Taiwanese.

Shakespeare said wrote: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Whatever name you call this language, it is still the mother tongue of tens of millions of people, who will keep treasuring it and adoring it.

Whatever way you choose to write down this language, it is still the language at the hearts of these millions and millions of people.

I am not interested in how people call this language group. I am interested in its linguistics. This language group has very rich set of dialectal forms. It has a unique tonal-phrase structure that is almost mathematically precise. How to convey and transcribe all these linguistic details? That's the purpose of Tadpolenese.

Little Tadpole Sat Oct 18, 2008 3:54 am GMT
<<Shakespeare said wrote: "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Whatever name you call this language, it is still the mother tongue of tens of millions of people, who will keep treasuring it and adoring it.

Whatever way you choose to write down this language, it is still the language at the hearts of these millions and millions of people.

I am not interested in how people call this language group. I am interested in its linguistics. This language group has very rich set of dialectal forms. It has a unique tonal-phrase structure that is almost mathematically precise. How to convey and transcribe all these linguistic details? That's the purpose of Tadpolenese. >>

Isn't the mother tongue of millions of Taiwanese people Mandarin Chinese?

Shuimo: <<Isn't the mother tongue of millions of Taiwanese people Mandarin Chinese?>>

Your point being?

When I talk about the Hoklo language, I am thinking it is the mother tongue of millions of people in Fujian, Guangdong, Teochew, Zhejiang, Hainan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. If you visit http://www.tadpolenese.com/, you see that a lot of songs there are from Singapore and Malaysia, not Taiwan.

Why do you focus only on Taiwan? What's so special about Taiwan that you cannot think about anywhere else? Why are you so traumatized by Taiwan?

You want to talk about Mandarin, that's fine, but go ahead open another thread. This thread is about Hoklo.

It's like the person who wanna preserve old egyptian script but it is not used now and this romanization is like old egyptian which isnt used now.Most people in taiwan speak mandarin and even though a few ppl may know dialects u mention but this romanization is like a foreign language for them just like old english for native english speakers.

I suggest u to reform ur americanish for the irregular spelling.