Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA)
The Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA) is a romanization system based on POJ, but designed to circumvent the unusual characters used in that system, particularly the 'o with a dot above-right', the superscript 'n' and the tone markings, which can cause problems when using computers.
The need for tone markings is avoided by using numbers instead, much as is done throughout this website. The 'o-dot' character is replaced by a double 'o', and the superscript 'n' was initially changed to a double 'n'. Later, in the 'Revised TLPA' system, a capital 'N' would be used instead for this nasalisation.
During the 1990s TLPA was promoted by the Kuomintang as an alternative to POJ - many in the Tai-bun movement suspect that this was a deliberate tactic to sabotage consensus among supporters of Taiwanese language promotion. Despite this, TLPA has largely failed to gain a significant user base.
