There are a multitude of romanization systems out there for Taiwanese which do the job they are designed for, so you might think that there is no reason to go around inventing new systems when others accomplish the work perfectly well. Well, some people would disagree with you, specifically in this case one Mr Tân (the gentleman pictured on the right).

Recently I was given a series of Mr Tân’s books by Mark of Pinyin.info which outline a new approach in to the “problem” of finding an effective written system for Taiwanese (I say new, but I think the books were published in the late nineties, so we’re talking relatively here). The system is interesting in that it combines two different approaches from the tradition of Taiwanese writing, although it has to be said that the attempt leaves a lot to be desired.

One of the issues always mentioned in connection with writing any Chinese language in romanization is that of information loss - the pro-character types assert that characters contain more information, more succinctly expressed, than any romanized system can. They would say that Chinese languages have such a high level of homogenity that no alphabetic system can convey the layers of meaning necessary. As an example, the Chinese character input system on my computer brings up a total of 247 possibilities for the Mandarin syllable “shi“, and even if we narrow it down by tone to “shì” there are still 36 possibilities for that one sound.

To combat this perceived defect in romanizations of Chinese languages, the inventor of this system has combined romanized writing with a system of “radicals” which indicate the category to which the sound belongs. To this end he has created a total of 40 categories into which words can fall, such as the “woman” category, the “vital” category, the “electricity” category, and so on. The category of the syllable is indicated by a letter or symbol after the sound. It’s as if the English word “boy” was written “boy♂” and “lightning” was rendered “lightning↯”.

Examples of words given in his books include “bòΛ” (cloth; written as pò͘ in the standard POJ romanization), “dwā%” (big; toā), “cuib” (open; khui), “cỳ→” (go; khì) and “kàᚑ” (to teach; kà).

The main problem with the whole system, besides the sometimes arbitrary assignation of words to categories, is the assumption that the greater number of homophones at the character level renders Taiwanese incomprehensible if written in romanization. This would be true if Taiwanese were a monosyllabic language, but in fact it is far away from being so, with the majority of both nouns and verbs in the language being either di- or trisyllabic. The system therefore does not address a need, or a lack in the existing romanization systems - meanwhile it does introduce another layer of complexity in to an already complex system. For a comprehensive dismantling of the “monosyllabic myth”, see the chapter of the same name in John DeFrancis’ book “The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy“.

For those who might doubt that written Taiwanese can be understood without the need for characters or the symbols which Mr Tân employs, it suffices not only to see the relatively large amount of material printed in the Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) romanization over the past 100 years, but also to note that Taiwanese speakers have no problems with verbal communication - so why would they struggle with a system (POJ) which represents the spoken language very accurately?

I’ve recently got around to redoing the Bookshelf section of the website, borrowing an idea and some code from John Oxton to create a smoother gallery with a nice little pop-up effect for the title and author.

Seven new books are included on the improved bookshelf, including Campbell’s great Amoy Dictionary and a collection of children’s poetry which is great for struggling learners of the language (like me). One job I need to get around to still is that of writing short reviews for all the books featured, although given the speed at which I have been updating the site recently, that might take a while…

While browsing in the Southern Materials Center bookshop near the National Taiwan University campus the other day, I found an interesting textbook that has probably been sat on the same shelf for a good few years. The first thing that caught my eye was the Chinese title “中國 閩南語對話”; word-for-word “China Southern Min Dialogues”. The English title hammers home the same message; “Chinese Dialogues in the Amoy Vernacular”; despite the big image of Taiwan, the implication is clear that we are talking about Chinese (linguistically and politically).

In the front of the book is the ROC national anthem in Chinese characters, Peh-oe-ji romanized Taiwanese and Mandarin romanized according to the Yale system. Also at the beginning of the book are short biographies of Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, who at the time of printing was the president (which, along with photos throughout the book, helps place the release date in the late 60s or early 70s). The biographies were required material for the book to pass official muster at the time, and naturally present a very uncritical aspect of the then president:

Tiong-hôa Bîn-kok Chóng-thóng, Chiúⁿ-tiong-chèng, jī Kài-se̍k (1887, 10, 31 - ) sī chòe úi-tāi ê hóan-kiōng léng-siū ê chi̍t ê. Kok-hū kòe-sin liáu-āu, léng-tō kek-bēng, cho͘-chit Kok-bîn Chèng-hú, thóng-it chôan-kok, chhui-hêng Sam-bîn-chú-gī, iōng Ki-tok ê cheng-sîn ài-hō͘ kok-bîn, Só͘-í kok-bîn lóng chheng-ho͘ i “Lāu-tōa-lâng”.

Republic of China President Chiang Chung-cheng, courtesy name Kai-shek (1887.10.31 - ) is the greatest of anti-communist leaders. After the death of the Father of the Nation [Sun Yat-sen] he has led the revolution, organised the Republican government, united the country [China], upheld the Three Principles of the People [Sun’s political philosophy] and used the spirit of Jesus to love his people, so the people all call him “venerable grandfather”.

The dialogues were produced by a group of western churches for use in educating their missionaries in Taiwan, so prominent mention is made of the Christian faith of both Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Yat-sen. Many of the dialogues too are oriented towards mission work, with discussions of the nature of faith and the path to salvation, as well as the more mundane tasks of posting a letter and buying a train ticket. Illustrated with a fair number of black and white photographs, the book provides a fascinating insight in to life in Taiwan in the late 60s.

In response to some email I have received about the problems of rendering the romanization on the site properly, I have decided to use a version that requires no extra fonts to display correctly. I hope to develop an option for those computers with the capability to display fully-featured POJ, but for the meantime all visitors will see POJ with tone numbers instead of diacritics (accent marks).

I have updated a few pages throughout the site, but the main change is in the Bookshelf section, where I have added basic details on five more items - three textbooks for learning the language (one in German, but hey - when it comes to Taiwanese manuals, beggars can’t be choosers), one on linguistics and a series of POJ texts for children/beginners. I hope to add reviews of all the books mentioned on the site in the future.

The next task is tackling the romanizations section - details on four more systems and a conversion chart hopefully coming up this weekend. Feel free to let me know of any features or information you would like to see.