Written Hokkien
 |
| Written Hokkien |
|---|
| Hàn-jī |
|
|
|
| Other transliterations |
|
| Lists |
Hokkien, a Min Nan variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the Republic of China Ministry of Education including its Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwan Minnan, but there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in the Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.
History[]
Prior to the modern era, the main written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on Old Chinese used in ancient times. Whilst the written form of Chinese mostly remained static, the spoken varieties of Chinese diverged from Old Chinese. In the early 20th century, reformers in China saw the need for language reform and championed the development of a writing system that allowed Chinese people to write the language the same way they speak, a system called written Vernacular Chinese. Because the various Mandarin Chinese dialects had the largest number of speakers amongst all varieties of Chinese, it was chosen as the basis for the vernacular standard.
However, there are various differences between the spoken Chinese varieties, such as Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, such as variations in vocabulary and grammatical particles, meaning that Vernacular Chinese is less suited for writing texts spoken in Hokkien. Various expressions in Hokkien, as with other Chinese varieties, do not have associated Chinese characters in Vernacular Chinese, meaning that some words originally could not be written. In the case of Cantonese, a vernacular system specifically for writing Cantonese was developed in Hong Kong, then a British colony. On the other hand, since Hokkien was never standardized, different people began to use various separate methods to solve the issue of Hokkien-specific words, where such words would eventually be written using either a Latin-based script, phonetically using bopomofo, or through the use of a Chinese character chosen phonetically with no relation to the original word via meaning.[1]
Varieties of Hokkien are spoken in Southern Fujian in mainland China, Taiwan, Chinese communities in Malaysia, Singapore, and other Chinese expatriate communities. Initially there was no effort by the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan, nor other governments, to create a standardized Hokkien vernacular. During the initial stages of Kuomintang rule in Taiwan, the official Kuomintang language policy was to promote the use of Mandarin Chinese in everyday speech, and to discourage the use of other dialects such as Hokkien and Hakka; this was done in an attempt to promote national linguistic unity, and to promulgate a Chinese identity over that of a Taiwanese one for political reasons.[1] Following the Taiwan localization movement, education and everyday usage of spoken and written Hokkien by local Taiwanese became more widely used. A Chinese character online dictionary for Hokkien was released in 2008 by the ROC Ministry of Education.[2] Nevertheless, within literature circles there is still ongoing debate over which writing system should be used to write Taiwanese Hokkien, and controversy exists between the various rival systems currently used to write Hokkien. Today usage of languages remains a politicized issue in Taiwan. In Singapore, in an effort to promote Mandarin as a lingua franca amongst ethnic Chinese through the Speak Mandarin Campaign, usage of other varieties such as Hokkien is discouraged.
Today, whilst Taiwanese Hokkien speakers speak in their variety of Hokkien, they would officially write in Vernacular Chinese for formal documents, and only use vernacular Hokkien writings during informal occasions, if at all. In Taiwan, vernacular Chinese is used for academic writings, newspaper articles and television news report headlines, whilst Hokkien writings are used in novels, songs lyrics, film subtitles, theatrical and opera scripts, and in informal communication.
Phonetic writing systems[]
Pe̍h-ōe-jī[]
Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Chinese: 白話字) is a Latin alphabet developed by Western missionaries working in Southeast Asia in the 19th century to write Hokkien. Pe̍h-ōe-jī allows Hokkien to be written phonetically in the Latin script, meaning that phrases specific to Hokkien can be written without having to deal with the issue of non-existent Chinese characters. Currently usage of Pe̍h-ōe-jī is restricted to some Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of Hokkien, and native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan. POJ remains the Taiwanese script with "the richest inventory of written work, including dictionaries, textbooks, literature [...] and other publications in many areas".[3]
Pe̍h-ōe-jī can also be used along with Chinese characters in a mixed script called Hàn-lô, where words specific to Hokkien are written in Pe̍h-ōe-jī, and words with associated characters written in Han Characters.
Sample mixed orthography text:[4]
翻 tńg 工，我 koh hap i tī Hotel ê 餐廳食西式 ê chái 起，我講 beh tò 去稅厝 ê 所在，i beh 送我去，我 kā 拒絕，mā 無 beh hō͘ i 知我 ê 地址、電話番，講若有緣就會 koh 再相會。I 講人海茫茫，我若無 tī hit 間跳舞、唱歌，i beh 去 toh 位 chhōe--我？「就是 án-ni m̄-chiah 講是緣」，我嘴是 án-ni 應，心肝內知影 kap i 自細漢到這時 ê 牽連、綿纏無 hiah 簡單就煞。
Bopomofo[]
Bopomofo is another script used in Taiwanese Hokkien writings. It is commonly used in Taiwanese literature to represent Hokkien-specific grammatical particles, along with Chinese characters, and can also be used to gloss Chinese characters with their Hokkien readings.
- Sample text: 我像離水ㄟ魚 ("I am like the fish that has left the water", with ㄟ [ei] being used as a replacement for ㆤ ê [e].)
Taiwanese kana[]
During the period of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a Kana-based system was introduced to gloss Hokkien writing in Chinese characters, as well writing as other languages of Taiwan.
Chinese characters[]
Writing Hokkien using Chinese characters (Hokkien: 漢字 Hàn-jī or 唐人字 Tn̂g-lâng-jī, Taiwanese pronunciation: [han˥˩d͡ʑi˧, tŋ̍˧˩laŋ˧˩d͡ʑi˧]) is a common method of writing in Taiwanese literature. However, there are various problems relating to the use of Chinese characters to write vernacular Hokkien, and in many cases Chinese characters are used alongside other scripts, such as bopomofo or POJ. The problem with using only Chinese characters to write Min Nan is that there are many morphemes (estimated to be around 15 percent of running text)[5] which are not definitively associated with a particular character. Various strategies have been developed to deal with the issue, including researching and reviving the etymologically correct Chinese character from ancient Chinese texts and classical Chinese, creating new characters, allocating Chinese characters used in written Mandarin with similar meanings, but dissimilar etymology, to represent the missing characters, or using romanization for the "missing 15%".[5]
In many cases, when writing Hokkien using Chinese characters phonetically, the use of characters is entirely unrelated to the original meaning of the phrase. While most Hokkien morphemes have standard designated characters, they are not always etymologically correct or phono-semantic. Similar-sounding, similar-meaning or rare characters are commonly borrowed or substituted to represent a particular morpheme. In addition, there may be many different ways to write a specific Hokkien phrase using Chinese characters. Wanhua District in Taipei is commonly written as 萬華 in Chinese (literally "ten thousand flowers"); however, the original meaning of the location name, pronounced Báng-kah in Taiwanese Hokkien (old character form 艋舺), is a rendering of a non-Chinese indigenous name for "boat".[1] Along with location names, common words also have orthography problems due to non-standardization; chhit-thô or thit-thô (lit. "play (around)") is commonly written as