Taiwanese Hokkien

How the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou accents mixed

Early settlers came from different parts of southern Fujian. Quanzhou speakers held the north and the west coast, Zhangzhou speakers the south and perhaps the central plains, and the two sometimes fought. Over time the accents blended, and almost every region now speaks a mixture; Lukang keeps its Quanzhou accent and Yilan its Zhangzhou one. Under Japanese rule Amoy Hokkien was held up as the standard, and the Japanese called the mixture Taiwango. Today's standard accent is sampled from Kaohsiung.

What Japanese rule added to the vocabulary

Contact with the mainland stopped after Taiwan passed to Japan, and Taiwanese absorbed Japanese words: piān-só͘, 'toilet', from benjo, ga-suh, 'gas', from gasu, and o͘-tó͘-bái, 'motorcycle', from ōtobai. Late in the colonial period romanised Taiwanese was outlawed, and in 1939 the private schools teaching Classical Chinese with literary Southern Min readings were closed.

When schools stopped punishing Taiwanese

In 1964 spoken Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka were forbidden in schools and official settings, and pupils who used them were fined, punished or humiliated. Revival followed the end of martial law in 1987 and the mother tongue movement of the 1990s. Taiwanese Hokkien was taught in schools from 1993, and by 2001 local languages were taught in all of them. The Development of National Languages Act, enacted on 25 December 2018, requires mother-tongue classes from elementary to high school. On 1 September 2025 Beiling Elementary School in Lujhu District, Kaohsiung, opened as a Taiwanese-language school with 16 pupils.

Which scripts compete to write it

Until the late 19th century speakers wrote mostly in Classical Chinese. Pe̍h-ōe-jī, a Latin alphabet developed by Presbyterian missionaries in the 19th century, is the oldest romanisation, and the Ministry of Education has promoted its adaptation Tâi-lô since 2006. The ministry also published recommended Han characters in three lists from 2007 to 2009, 700 in all. Most speakers still write in Mandarin.