Taiwanese Hokkien in the context of "Taiwanese units of measurement"

Kana (仮名; Japanese pronunciation: [ka.na]) are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana and katakana. It can also refer to their ancestor magana (真仮名; lit. 'true kana'), which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana); and hentaigana, which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana.

Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule.

The Hoklo people (Chinese: 福佬人; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Ho̍h-ló-lâng) are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, and known by various related terms such as Banlam people (閩南人; Bân-lâm-lâng), Minnan people, Fujianese people or more commonly in Southeast Asia as the Hokkien people (福建人; Hok-kiàn-lâng). The Hokkien people are found in significant numbers in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, and the United States. The Hokkien people have a distinct culture and architecture, including Hokkien shrines and temples with tilted sharp eaves, high and slanted top roofs, and finely detailed decorative inlays of wood and porcelain. The Hokkien language, which includes Taiwanese Hokkien, is the mainstream Southern Min, which is partially mutually intelligible to other Southern Min varieties such as Teochew, Zhongshan, Haklau, and Zhenan.

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (/peɪweɪˈdʒiː/ pay-way-JEE; Taiwanese Hokkien: 白話字, pronounced [pe˩ˀ o̯e̞˩ d͡ʑi˧] , lit. 'vernacular writing'; POJ), also known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. It is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.

Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News.

Min is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 75 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in China in a region centered on modern Fujian Province, stretching from Southern Zhejiang to Eastern Guangdong, as well as on Hainan Island and the neighbouring Leizhou Peninsula. Min varieties are also spoken in Taiwan, and by a large international diaspora, particularly in Southeast Asia. The name Min is shared with the Min River in Fujian, and is also the abbreviated name of Fujian Province. Min languages are not mutually intelligible with one another nor with other varieties of Chinese.

The most widely spoken variety of Min outside of China is Hokkien, a variety of Southern Min which has its origin in Southern Fujian. Amoy Hokkien is the prestige dialect of Hokkien in Fujian, while a majority of Taiwanese people speak a dialect called Taiwanese Hokkien or simply Taiwanese. The majority of Chinese Singaporeans, Chinese Malaysians, Chinese Filipinos, Chinese Indonesians, Chinese Thais, and Chinese Cambodians are of Southern Min-speaking background (particularly Hokkien and Teochew), although some of these communities are shifting to national or regional languages. Communities speaking Eastern Min, Pu-Xian Min, Haklau Min, Leizhou Min, and Hainanese can also be found in parts of the Chinese diaspora, such as in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Southern Min (simplified Chinese: 闽南语; traditional Chinese: 閩南語; pinyin: Mǐnnányǔ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bân-lâm-gí/gú; lit. 'Southern Min language'), Minnan (Mandarin pronunciation: [mìn.nǎn]) or Banlam (Min Nan Chinese pronunciation: [bàn.lǎm]), is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian (especially the Minnan region), most of Taiwan (many citizens are descendants of settlers from Fujian), Eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and Southern Zhejiang. Southern Min dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Southern and Central Vietnam, as well as major cities in the United States, including in San Francisco, in Los Angeles and in New York City. Minnan is the most widely-spoken branch of Min, with approximately 34 million native speakers as of 2025.

The most widely spoken Southern Min language is Hokkien, which includes Taiwanese.Other varieties of Southern Min have significant differences from Hokkien, some having limited mutual intelligibility with it, others almost none. Teochew, Longyan, and Zhenan are said to have general mutual intelligibility with Hokkien, sharing similar phonology and vocabulary to a large extent. On the other hand, variants such as Datian, Zhongshan, and Qiong-Lei have historical linguistic roots with Hokkien, but are significantly divergent from it in terms of phonology and vocabulary, and thus have almost no mutual intelligibility with Hokkien. Linguists tend to classify them as separate languages.

The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Owing to the wide internal variety of the Formosan languages, research on historical linguistics recognizes Taiwan as the Urheimat (homeland) of the whole Austronesian languages family. In the last 400 years, several waves of Han emigrations brought several different Sinitic languages into Taiwan. These languages include Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, which have become the major languages spoken in present-day Taiwan.

Formosan languages were the dominant language of prehistorical Taiwan. Taiwan's long colonial and immigration history brought in several languages such as Dutch, Spanish, Hokkien, Hakka, Japanese, and Mandarin. Due to the former Japanese occupation of the island, the Japanese language has influenced the languages of Taiwan, particularly in terms of vocabulary, with many loanwords coming from Japanese.

Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/ HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/ HOH-kee-en) is a variety of the Southern Min group of Chinese languages. Native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, it is also referred to as Quanzhang (Chinese: 泉漳; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Choân-chiang), from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.

Taiwanese Hokkien is one of the national languages in Taiwan. Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, and elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity.

The official romanization system for Taiwanese Hokkien (Taigi) in Taiwan is known as Tâi-uân Tâi-gí Lô-má-jī Phing-im Hong-àn, often shortened to Tâi-lô. It is derived from Pe̍h-ōe-jī and since 2006 has been one of the phonetic notation systems officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education. The system is used in the MoE's Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwanese Taigi. Its main differences with Pe̍h-ōe-jī are that it uses ts tsh instead of ch chh, u instead of o in vowel combinations such as oa and oe, i instead of e in eng and ek, oo instead of o͘, and nn instead of ⁿ.

Taiwanese kana (タイ𚿳ヲァヌ𚿳ギイ𚿰カア𚿰ビェン𚿳, tâi oân gí ká biêng, [tai˨˦ uan˨˦ gi˥˩ ka˥˩ biɪŋ˨˦]) is a katakana-based writing system that was used to write Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly called "Taiwanese") when the island of Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functioned as a phonetic guide to hanzi, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhuyin fuhao in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages.

The system was imposed by Japan at the time and used in a few dictionaries, as well as textbooks. The Taiwanese–Japanese Dictionary, published in 1931–32, is an example. It uses various signs and diacritics to identify sounds that do not exist in Japanese. The system is chiefly built for the Amoy dialect of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan, with some consideration for the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects of Hokkien also spoken in Taiwan as well, which descendant speakers of all three of the historical major dialects of Hokkien thrived, developed, and intermixed in Taiwan for centuries producing modern Taiwanese Hokkien and its own specific regional dialects throughout the island (Formosa) and nearby smaller islands (e.g. Pescadores).