Handbook of Taiwanese Romanization

About the Book

Taiwanese and the related Amoy Hokkien dialect are the most widely spoken Hokkien dialects. Hokkien, along with the related Teochew, is among the most widely spoken non-Mandarin Chinese languages overseas along with Cantonese, Hakka, and Shanghainese. However, most spoken and written Chinese language instruction is in standard Mandarin. Each Chinese language uses Chinese characters and has a set of rules for pronunciation based on the context of how each character is used. However, with the estimated eight thousand to fifty thousand Chinese characters that do exist, there are still many common colloquial terms where the language’s syntax for Chinese characters do not fit how they are spoken. Additionally, unique to each Chinese language exist coined Chinese characters that are only used in that language. In such situations, Romanization is a more feasible alternative to written Chinese characters because it helps preserve the spoken language including colloquial terms that cannot be expressed in written Chinese form. The Handbook of Taiwanese Romanization focuses on the phonology of Taiwanese and the closely related Amoy Hokkien. It covers five Taiwanese Romanization methods used in available Taiwanese language resources for English, Japanese, and Chinese (Mandarin) speakers. This book is for native Taiwanese speakers who live overseas and are unfamiliar with Chinese characters but want to learn how to express their mother tongue through reading and writing. It is also a tool to aid native speakers in teaching their own children. This book focuses more on Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien but provides a foundation in phonetics and tones that can be applied to other Hokkien dialects.

About the Author

David Li-Wei Chen is a Taiwanese American family whose family immigrated to the United States in the mid-1970's when he was almost two years old. He was exposed to both Taiwanese and Mandarin languages growing up. Like many growing up in United States, he attended Saturday Mandarin "Chinese" schools, which became popular in the 1980's and are now mainstream. He learned basic Chinese language grammar structure and the importance of written traditional Chinese characters, phonetics, and tones that provided him language tools that he applied when visiting relatives in Taiwan. He took Japanese language in high school for his foreign language requirement and applied the tools he learned from the previous Mandarin courses. He obtained a Bachelor's of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering from University of Washington (UW) and later obtained his Masters of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering from University of California, Irvine (UCI) where he also took some freshman Mandarin courses. He always recognized Taiwanese language as the mother tongue of Taiwanese people, especially communities overseas, and is currently applying his language experiences from learning Mandarin and Japanese to developing Taiwanese language materials for overseas Taiwanese youth. He currently resides in Southern California.