Languages of Taiwan | |
---|---|
Official | de jure: N/A de facto: Mandarin |
National | |
Main | Mandarin |
Indigenous | Formosan languages (Amis, Atayal, Bunun, Kanakanavu, Kavalan, Paiwan, Puyuma, Rukai, Saaroa, Saisiyat, Sakizaya, Seediq, Thao, Truku, Tsou), Tao |
Immigrant | Indonesian, Tagalog (Filipino), Thai, Vietnamese, Malay |
Foreign | English, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog (Filipino), Thai, Vietnamese [4] [5] |
Signed | Taiwanese Sign Language |
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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.
After World War II, a long martial law era was held in Taiwan. Policies of the government in this era suppressed languages other than Mandarin in public use. This has significantly damaged the evolution of local languages, including Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, Formosan languages, and the Matsu dialect. The situation had slightly changed since the 2000s when the government made efforts to protect and revitalize local languages. [6] Local languages became part of elementary school education in Taiwan, laws and regulations regarding local language protection were established for Hakka and Formosan languages, and public TV and radio stations exclusively for these two languages were also established. Currently, the government of Taiwan also maintains standards for several widely spoken languages listed below; the percentage of users are from the 2010 population and household census in Taiwan. [7]
Language | Percentage of home use | Recognised variants | National language[ clarification needed ] | Statutory language for public transport | Regulated by | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Taiwanese Mandarin | 83.5% | 1 | By legal definition [a] | Required nationwide | Ministry of Education | ||
Taiwanese Hokkien (incl. Kinmen dialect) | 81.9% | 1~6 | By legal definition [a] | Required nationwide | Ministry of Education | ||
Taiwanese Hakka | 6.6% | 6 | By legal definition [a] | Required nationwide | Ministry of Education | ||
Formosan languages | Amis | 1.4% | 5 | By legal definition [a] | Discretionary | Council of Indigenous Peoples | |
Atayal | 6 | ||||||
Bunun | 5 | ||||||
Kanakanavu | 1 | ||||||
Kavalan | 1 | ||||||
Paiwan | 4 | ||||||
Puyuma | 4 | ||||||
Rukai | 6 | ||||||
Saaroa | 1 | ||||||
Saisiyat | 1 | ||||||
Sakizaya | 1 | ||||||
Seediq | 3 | ||||||
Thao | 1 | ||||||
Truku | 1 | ||||||
Tsou | 1 | ||||||
Malayo-Polynesian | Tao | 1 | |||||
Taiwan sign language | <1% | 1 | By legal definition [a] | N/A | Ministry of Culture | ||
Matsu dialect | <1% | 1 | By legal definition [a] [ clarification needed ] | Required in Matsu Islands | Ministry of Culture Department of Education, Lienchiang County Government | ||
Wuqiu dialect | <1% | 1 | By legal definition but not listed [a] [ clarification needed ] | Recognized minority language in Wuqiu Township | Ministry of Culture Department of Education, Kinmen County Government |
The Taiwanese indigenous languages or Formosan languages are the languages of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples. Taiwanese aborigines currently comprise about 2.3% of the island's population. [10] However, far fewer can still speak their ancestral language after centuries of language shift. It is common for young and middle-aged Hakka and aboriginal people to speak Mandarin and Hokkien better than, or to the exclusion of, their ethnic languages. Of the approximately 26 languages of the Taiwanese aborigines, at least ten are extinct, another five are moribund, [11] and several others are to some degree endangered. The government recognizes 16 languages and 42 accents of the indigenous languages.
Classification | Recognized languages (accents) | |
---|---|---|
Formosan | Atayalic | Atayal (6), Seediq (3), Truku (1) |
Rukaic | Rukai (6) | |
Northern Formosan | Saisiyat (1), Thao (1) | |
Eastern Formosan | Amis (5), Kavalan (1), Sakizaya (1) | |
Southern Formosan | Paiwan (4), Bunun (5), Puyuma (4) | |
Tsouic | Tsou (1), Kanakanavu (1), Saaroa (1) | |
Malayo-Polynesian | Batanic (Philippine) | Tao (1) |
The governmental agency Council of Indigenous Peoples maintains the orthography of the writing systems of Formosan languages. Due to the era of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a large number of loanwords from Japanese also appear in Formosan languages. There is also Yilan Creole Japanese as a mixture of Japanese and Atayal.
All Formosan languages are slowly being replaced by culturally dominant Mandarin. In recent decades the government started an aboriginal reappreciation program that included the reintroduction of Formosan mother tongue education in Taiwanese schools. However, the results of this initiative have been disappointing. [12] [13] The television station Taiwan Indigenous Television and radio station Alian 96.3 were created as efforts to revive the indigenous languages. Formosan languages were made an official language in July 2017. [14] [15]
The Amis language is the most widely spoken aboriginal language on the eastern coast of the island, where Hokkien and Hakka are less present than on the western coast. The government estimates put the number of Amis people at a little over 200,000, but the number of people who speak Amis as their first language is lower than 10,000. [16] Amis has appeared in some mainstream popular music. [17] Other significant indigenous languages include Atayal, Paiwan, and Bunun. In addition to the recognized languages, there are around 10 to 12 groups of Taiwanese Plains Indigenous Peoples with their respective languages.
Some indigenous people and languages are recognized by local governments. These include Siraya (and its Makatao and Taivoan varieties) to the southwest of the island. Some other language revitalization movements are going on Basay to the north, Babuza-Taokas in the most populated western plains, and Pazeh bordering it in the center west of the island.
Mandarin is commonly known and officially referred to as the national language (國語; Guóyǔ) in Taiwan. In 1945, following the end of World War II, Mandarin was introduced as the de facto official language and made compulsory in schools. Before 1945, Japanese was the official language and taught in schools. Since then, Mandarin has been established as a lingua franca among the various groups in Taiwan: the majority Taiwanese-speaking Hoklo (Hokkien), the Hakka who have their own spoken language, the aboriginals who speak aboriginal languages; as well as Mainland Chinese immigrated in 1949 whose native tongue may be any Chinese variant.
People who emigrated from mainland China after 1949 (12% of the population) mostly speak Mandarin Chinese. [18] Mandarin is almost universally spoken and understood. [19] It was the only officially sanctioned medium of instruction in schools in Taiwan from late 1940s to late 1970s, following the handover of Taiwan to the government of the Republic of China in 1945, until English became a high school subject in the 1980s and local languages became a school subject in the 2000s.
Taiwanese Mandarin (as with Singlish and many other situations of a creole speech community) is spoken at different levels according to the social class and situation of the speakers. Formal occasions call for the acrolectal level of Standard Chinese of Taiwan (國語; Guóyǔ), which differs little from the Standard Chinese of China (普通话; Pǔtōnghuà). Less formal situations may result in the basilect form, which has more uniquely Taiwanese features. Bilingual Taiwanese speakers may code-switch between Mandarin and Taiwanese, sometimes in the same sentence.
Many Taiwanese, particularly the younger generations, speak Mandarin better than Hakka or Hokkien, and it has become a lingua franca for the island amongst the Chinese dialects. [20]
Commonly known as Taiwanese (臺語, Pe̍h-ōe-jī :Tâi-gí) and officially referred as Taiwanese Hokkien (臺灣閩南語; Tâi-oân Bân-lâm-gú); Taiwanese Hokkien is the most-spoken native language in Taiwan, spoken by about 70% of the population. [21] [22] Linguistically, it is a subgroup of Southern Min languages variety originating in southern Fujian province and is spoken by many overseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia.
There are both colloquial and literary registers of Taiwanese. Colloquial Taiwanese has roots in Old Chinese. Literary Taiwanese, which was originally developed in the 10th century in Fujian and based on Middle Chinese, was used at one time for formal writing but is now largely extinct. Due to the era of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a large number of loanwords from Japanese also appear in Taiwanese. The loanwords may be read in Kanji through Taiwanese pronunciation or simply use the Japanese pronunciation. These reasons make the modern writing Taiwanese in a mixed script of traditional Chinese characters and Latin-based systems such as pe̍h-ōe-jī or the Taiwanese romanization system derived from pe̍h-ōe-jī in official use since 2006.
Recent work by scholars such as Ekki Lu, Sakai Toru, and Lí Khîn-hoāⁿ (also known as Tavokan Khîn-hoāⁿ or Chin-An Li), based on former research by scholars such as Ông Io̍k-tek, has gone so far as to associate part of the basic vocabulary of the colloquial language with the Austronesian and Tai language families; however, such claims are not without controversy. Recently there has been a growing use of Taiwanese Hokkien in the broadcast media.
Accent differences among Taiwanese dialects are relatively small but still exist. The standard accent — Thong-hêng accent (通行腔) is sampled from Kaohsiung city, [23] while other accents fall into a spectrum between
Much of Taiwanese Hokkien is mutually intelligible with other dialects of Hokkien as spoken in China and South-east Asia (such as Singaporean Hokkien), but also to a degree with the Teochew variant of Southern Min spoken in Eastern Guangdong, China. It is, however, mutually unintelligible with Mandarin and other Chinese languages.
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Hakka (客家語; Hak-kâ-ngî) is mainly spoken in Taiwan by people who have Hakka ancestry. These people are concentrated in several places throughout Taiwan. The majority of Hakka Taiwanese reside in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli. Varieties of Taiwanese Hakka were officially recognized as national languages. [3] Currently the Hakka language in Taiwan is maintained by the Hakka Affairs Council. This governmental agency also runs Hakka TV and Hakka Radio stations. The government currently recognizes and maintains five Hakka dialects (six, if Sixian and South Sixian are counted independently) in Taiwan. [24]
Subdialect (in Hakka) | Si-yen | Hói-liu̍k | South Si-yen | Thai-pû | Ngiàu-Phìn | Cheu-ôn |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subdialect (in Chinese) | 四縣腔 Sixian | 海陸腔 Hailu | 南四縣腔 South Sixian | 大埔腔 Dabu | 饒平腔 Raoping | 詔安腔 Zhao'an |
Percentage (as of 2013) | 56.1% | 41.5% | 4.8% | 4.2% | 1.6% | 1.3% |
Percentage (as of 2016) | 58.4% | 44.8% | 7.3% | 4.1% | 2.6% | 1.7% |
Matsu dialect (馬祖話, Mā-cū-ngṳ̄) is the language spoken in Matsu islands. It is a dialect of Fuzhounese of the Eastern Min branch.
Wuqiu dialect (烏坵話, Ou-chhiu-uā) is the language spoken in Wuchiu islands. It is a dialect of Hinghwa of the Pu-Xian Min branch. Currently Taiwanese government does not label the language as part of national language probably due to low population of native speaker.
Cantonese is one of the Chinese languages in Taiwan. Cantonese is spread by Waishengren who have backgrounds in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau.
Cantonese is mainly spoken by immigrants from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, and Macau. Various Cantonese-speaking communities exist throughout Taiwan, and the use of the language in Taiwan continues to increase. Many Malaysian Chinese are also able to speak Cantonese as well.
Cantonese is the biggest Sinitic language which does not recognize as national language.
There are a reported 87,719 Hongkongers residing in Taiwan as of the early 2010s; [26] however, it is likely that this number has increased following emigration following political tension from the Hong Kong national security law in 2020. [27]
Traditional Chinese characters are widely used in Taiwan to write Sinitic languages including Mandarin, Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka and Cantonese. The Ministry of Education maintains standards of writing for these languages, publications including the Standard Form of National Characters and the recommended characters for Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka.
Written vernacular Chinese is the standard of written Chinese used in official documents, general literature and most aspects of everyday life, and has grammar based on Modern Standard Mandarin. Vernacular Chinese is the modern written variant of Chinese that supplanted the use of classical Chinese in literature following the New Culture Movement of the early 20th Century, which is based on the grammar of Old Chinese spoken in ancient times. Although written vernacular Chinese had replaced Classical Chinese and emerged as the mainstream written Chinese in the Republic of China since the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese continued to be widely used in the Government of the Republic of China. Most government documents in the Republic of China were written in Classical Chinese until reforms in the 1970s, in a reform movement spearheaded by President Yen Chia-kan to shift the written style to a more combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文). [28] [29] After January 1, 2005, the Executive Yuan also changed the long-standing official document writing habit from vertical writing style to horizontal writing style.
Today, pure Classical Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions and religious or cultural rites in Taiwan. The National Anthem of the Republic of China (中華民國國歌), for example, is in Classical Chinese. Taoist texts are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed. Buddhist texts, or sutras, are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed or translated from Sanskrit sources. In practice, there is a socially accepted continuum between vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. Most official government documents, legal, courts rulings and judiciary documents used a combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文). [30] For example, most official notices and formal letters are written with a number of stock Classical Chinese expressions (e.g. salutation, closing). Personal letters, on the other hand, are mostly written in the vernacular, but with some Classical phrases, depending on the subject matter, the writer's level of education, etc.
In recent times, following the Taiwan localization movement and an increasing presence of Taiwanese literature, written Hokkien based on the vocabulary and grammar of Taiwanese Hokkien is occasionally used in literature and informal communications.
Traditional Chinese characters are also used in Hong Kong and Macau. A small number of characters are written differently in Taiwan; the Standard Form of National Characters is the orthography standard used in Taiwan and administered by the Ministry of Education, and has minor variations compared with the standardized character forms used in Hong Kong and Macau. Such differences relate to orthodox and vulgar variants of Chinese characters.
Latin alphabet is native to Formosan languages and partially native to Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka. With the early influences of European missionaries, writing systems such as Sinckan Manuscripts, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, and Pha̍k-fa-sṳ were based on in Latin alphabet. Currently, the official writing systems of Formosan languages are solely based on Latin and maintained by the Council of Indigenous Peoples. The Ministry of Education also maintains Latin-based systems Taiwanese Romanization System for Taiwanese Hokkien, and Taiwanese Hakka Romanization System for Hakka. The textbooks of Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka are written in a mixed script of traditional Chinese characters and the Latin alphabet.
Chinese language romanization in Taiwan tends to be highly inconsistent. Taiwan still uses the Zhuyin system and does not commonly use the Latin alphabet as the language phonetic symbols. Traditionally Wade–Giles is used. The central government adopted Tongyong Pinyin as the official romanization in 2002, but local governments are permitted to override the standard as some have adopted Hanyu Pinyin and retained old romanizations that are commonly used. However, in August 2008, the central government announced that Hanyu Pinyin would be the only system of romanization of Standard Mandarin in Taiwan as of January 2009.
Zhuyin Fuhao, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo after its first four letters, is the phonetic system of Taiwan for teaching the pronunciation of Chinese characters, especially in Mandarin. Mandarin uses 37 symbols to represent its sounds: 21 consonants and 16 rimes. Taiwanese Hokkien uses 45 symbols to represent its sounds: 21 consonants and 24 rimes. There is also a system created for Hakka language.
These phonetic symbols sometimes appear as ruby characters printed next to the Chinese characters in young children's books, and in editions of classical texts (which frequently use characters that appear at very low-frequency rates in newspapers and other such daily fares). In advertisements, these phonetic symbols are sometimes used to write certain particles (e.g., ㄉ instead of 的); other than this, one seldom sees these symbols used in mass media adult publications except as a pronunciation guide (or index system) in dictionary entries. Bopomofo symbols are also mapped to the ordinary Roman character keyboard (1 = bo, q = po, a = mo, and so forth) used in one method for inputting Chinese text when using a computer. In more recent years, with the advent of smartphones, it has become increasingly common to see Zhuyin used in written slang terms instead of typing full characters – for example ㄅㄅ replacing 拜拜 (bye bye). It is also used to give phrases a different tone, like using ㄘ for 吃 (to eat) to indicate a childlike tone in the writing.
The sole purpose of Zhuyin in elementary education is to teach standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts were given in annotated form. Around grade four, the presence of Zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds. Even among adults, it is almost universally used in Taiwan to explain the pronunciation of a certain character being referred to by others.
Taiwan has a national sign language, the Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL), which was developed from Japanese Sign Language during Japanese colonial rule. TSL has some mutual intelligibility with Japanese Sign Language (JSL) and the Korean Sign Language as a result (KSL). TSL has about a 60% lexical similarity with JSL. [31]
The Japanese language was compulsorily taught while Taiwan was under Japanese rule (1895 to 1945). By 1943, over 80% of the Taiwanese population at the time were speakers of Japanese. Taiwanese Americans and others in the Taiwanese diaspora may have older relatives or grandparents who learned Japanese and also spoke it as the lingua franca during their youth. [32] Many famous Taiwanese figures, including former Taiwanese President, Lee Teng-hui, and the founder of Nissin and inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando, were considered to be native Japanese speakers due to being born in Japanese Taiwan. Japanese is also one of the languages that is used in metro stations.
The Korean language, along with English and Japanese are the most popular foreign languages to learn in Taiwan. The reason of its popularity is due to Korean Wave. The Korean language is also one of the languages used in metro stations.
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A significant number of immigrants and spouses in Taiwan are from South-East Asia.
Chinese is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language.
Standard Chinese is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912–1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is largely based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon. Hong Kong written Chinese, used for formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macau, is a form of Standard Chinese that is read aloud with the Cantonese reading of characters.
Taiwanese Hokkien, or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taiuanoe, Taigi, Taigu, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.
Min is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 70 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in Fujian province as well as by the descendants of Min-speaking colonists on the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan and by the assimilated natives of Chaoshan, parts of Zhongshan, three counties in southern Wenzhou, the Zhoushan archipelago, Taiwan and scattered in pockets or sporadically across Hong Kong, Macau, and several countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei. The name is derived from the Min River in Fujian, which is also the abbreviated name of Fujian Province. Min varieties are not mutually intelligible with one another nor with any other variety of Chinese.
There are several hundred languages in China. The predominant language is Standard Chinese, which is based on Beijingese, but there are hundreds of related Chinese languages, collectively known as Hanyu, that are spoken by 92% of the population. The Chinese languages are typically divided into seven major language groups, and their study is a distinct academic discipline. They differ as much from each other morphologically and phonetically as do English, German and Danish, but meanwhile share the same writing system (Hanzi) and are mutually intelligible in written form. There are in addition approximately 300 minority languages spoken by the remaining 8% of the population of China. The ones with greatest state support are Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang.
There are hundreds of local Chinese language varieties forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast part of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Jin, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou and its surrounding Pearl River Delta.
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived to be higher-status stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be lower-status. An example is the shift from Gaulish to Latin during the time of the Roman Empire.
The Hoklo people 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, Minnan people, or more commonly in Southeast Asia as the Hokkien people. The Hokkien people are found in significant numbers in mainland 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 the Teochew language, Hainanese, Leizhou Min, and Haklau Min.
Taiwanese Mandarin, frequently referred to as Guoyu or Huayu, is the variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. A large majority of the Taiwanese population is fluent in Mandarin, though many also speak a variety of Min Chinese known as Taiwanese Hokkien, which has had a significant influence on the Mandarin spoken on the island.
Saisiyat is the language of the Saisiyat, a Taiwanese indigenous people. It is a Formosan language of the Austronesian family. It has approximately 4,750 speakers.
There are many romanization systems used in Taiwan. The first Chinese language romanization system in Taiwan, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was developed for Taiwanese by Presbyterian missionaries and has been promoted by the indigenous Presbyterian Churches since the 19th century. Pe̍h-ōe-jī is also the first written system of Taiwanese Hokkien; a similar system for Hakka was also developed at that time. During the period of Japanese rule, the promotion of roman writing systems was suppressed under the Dōka and Kōminka policy. After World War II, Taiwan was handed over from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945. The romanization of Mandarin Chinese was also introduced to Taiwan as official or semi-official standard.
Singaporean Mandarin is a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken natively in Singapore. Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore along with English, Malay and Tamil.
Hokkien is a variety of the Southern Min languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang, from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.
Benshengren are ethnic Hoklo or Hakka Taiwanese nationals who settled on the island prior to or during the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. Its usage is to differentiate the different culture, customs, and political sentiments within contemporary Taiwan between those who lived through World War II on the island and later migrants from Mainland China, who are known as waishengren. Hoklo and Hakka people who migrated to Taiwan after 1945, especially those who migrated with the retreat of the Nationalist-Led Chinese Government to Taiwan in 1949 are not included in this term.
Hokkien, a variety of Chinese that forms part of the Southern Min family and is 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 Standard Chinese (Mandarin). In Taiwan, a standard for Written Hokkien has been developed by the 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 Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.
The usage of Chinese by the Chinese diaspora and their descendants has been determined by a large number of factors, including their ancestry, their migrant ancestors' "regime of origin", assimilation through generational changes, and official policies of their country of residence. The general trend is that more established Chinese populations in the Western world and in many regions of Asia have Cantonese as either the dominant variety or as a common community vernacular, while Mandarin is much more prevalent among new arrivals, making it increasingly common in many Chinatowns, though still not dominant.
Protection of the varieties of Chinese refers to efforts to protect the continued existence of the varieties of Chinese in mainland China and other Sinophone regions, amid pressure to abandon their use, usually in favor of Standard Chinese. The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has proclaimed to be taking active measures to protect ten varieties of Chinese. However, a large majority of the citizens of China speak a dialect of Mandarin Chinese, a standardized form of which has been enforced and promoted by the government of China for the last sixty years. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China calls on the government to promote Standard Chinese as the common tongue of the nation, but this policy has caused conflict to a certain extent with plans to preserve local varieties of Chinese. Education and media programming in varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin have been discouraged by the governments of the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Taiwan. Teaching the varieties of Chinese to non-native speakers is discouraged by the laws of the People's Republic of China in favor of Putonghua. The Guangdong National Language Regulations were passed by the Guangdong provincial government in 2012 to promote the use of Standard Chinese in broadcast and print media at the expense of the local standard Cantonese and other related dialects. It has been labelled "pro-Mandarin, anti-Yue" legislation.
During the martial law period in Taiwan, a Mandarin monolingual policy was implemented in Taiwan by the Kuomintang. The policy was formulated as a political goal to unite the island. However, the demotion of prior local languages into "dialects" across cultural and educational landscapes resulted in a pushback of the policy and eventually rescinded as Taiwan democratized.