Culture groups urge ministry to expedite Hoklo writing rules

Native-language interest groups yesterday urged the Ministry of Education to speed up the creation of a unified phonetic system for the Hoklo language (commonly known as Taiwanese) to preserve Taiwanese culture.

Lee Shang-hsien (李尚賢), director of the Taiwan Pik Hap Cultural Association which promotes the Hoklo language, said that different versions of elementary school Hoklo textbooks used three different phonetic systems.

At the moment, Hoklo text books use either Tongyong pinyin, the Hanyu Romanization system, or the Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA).

Lee said that the three systems did not reflect regional Hoklo accents, and added that the Hoklo language could not be preserved and passed on to the next generation without a unified phonetic system.

Language teacher Su Huang-hung (蘇皇虹) said that Hoklo originally had eight tones, but due to the similarity of the second and sixth tones, most phonetic systems regarded Hoklo as a seven-tone language.

Using the Tongyong pinyin system reduces Hoklo to only five tones, Su said.

In addition, Hoklo pronunciation changes according to syntactic context, she added.

However, Tongyong pinyin marks these cases as variant pronunciations, creating a situation in which many students do not know the original pronunciation of the words they study, Su said.

Hanyu pinyin and the TLPA are almost entirely identical, since the TLPA system was derived from Hanyu pinyin by the Ministry of Education many years ago, said Lu Ching-ching (呂菁菁), a member of the ministry's Native Language Promotion Committee.

Lu said there were similarities among the three systems, and that all three have advantages and disadvantages.

The committee's main problem was to reach a consensus and decide on one system or to incorporate the three systems into one, she said.

Discussions are still taking place at the ministry on unifying the phonetic system, Lu added.

Huang Yu-chi (黃育旗), director of the Taiwan Association for Students Abroad, said that many overseas Taiwanese return during summer and winter vacations and hope to learn their mother tongue, but the lack of a unified phonetic system makes it difficult for them to do so.

Other representatives said that not only students, but also foreigners and foreign spouses need to learn Hoklo and are in need of a unified system.