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Nov 27, 2007

Standardizing Holo Taiwanese writing

Edit: A great article in the Liberty Times about how bad the media is at writing Taiwanese.

I was able to get my hands on that draft copy of the government's efforts to standardize written Holo Taiwanese to facilitate teaching it in school. The file is a PDF contains:

* An explanation of the principles the committee considers when choosing a standard written character.

* A review of the government's initial decision on the first 300 standardized characters (called the 臺灣閩南語推薦用字(第1批)).

* The draft copy of some of the next 1500 characters to be standardized (the draft contains only 100 of these).

Anyone interested in seeing the new darft should contact me via comments or email. The first 300 are available here. Below I discuss some of the more interesting words under consideration:

袂 bē/buē
Mandarin: 不、不能、不會
Examples: 袂食袂睏、袂行、袂來

偌 guā/luā/juā
Mandarin: 多少、多麼 Examples: 無偌久、偌濟 Also considering: 外、若

甲kah
Mandarin: 得 Example: 食甲足飽、講甲足投機 Also considering: 、徦、到

莫mài
Mandarin: 甭、別、不要 Examples: 莫去、莫講 Also considering: 勿、「勿愛」

啥乜 siánn-mih
Mandarin: 什麼 Example: 啥物代誌 Also considering: 啥麼、啥物

佗位 tó-uī/toh-uī
Mandarin 哪裡 Examples: 欲去佗位、學校佇佗位 Also considering: 叨位

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