New writing system for Taiwanese

[Nobuho Zheng]

Obviously this is not new but what do you guys think of its' possiblities?

http://www.taioanji.com/

[wei]

this is not a good website. i feel that this website has more political motives than linguistic research. taiwan is part of china, but the author has the motive of inventing new writing system for hokkien and discard hanzi. this is bad!

[Lim Eng Di]

I disagree with Wei. I think taioanji is an interesting and novel system that has possibilities. There may be underlying political ramifications (and possibly motives), but that doesn't take away from the intelligence and beauty of the design. Korean Hangul is a perfect system for Korean. Taioanji seems to be a good match for minnan. Unfortunately I think there is way too much prestige associated with characters. This is a major obstacle in teaching anything that doesn't use chinese characters.

I am personally open to all the possibilities of representing minnan languages. Whether it be romanization, modified bopomofo, taioanji, I'm not sure. Mixed systems with characters may be a possibility as well.

For Teochiu (a Minnan Language), I am currently supporting romanization similar to the system that was recently adopted by the Taiwanese govt.

[Aurelio]

Dear Lim Eng Di:

<For Teochiu (a Minnan Language), I am currently supporting romanization similar to the system that was recently adopted by the Taiwanese govt.>

Please forgive my ignorance (sitting on the other side of the world): What is the govt. standard in Taiwan? Tongyong? TMSS? Something else? When was the decision made?

Regards,
Aurelio

[A-hiong]

Yuck...I don't like romanji! I think we should just keep using characters. If the Cantonese can still express Cantonese with characters, why can't we?