Taiwanese all speak Hokkien as well??

[tara]

Just out of curiousity, as I've noticed in Taiwan shows, do all Taiwanese speak Hokkien?

I don't speak fluent Cantonese or Putonghua but when it comes to understanding, I do BUT when it comes to Hokkien, I speak fluent (well, quite fluent) but can't seem to understand the Hokkien spoken in Taiwan shows? Are there different Hokkien dialects?

[Ian_Lee]

As far as I understand, the Hokkien (Fujian) language that Taiwanese speak is the dialect spoken around the southern part of the province around the seaport Xiamen (Amoy).

However, the southern Fujianese is way different from the the Fujianese spoken in the provincial capital -- Fuzhou -- much north.

The southern Fujianese is very close to the dialect spoken at the eastern seaport of Guangdong -- Swatow, Chaochou (Teochow) and its vicinity -- which is right across the provincial border.

The counting number of Minnanese (Southern Fujianese) pronounces the same as Teochowese does.

I guess many Singaporeans' ancestors came from the Fuzhou area and so might be your great grand parent.

[smithsgj]

It's also known as Minnanhua (or Southern Min). It's certainly mutually comprehensible with Taiwanese, and may be to all intents and purposes the same dialect. That the terms "Taiwanese" and "Taiyu" are used at all may be down to politics, but there are certainly some differences. At the very least Taiwanese contains Japlish vocabulary -- I bet the mainland version doesn't have "backu" to reverse a car and "boss" for example.

This was covered in a recent thread, but to sum up there are two political difficulties with the term "Taiwanese". From the mainland point of view, its use seems to assert a national language and therefore nationhood for Taiwan. And internal to Taiwan, it seems unfair on the Hakka and Aboriginal minorities of Taiwan to claim that Taiwanese (Minnanhua) is somehow more "Taiwanese" than the languages of those groups.

Nevertheless, Taiyu is the only term ever used in Taiwan, other than by political activists.

The other question was "Does everyone in Taiwan speak it?" Considering it was once banned (my wife used to get her wrist caned for speaking it at school) it has pretty good currency. I think I've read that 80% speak it; but I don't know anyone grown-up who doesn't. A lot of kids don't, though, and who can say whether they will learn it as they grow up. Professional people living in Taipei tend not to use it with their kids or anyone else, except taxi drivers and security guards. This is weird, because it's often a *requirement* for management/sales jobs. I think these people have to be able to speak it to colleagues and clients on all-male drunken evening jollies.

[Guest 北洋大臣]

Young people use Mandarin, old people tend to use Taiyu

People in cities tend to use Mandarin, People in countrysides tend to use Taiyu

People with higher education and higher occupation avoid using Taiyu at their working places.

[tara]

The other question was "Does everyone in Taiwan speak it?" Considering it was once banned (my wife used to get her wrist caned for speaking it at school) it has pretty good currency. I think I've read that 80% speak it; but I don't know anyone grown-up who doesn't. A lot of kids don't, though, and who can say whether they will learn it as they grow up. Professional people living in Taipei tend not to use it with their kids or anyone else, except taxi drivers and security guards. This is weird, because it's often a *requirement* for management/sales jobs. I think these people have to be able to speak it to colleagues and clients on all-male drunken evening jollies.

Agreed smithsgj, it does have pretty good currency....well at least on one occasion where I was paid for being translator of Hokkien to English in a legal case where the witness could only speak Hokkien.

[pazu]

And Taipei mayor Ma Yinjiu 馬英九 was said to be learning Taiyu (Minnanhua) a few years ago.

[劍帥文佩然]

Young people use Mandarin' date=' old people tend to use Taiyu

People in cities tend to use Mandarin, People in countrysides tend to use Taiyu

People with higher education and higher occupation avoid using Taiyu at their working places.[/quote']

These are not true.

Higher than 99.99% Taiwanese can speak Mandarin. And people speaking Taiyu or Mandarin just depends on their family's and friends' habits or the language tendency of places. If their family and friends used to speak Mandarin, and they'll tend to speak Mandarin everywhere, and vice versa.

Language tendency of places means if everyone here speak Taiyu, and the new one will speak Taiyu here.

So, city or country, higher or lower education, young or old is not the reason for Taiwanese speaking Mandarin or Taiyu.

You can see professors speak Taiyu at universities, or youngers speak Taiyu at the side of roads.

[smithsgj]

> Higher than 99.99% Taiwanese can speak Mandarin

That wasn't the question. The question was can all Taiwanese (I think the poster meant people holding a shenfenzheng issued in the Taiwan area) speak Taiyu.

I live in Taiwan (though I'm not Taiwanese). Everyone I know speaks both languages, except children, and a friend from Korea who is a hua qiao. I don't know how representative this is, because I don't know any Kejia or Shandi ren and think it likely that these groups do not know Taiyu.

There is a known and documented phenomenon of Mandarin monolingual kids being unable to communicate with their Taiyu monolingual grandparents. Also, Taiyu is widely used as a 'secret language' among adults to prevent children from understanding (in the same way as we use spelling -- like the country song D-I-V-O-R-C-E! -- in the west).

The point made by 北洋大臣 is basically correct. Old people in the countryside are *much* more likely to speak Taiyu. Teenagers in the city are *much* more likely to speak Mandarin.

You Taiyu speaking professor is making a political point and not really addressing the topic of his talk directly. Kids standing around at the side of the road? What, smoking cigarettes and looking shifty? Never seen kids do this in Taiwan, unless they're waiting for a bus. *On* the bus they speak Mandarin. I catch different buses to and from work every day, and the only Taiwanese I hear spoken is between bus drivers and little old ladies.