What are the best resources for learning Taiwanese?

[gao_bo_han]

Hello all,

Thanks for the great advice on dictionaries. I feel that I made my final decision wisely. I am hoping that someone can help me find the best resource for learning Taiwanese as well.

It seems like "Spoken Taiwanese" is a good choice because it has both a decently sized book and also 13 cassettes. When I was in Taiwanese I got a couple of CDs, but they did not contain any explanations of grammar or a logical procession in the lessons at all. Nor was there an introduction to the alphabet or Romanized system of writing. I had the same frustration when I started learning Mandarin years ago: seems like lots of companies will just throw anything together and hope someone buys it.

Anyways, I would appreciate any help I could get on this.

Thanks,

Bo Han

[Guest timc18]

It'll probably be very hard to find a romanization of Taiwanese because such a system does not exist. I have seen some places use bopomofo (zhu yin), but it was originally designed for mandarin, and many taiwanese words are very hard to spell.

[wix]

It'll probably be very hard to find a romanization of Taiwanese because such a system does not exist.

Wrong. A number of systems exist. The most common being "Church Romanisation" which is used with slight variations on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In Taiwan some people also use a modified form of zhuyin fuhao and Taiwan's tongyong pinyin.

[Guest timc18]

I believe the romanization you are speaking of was invented when the Dutch came to Taiwan a few hundred years ago. Although there may be documents written in this script, not a single native taiwanese would be able to understand it today (except linguists). But, there may be a few places where you can find one of the romanization systems if it is geared towards non-Chinese. At http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/index.htm (upper right, "Learn TAIWANESE"), one of the romanization systems (which was slightly modified by the author) is used. There are also recordings which you may find helpful.

Just as a side note, written Taiwanese has basically died. Both my parents cannot read Chinese characters in the Taiwanese pronunciation very well. They only know how to speak it but do not know what characters are associated with what words. Only the older generation (my grandma), scholars and a few of the everyday people are still able to write in colloquial Taiwanese in Chinese Characters. (The site above, written by a linguist, has chinese characters, but I question a few of them, or maybe written taiwanese really is that different)

[gao_bo_han]

Thanks for your responses everybody.

However, I should have been more specific. I was thinking more along the lines of books/tapes/cds. My internet connection at home is unreliable and slow, and in general I just prefer the old fashion way, i.e. through books and tapes.

Has anybody here learned Taiwanese via these methods as well? If so, which learning program did you use? I have to admit I got a little impatient and ordered "Spoken Taiwanese" from worldlanguages.com already. As I make progress (or do not make progess!), I will write and post a review of it on here.

Cheers,

Bo Han