User:Taiwantaffy/POJ
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Pe̍h-ōe-jī (pronounced [peʔ˩ ue˩ ʑi˨]; abbreviated to POJ; literally vernacular writing; also known as Church Romanization) is an orthography used to write variants of the Chinese Southern Min language/dialect, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified latin alphabet together with some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan, and in the mid-twentieth century there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News.
Pe̍h-ōe-jī Church Romanization | |
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Script type | (modified) |
Creator | Walter Henry Medhurst Elihu Doty John Van Nest Talmage |
Time period | 1830s–present |
Languages | Southern Min |
Related scripts | |
Child systems | TLPA Tai-lo |
This page contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. |
The orthography was suppressed during the Japanese era in Taiwan, and faced further countermeasures during the Kuomintang martial law period. In Fujian use declined after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and today the system is not in general use there. Use of Pe̍h-ōe-jī is now restricted to some Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of the language, and native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan. Full native computer support arrived in 2004, and users can now call on fonts, input methods, and extensive online dictionaries. Rival writing systems have been developed over time, and there ongoing debate within the Taiwanese mother tongue movement as to which system should be used. Versions of Pe̍h-ōe-jī have been devised for other languages, including Hakka, Gan, Teochew, and Min Dong.