Taiwanese (Min Nan) Language Guide

Also spoken in
Taiwan
Script
Han, Latin

Where it's spoken

Taiwan's Development of National Languages Act defines a "national language" as the natural and sign languages used by Taiwan's different ethnic groups. The Executive Yuan's national languages development plan names Taiwan Taigi alongside Taiwan Indigenous Languages, Taiwan Hakka, the Matsu Language and Taiwan Sign Language.

Taiwan's Act of Broadcasting Language Equality Protection in Public Transport provides that, in addition to Mandarin, Southern Fujianese and Hakka should be broadcast on public transport.

According to a Legislative Yuan report citing Taiwan's population and housing census, 31.7% of resident Taiwan nationals aged 6 and over mainly used Min Nan (閩南語), compared with 66.4% for Mandarin. The share mainly using Min Nan was 65.9% among people aged 65 and over and 7.4% among children aged 6 to 14.

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Script & pronunciation

The Ministry of Education's Dictionary of Frequently-Used Taiwanese Taigi gives each word in Chinese characters together with its romanization. The dictionary gives 食 (tsia̍h) the senses "eat" and "drink", and 走 (tsáu) the senses "run", "leave" and "flee". In this app, 食 appears in 你食飽未？ (Lí tsia̍h-pá-buē?, "Have you eaten yet?").

The romanization on this app's cards is the Ministry of Education's romanization scheme for Taiwan Taigi (臺灣台語羅馬字拼音方案), abbreviated 臺羅; the scheme was originally announced as the "Taiwan Min Nan" romanization scheme and was later renamed the "Taiwan Taigi" romanization scheme. Its formal version marks tones with the traditional 白話字 tone marks, as in 多謝 (To-siā, "Thank you"), and tone numbers may be used instead when the marks are inconvenient. Syllables within a word are basically joined with a hyphen, and words within a phrase are basically separated by a space, as in 請等一下 (Tshiánn tán tsi̍t-ē, "Please wait"). A double hyphen "--" marks that the syllable after it is read in the neutral tone, as in 我知影矣 (Guá tsai-iánn--ah, "I understand").

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Grammar essentials

Taiwanese has more than one word for "not". The Ministry of Education's dictionary lists 毋 (m̄) as expressing negation, 無 (bô) both as "not have" and as "not" before verbs and adjectives, and 袂 (bē) as a negative word whose opposite is 會. Examples from this app are 毋是 (M̄ sī, "No"), 我無訂位 (Guá bô tīng-uī, "I don't have a reservation") and 我袂曉講台語 (Guá bē-hiáu kóng Tâi-gí, "I can't speak Taiwanese (Min Nan)").

A yes/no question can be made by putting 無 (bô) at the end of a sentence; the dictionary describes this 無 as a sentence-final question particle, mostly read in the neutral tone. Examples are 你會曉講英語無？ (Lí ē-hiáu kóng Ing-gí bô?, "Do you speak English?") and 有無？ (Ū bô?, "Do you have it?").

The dictionary also lists 敢 (kám) as an adverb that expresses a question. Examples from this app are 敢好？ (Kám hó?, "Is this OK?") and 你敢有要緊？ (Lí kám ū iàu-kín?, "Are you OK?").

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Politeness & etiquette

The Ministry of Education's dictionary describes 請問 (Tshiánn-mn̄g) as a polite expression used when asking someone something; this app's card translates it as "Excuse me / May I ask". The dictionary glosses 歹勢 (Pháinn-sè) as "excuse me, sorry, apologetic", and this app's card translates it as "Excuse me". This app's card for 對不起 (Tuì-put-khí) notes that it is a loan from Mandarin widely used in Taiwanese, and that the native apologies are 歹勢 and 失禮.

The dictionary lists 恁 (lín) as the plural "you" and as the singular possessive "your". This app's card 恁貴姓？ (Lín kuì-sènn?, "What is your honorable name?") is described on the card as a formal way to ask someone's name when meeting for the first time, with "kuì" as an honorific prefix.

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