Written Taiwanese in movie subtitles 映画字幕の台湾語

Groundbreaking! Written Taiwanese, in a mixture of Chinese characters and romanized alphabet, as currently promoted by the government, accompanied solely by English, with no Mandarin in sight. In a children’s film at the National Taiwan museum. 国立台湾博物館で今日撮りました。画期的です。子供向けの映画で、教育部が推進している漢字ローマ字混じりの台湾語と英語のみの字幕。北京語は全くありません。

A "Russian doll" problem 2

I heard a teacher in southern Philippines complain that she now had to deal with three "foreign" languages instead of two. Previously, she and her students only had to struggle with Filipino and English. Now, in addition to that, she also has to deal with a variety of Cebuano which differs from the local vernacular. Only because the government designated her area to be part of the Cebuano-speaking region. 

A "Russian doll" problem 1

To revitalize a minority language, someone first has to pick one of the many existing varieties, develop it, codify it, write a grammar in it, make a dictionary in it, and teach it to promote it. People who speak other varieties of the same language feel disenfranchised. And they resist the top-down imposition of a "foreign" variety. Actually, the promoters of the minority language is doing exactly what they opposed and resisted when done by the promoter of the majority language. 

Do Taiwanese speakers consider themselves Hokkien speakers?

Taiwanese Hokkien speakers in Taiwan, despite speaking substantially the same language, do not normally consider themselves to be belonging to the same speech community as the Hokkien speakers in Southeast Asia and Fujian Province in China. The reverse is probably also true, seen from the fact that Hokkien speakers from the Philippines customarily use Mandarin to communicate with Taiwanese speakers, despite their respective languages being mutually intelligible.

中文最大的好處是簡潔

中文最大的好處是簡潔。日翻中，長度變三分之一。以前寫漢字費時，現在打字沒差。讀得快，想得快。我在日本工作，行程表都用中文寫，工作變得有效率。Try saying this in Japanese.

金門島の閩南語についての補考

インターネットによると、市場をpa-satと言ったり、お金をlúiと言うらしい。これはシンガポールやマレーシアなど、南洋の福建語と同じ。ただ、今の若い世代が使うかどうかは不明。台湾閩南語の影響を受けてchhài-chhī-á, chhîⁿと言うようになるのか、それとも馬祖のように完全に北京語にシフトするのか、今後の動向が注目される。

Language can alienate too

A language can connect but can alienate as well. When writing a post in Taiwanese, I may be unwittingly alienating my Taiwanese friends. Not only because they can't read it, but also because it can be interpreted as a gesture of intolerance. I noticed that many people who post on Facebook in Taiwanese often denigrate Mandarin users in Taiwan. However, they themselves may be far more proficient in Mandarin than in Taiwanese. If they write in POJ, their message of denigration cannot be conveyed to their targets, so they write in Chinese characters. I suspect that they would not dare speak to strangers in Taiwanese when in in-person communication situations. That's why Mandarin keeps spreading and Taiwanese keeps on declining.