The power of government sanction

The power of government sanction: Tâi-lô, the system advocated by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, is quickly replacing the century-old Pe̍h-ōe-jī, surprisingly even in Malaysia and the Philippines. POJ is a well-established system with lots of publications. This shows what really counts is official recognition and promotion by a government, despite the fact that this alienates proponents of other systems. It is so ironic: The whole point about Taiwan switching from POJ to Tailo was to detach itself from the rest of the Sinosphere. What it actually did was to unwittingly "unite" the rest of the Hokken-speaking world. It's probably why Taiwan is now promoting Chinese-characters-based writing system, which is not readily available to non-Chinese-educated Southeast Asians.

Advantage of Chinese over Japanese 日本語に対する中国語の利点 中文優於日文的優勢

An advantage of Chinese over Japanese: The meanings of the scientific names of dinosaurs are apparent, even without knowledge of Latin and Greek. For example Brachiosaurus is 腕龍, which literally means "arm dragon." 

An advantage of Japanese over Chinese: Despite meaning of katakana being obscure, Japanese users have easy access to western literature on dinosaurs because the names sound substantially the same. 

日本語に対する中国語の利点: ラテン語やギリシャ語の知識がなくても、恐竜の学名の意味は明らかです。たとえば、ブラキオサウルスは腕龍で、文字通り「腕の龍」を意味します。

中国語に対する日本語の利点: カタカナの意味が不明であるにもかかわらず、日本人ユーザーは名前が実質的に同じように聞こえるため、恐竜に関する西洋の文献に簡単にアクセスできます.

中文優於日文的優勢：即使不懂拉丁語和希臘語，恐龍學名的含義也很明顯。例如腕龍就是腕龍，字面意思是“臂龍”。

日語優於中文的優勢：儘管片假名的含義晦澀難懂，但日本用戶可以輕鬆參考西方有關恐龍的文獻，因為名稱聽起來基本相同。

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.