Written Hokkien

Hokkien, a Min Nan variety of Chinese spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, does not have a unitary standardized writing system, in comparison with the well-developed written forms of Cantonese and Vernacular Chinese (Mandarin). Since there is no official standardizing body for Hokkien except the Republic of China Ministry of Education in Taiwan, there are a wide variety of different methods of writing in Vernacular Hokkien. Nevertheless, vernacular works written in the Hokkien are still commonly seen in literature, film, performing arts and music.

Prior to the modern era, the main written language of China was Classical Chinese, which has grammar and vocabulary based on Old Chinese used in ancient times. Whilst the written form of Chinese mostly remained static, the spoken varieties of Chinese diverged from Old Chinese. In the early 20th century, reformers in China saw the need for language reform and championed the development of a writing system that allowed Chinese people to write the language the same way they speak, a system called written Vernacular Chinese. Because the various Mandarin Chinese dialects had the largest number of speakers amongst all varieties of Chinese, it was chosen as the basis for the vernacular standard.

However, there are various differences between the spoken Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien, such as variations in vocabulary and grammatical particles, meaning that Vernacular Chinese is less suited for writing texts spoken in Hokkien. Various expressions in Hokkien, as with other Chinese varieties, do not have associated Chinese characters in Vernacular Chinese, meaning that some words originally could not be written. In the case of Cantonese, a vernacular system specifically for writing Cantonese was developed in Hong Kong, then a British colony. On the other hand, since Hokkien was never standardized, different people began to use various separate methods to solve the issue of Hokkien-specific words, where such words would eventually be written using either a Latin-based script, phonetically using bopomofo, or through the use of a Chinese character chosen phonetically with no relation to the original word via meaning.

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