text when using a computer. In more recent years, with the advent of smartphones, it has become increasingly common to see Zhuyin used in written slang terms, instead of typing full characters – for example ㄅㄅ replacing (bye bye). It is also used to give phrases a different tone, like using ㄘ for (to eat) to indicate a childlike tone in the writing. The sole purpose for Zhuyin in elementary education is to teach standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts are given in annotated form. Around grade four, presence of Zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary, and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds. Even among adults, it is almost universally used in Taiwan to explain pronunciation of a certain character being referred to others. Sign language Taiwan has a national sign language, the Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL), which was developed from Japanese Sign Language during Japanese colonial rule. TSL has some mutual intelligibility with Japanese Sign Language (JSL) and the Korean Sign Language as a result (KSL). TSL has about a 60% lexical similarity with JSL. Other languages Japanese The Japanese language was compulsorily taught while Taiwan was under Japanese rule (1895 to 1945). By 1943, over 80% of the Taiwanese population at the time were speakers of Japanese. Taiwanese Americans and others in the Taiwanese diaspora may have older relatives or grandparents who learned Japanese and also spoke it as the lingua franca during their youth. Many famous Taiwanese figures, including former Taiwanese President, Lee Teng-hui, and the founder of Nissin and inventor of instant ramen, Momofuku Ando, were considered to be native Japanese speakers due to being born in Japanese Taiwan. South-East Asian languages A significant number of immigrants and spouses in Taiwan are from South-East Asia. Indonesian: Indonesian is the most widely spoken language among the approximately 140,000 Indonesians in Taiwan. Javanese: Javanese is also spoken by Javanese people from Indonesia who are in Taiwan. Tagalog: Tagalog is also widely spoken by Filipinos by the approximately 108,520 Filipinos in Taiwan. Vietnamese: There are somewhere around 200,000 Vietnamese in Taiwan, many of whom speak Vietnamese. There has been