Taiwanese Mandarin

Taiwanese Mandarin refers to any of the varieties of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. The standard form of this language, called Guoyu (), is the official national language of Taiwan taught in the education system and used in official communications. The core of this standard variety is described in the dictionary "Guoyu Cidian" () maintained by the Ministry of Education of Taiwan. It is based on the phonology of the Beijing dialect together with the grammar of vernacular Chinese. "Guoyu" closely resembles and is mutually intelligible with Standard Chinese (), the official language of mainland China, with some divergences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. 
"Taiwanese Mandarin" can also refer to the variety of Mandarin that departs from standard "Guoyu", i.e., the non-standard form. The divergences are often the result of the influence of other languages in Taiwan, primarily Taiwanese Hokkien, and to a lesser extent Japanese and Taiwanese Hakka. This form of the language, while still mutually intelligible with "Putonghua", exhibits greater discrepancies and is more colloquial and identifiably "Taiwanese" than spoken "Guoyu".
All forms of Chinese in Taiwan are written in traditional characters. The PRC adopted simplified Chinese characters beginning in the 1950s, while Taiwan, along with Hong Kong and Macau, maintained the more complex set of characters from which simplified characters were derived.
Definition.
Linguists have differentiated between Standard "Guoyu", the formal, standardized form of Mandarin in Taiwan (標準國語 "Biāozhǔn Guóyǔ", lit. "Standard National Language") and Taiwan(ese) Mandarin (臺灣國語 "Táiwān Guóyǔ"), which refers to Mandarin as is actually spoken, and includes much more influence from Southern Min, among other differences. This is an example of diglossia. More formal occasions—such as television news broadcasts or in books—will generally use "Guoyu", which much more closely resembles "Putonghua", but this is not necessarily how the language is spoken day-to-day.
More formal occasions call for the acrolectal, standard "Guoyu". Less formal situations often result in the basilect, which has more uniquely Hokkien features. Bilingual speakers often code-switch between Mandarin and Hokkien, sometimes in the same sentence.
History and usage.
Large-scale Han Chinese settlement of Taiwan began in the 17th century with Hoklo immigrants from Fujian province speaking Southern Min (Hokkien), and to a lesser extent, Hakka immigrants speaking their language. Official communications were done in Mandarin (官話 "guānhuà", literally: 'official language'), but the primary languages of everyday life were Hokkien or to a lesser extent Hakka. After its defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing dynasty ceded Taiwan to the Empire of Japan, which governed the island as an Imperial colony from 1895 to 1945. By the end of the colonial period, Japanese had become the high dialect of the island as the result of decades of Japanization policy.
After the Republic of China under Kuomintang regained control of Taiwan in 1945, Mandarin was introduced as the official language and made compulsory in schools, despite the fact that few local Taiwanese spoke it. The Mandarin Promotion Council (now called National Languages Committee) was established in 1946 by Taiwan Chief Executive Chen Yi to standardize and popularize the usage of Standard Mandarin in Taiwan. The Kuomintang highly discouraged the use of Hokkien and other vernaculars, even portraying them as inferior, and school children could be punished for speaking their home languages. Mandarin was thus established as a "lingua franca" among the various groups in Taiwan at the expense of other, preexisting Chinese languages.
Mandarin remains the dominant language, but following the end of martial law in Taiwan in 1987, the country underwent a liberalization of language policy. Local languages were no longer proscribed in public discourse, mass media, or schools. Mandarin is still the main language of public education, with English and "mother tongue education"() being introduced as subjects in primary school. Mother tongue classes generally occupy much less time than Mandarin/"Guoyu" classes, however, and English classes are often preferred by parents and students over mother tongue classes. Overall, while the government at both national and local levels has promoted the use of non-Mandarin Chinese languages, younger generations generally prefer using Mandarin.
Mandarin is spoken fluently by almost the entire Taiwanese population, except for some elderly people who were educated under Japanese rule. In the capital Taipei, where there is a high concentration of Mainlanders whose native variety is not Hokkien, Mandarin is used in greater frequency and fluency than other parts of Taiwan. As of 2010, in addition to Mandarin, Hokkien is natively spoken by around 70% of the population, and Hakka by 15%.
Script.
Taiwanese Mandarin uses traditional Chinese characters like in the two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau, rather than the simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China. 
Shorthand characters.
Taiwanese Mandarin users may write informal, shorthand "suzi" (; also "sútǐzì"), variant Chinese characters that are easier to write by hand. Often, "suzi" are identical to their simplified counterparts, but they may also take after Japanese kanji, or differ from both, as shown in the table below. Some "suzi" are used as frequently as standard characters in printed media, such as the "tai" in "Taiwan" being written (5 strokes), as opposed to the official traditional form, (14 strokes).
Braille.
Taiwanese braille is based on different letter assignments than Mainland Chinese braille.
Romanization.
Chinese language romanization in Taiwan differs somewhat from in the mainland, where Hanyu Pinyin is used almost exclusively. A competing pinyin system, Tongyong Pinyin, had been formally revealed in 1998 with the support of Taipei mayor Chen Shuibian. In 1999, however, the Legislative Yuan endorsed a slightly modified Hanyu Pinyin, creating paralleled romanization schemes along largely partisan lines, with Kuomintang-supporting areas using Hanyu Pinyin, and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) using Tongyong Pinyin. In 2002, the Taiwanese government led by the DPP promulgated established Tongyong Pinyin as the country's preferred system, but this was formally abandoned in 2009 in favor of Hanyu Pinyin.
In addition, various other historical romanization systems also coexist across the island, sometimes together in the same locality. Following the defeat of the Kuomintang and subsequent retreat to Taiwan, little emphasis was placed on romanizing Chinese characters, and the default was the Wade-Giles system. The Gwoyeu Romatzyh method, invented in 1928, also was in use during this time period, but to a lesser extent. In 1984, Taiwan's Ministry of Education began revising the Gwoyeu Romatzyh method out of concern that Hanyu Pinyin was gaining prominence internationally. Ultimately, a revised version of Gwoyeu Romatzyh was released in 1986, formally called the National Phonetic Symbols, Second Scheme, but this was not widely adopted.
Phonology.
Standard "Guoyu".
Like mainland "Putonghua" and all other Sinitic languages, Taiwanese Mandarin is tonal. Pronunciation of many individual characters differs in the standards prescribed by language authorities in Taipei and Beijing, usually in tone. Mainland authorities tend to prefer pronunciations popular in Northern Mandarin areas, whereas Taiwanese authorities prefer traditional pronunciations recorded in dictionaries from the 1930s and 1940s. 
The character-level differences notwithstanding, "Guoyu" pronunciation is largely identical to "Putonghua", but with two major systematic differences: 
Hokkien influence on non-standard form.
In the more basilectal forms, Taiwanese Mandarin has been strongly influenced by Hokkien, especially in areas where Hokkien is more common, namely, Central and Southern Taiwan. The Hokkien-influenced Mandarin accent in Taiwan is generally similar to the Hokkien-influenced Mandarin accent in Minnan region of Fujian.
In basilectal Taiwanese Mandarin, sounds that do not occur in Hokkien are often replaced by sounds from Hokkien. These variations from Standard Mandarin are similar to the variations of Mandarin spoken in southern China. Using the Hanyu Pinyin system, the following sound changes take place (going from "Putonghua" to Taiwanese Mandarin followed with an example):
Elision.
Taiwanese Mandarin exhibits widespread, informal elision in its spoken form. For instance, 這樣子 "zhè yàngzi" 'so, this way, like this' frequently elides into an utterance pronounced like 醬子 "jiàngzi" 'paste, sauce'; wherein the "theoretical" retroflex (so called because it is often not realized in everyday speech) is assimilated into the palatal glide [j]. 
Often the elision involves the removal of initials in compound words, such as dropping the "t" in 今天 "jīntiān" 'today' or the "ch" in 非常 "fēicháng" 'extremely, very'. Such elisions are not necessarily a function of speed of speech but rather register; it is much more common in casual conversation than in formal contexts.
Differences from Mainland Mandarin.
Standard pronunciations.
In addition to elision and Hokkien influence, which are not codified in the standard "Guoyu", there are pronunciation differences that arise from conflicting official standards in Taiwan and the mainland. These differences are primarily, but not exclusively, in the form of tone.
Official pronunciations given by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education are considered formal standards. The Ministry of Education tends to prefer language features traditional Beijing Mandarin, on which "Guoyu" is formally based, but these may not always reflect actual pronunciations commonly used by native Taiwanese Mandarin speakers.
The following table is of common characters pronounced with different tones in "Guoyu" and "Putonghua" in all contexts:
Rarer are characters with non-tonal phonemic differences. Some examples include:
Some differences are not universal and may be relevant only in certain contexts. The following is a list of examples of such differences from the Cross-strait language database:
Vocabulary.
"Guoyu" and "Putonghua" share a large majority of their vocabulary, but significant differences do exist. Some, but not all, of these differences may affect mutual understanding between speakers of the respective dialects. These differences can be classified in one of several ways: same word, different meaning (同實異名); same meaning, different word (同實異名); and words referring to concepts specific to either Taiwan or the mainland (臺詞 and 陸詞, respectively, in the "Cross-Straits Dictionary").
Differing usage or preference.
"Guoyu" and "Putonghua" speakers may display strong preference for one of a set of synonyms. For example, both "jièjù" 借據 and "jiètiáo" 借條 refer to an IOU in either dialect, but Taiwanese tend to use "jièjù", and mainland speakers prefer "jiètiáo". Additionally, words with the same meaning and usage might have different grammatical features. The verb "bāngmáng" 幫忙 'to help' in Taiwanese Mandarin can take a direct object, which is ungrammatical in Standard Mandarin—我幫忙他 'I help him' and must be rendered as 我帮他的忙 in mainland Mandarin.
Likewise, words with the same literal meaning in "Putonghua" may differ in register from "Guoyu". For instance, "éryǐ" 而已 'that's all, only' is very common in "Guoyu" both spoken and written, influenced by speech patterns in Hokkien, but in Standard Chinese the word primarily appears in formal writing, not spoken language.
The following table highlights some terms where one or more of a particular set of synonyms is strongly preferred in either "Guoyu" or "Putonghua".
This also applies in the use of some function words. Preference for the expression of modality often differs among northern Mandarin speakers and Taiwanese, as evidenced by the selection of modal verbs. Compared to native speakers from Beijing, Taiwanese Mandarin users very strongly prefer 要 "yào" and 不要 "búyào" over 得 "děi" and 別 "bié" to express 'must' and 'must not', for instance, though both pairs are grammatical in either dialect.
Same word, different meaning.
Some terms have different meanings in Taiwan and China, which can sometimes lead to misunderstandings between speakers of different sides of the Taiwan Strait. Often there are alternative, unambiguous terms which can be understood by both sides.
Same meaning, different word.
The political separation of Taiwan (formally, the Republic of China, ROC) and mainland China (formally, the People's Republic of China, PRC) after the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949 contributed to many differences in vocabulary. This is especially prominent with respect to words and phrases referring to things invented after the split, which frequently have totally different names in "Guoyu" and "Putonghua". Thus, scientific and technological terminology shows especially great variance between "Putonghua" and both Standard "Guoyu" and non-standard Taiwanese Mandarin. 
In computer science, for instance, the differences are prevalent enough to hinder communication. Zhang (2000) selected four hundred core nouns from computer science and found 58.25% are identical in Standard and Taiwanese Mandarin, while 21.75% were "basically" or "entirely" different.
As cross-strait relations began to improve in the early 21st century, direct interaction between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese increased, and some vocabulary began to merge, especially by means of the Internet. For example, the words "píngjǐng" 瓶頸 'bottleneck (in a production process, etc.)' and "zuòxiù" 作秀 'to grandstand, show off' were originally unique to Taiwanese Mandarin, but have since become widely used in mainland China. Likewise, Taiwanese Mandarin users have incorporated mainland phrases and speech patterns as well. For example, Taiwanese Mandarin traditionally uses the word "guǎndào" 管道 for a figurative "channel" (as in "communications channel", etc.), as opposed to "qúdào" 渠道 in the mainland, but "qúdào" has become common in Taiwan as well.
The following is a small selection of vocabulary items that distinct separate in "Guoyu" and "Putonghua". 
In some cases, the same word might carry slightly different connotations or usage patterns, and may be polysemous in one form of Mandarin but not the other. For example, "lǒngluò" 籠絡 in Taiwan's "Guoyu" means 'to convince, win over', but in mainland "Putonghua", it carries a negative connotation (cf. 'beguile, coax'). "Kuāzhāng" 誇張 means 'to exaggerate,' but in Taiwan, it can also be used to express exclamation at something absurd or overdone, e.g., "(他們) 居然到現在還沒回來, 是不是太誇張了" '(They) still haven't even come back yet, isn't that absurd?'
Words specific to Taiwanese Mandarin.
Authors of the "Cross-Straits Dictionary" (《两岸差异词词典》) estimate there are about 2000 words unique to Taiwanese Mandarin, around 10% of which come from Hokkien. Likewise, Standard Mandarin in the mainland has vocabulary that is unknown in Taiwan.
Some of these vocabulary differences stem from different social, political, and other conditions or concepts not present in the other area, e.g. "fúcǎi" 福彩, a common abbreviation for the China Welfare Lottery of the People's Republic of China, or "shíbāpā" 十八趴, which refers to the 18% preferential interest rate on civil servants' pension funds in Taiwan. (趴 pā used as "percent" also being unique to Taiwanese Mandarin.) 
Additionally, many terms unique to Taiwanese Mandarin were adopted from Japanese both as a result of its close proximity (to Okinawa) as well as Taiwan's status as a Japanese territory in the first half of the 20th century.
In other cases, the concepts might exist in both China and Taiwan, but one side might not have a specific term for it; for example, 'flight safety' is commonly abbreviated as "fēi'ān" 飛安 in Taiwan, but this term is not used in the mainland.
Particles.
Spoken Taiwanese Mandarin uses a number of Taiwan specific (but not exclusive) final particles, such as 囉 (luō), 嘛 (ma), 喔 (ō), 耶 (yē), 咧 (lie), 齁 (hō), 咩 (mei), 唷 (yō), etc.
In informal writing, Taiwanese Mandarin speakers may replace possessive particles "de" 的 or "zhī" 之 with the Japanese particle "no" の in hiragana (usually read as "de"), which serves a nearly identical grammatical role. "No" is often used in advertising, where it evokes a sense of playfulness and fashionability, and handwriting, because it is easier to write.
Loan words.
Loan words may differ between Putonghua and Taiwanese Mandarin. Different characters or methods may also be chosen for transliteration (phonetical or semantical), even the number of characters may differ. For example, former U.S. President Barack Obama's surname is called "Àobāmǎ" in Putonghua and or "Ōubāmǎ" in Guoyu. 
From Taiwanese Hokkien.
The terms " "agōng"" and " "amà"" are more commonly heard than the standard Mandarin terms "yéye" (paternal grandfather), "wàigōng" (maternal grandfather), "nǎinai" (paternal grandmother) and "wàipó" (maternal grandmother).
Some local foods usually are referred to using their Hokkien names. These include:
List of Taiwanese Hokkien words commonly found in local Mandarin-language newspapers and periodicals:
From Japanese.
Japanese loanwords based on phonetics, transliterated using Chinese characters with similar pronunciation in Mandarin or Taiwanese Hokkien.
Grammar.
For non-recurring events, the construction involving ("yǒu") is used where the sentence final particle ("le") would normally be applied to denote perfect. For instance, Taiwanese Mandarin more commonly uses "" to mean "Have you seen a doctor?" whereas Putonghua uses "". This is due to the influence of Hokkien grammar, which uses ("ū") in a similar fashion. For recurring or certain events, however, both Taiwanese and Mainland Mandarin use the latter, as in "", meaning "Have you eaten?"
Another example of Hokkien grammar's influence on both Guoyu and Taiwan Mandarin is the use of ("huì") as "to be" (a copula) before adjectives, in addition to the usual meanings "would" or "will". Compare typical ways to render "Are you hot?" and "I am (not) hot" in Putonghua, Guoyu, and Taiwanese Hokkien:
Further resources.
Transliteration and romanization of Hokkien done with reference to: 