[Wikipedia-l] Re: Peh-oe-ji on minnan.wikipedia.org (clarification)

[Tim Starling]

I wrote:
> The Taiwanese people who write in zh.wikipedia.org 
> speak the exact same language as those who write on 
> minnan.wikipedia.org. That language is a form of Min Nan, referred to in 
> Taiwan as Ho-lo-oe.

Kaishu let me know on the wiki that this statement was misleading, so 
here is a clarification. There are several linguistic groups on Taiwan, 
including:

* Speakers of Ho-lo-oe
* Speakers of Mandarin
* Speakers of aboriginal languages and other dialects of Chinese

Of the speakers of Ho-lo-oe, most write using what we would call 
Traditional Chinese, a script which historically was promoted throughout 
East Asia by Chinese conquest and influence. A small minority of 
Ho-lo-oe speakers promote the use of latin-based orthographies, which 
follow phonetically from the spoken language. Such orthographies are 
referred to as "Peh-oe-ji", which means vernacular. The point I was 
trying to make with the quoted paragraph was that Ho-lo-oe speakers 
contribute to both zh.wikipedia.org and minnan.wikipedia.org.

-- Tim Starling