Pe̍h-ōe-jī
Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Taiwanese Hokkien: [pe˩ˀ o̯e̞˩ d͡ʑi˧] , English approximation: /ˌpɛɔɪdʒiː/ PEH-oy-JEE; abbr. POJ; lit. 'vernacular writing'), sometimes known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min,[2] particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.[3]
This article is about the Hokkien romanisation system. For other uses of these hanzi, see 白話字.
Pe̍h-ōe-jī
Church Romanization
since the 1830s
BCP 47 variant subtag: pehoeji[1]
Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News.
During Japanese rule (1895–1945), the use of pe̍h-ōe-jī was suppressed and Taiwanese kana encouraged; it faced further suppression during the Kuomintang martial law period (1947–1987). In Fujian, use declined after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (1949) and by the early 21st century the system was not in general use there. However, Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of Southern Min, and native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan are among those that continue to use pe̍h-ōe-jī. Full computer support was achieved in 2004 with the release of Unicode 4.1.0, and POJ is now implemented in many fonts, input methods, and is used in extensive online dictionaries.
Versions of pe̍h-ōe-jī have been devised for other Southern Chinese varieties, including Hakka and Teochew Southern Min. Other related scripts include Pha̍k-oa-chhi for Gan, Pha̍k-fa-sṳ for Hakka, Bǽh-oe-tu for Hainanese, Bàng-uâ-cê for Fuzhou, Pe̍h-ūe-jī for Teochew, Gṳ̿ing-nǎing Lô̤-mǎ-cī for Northern Min, and Hing-hua̍ báⁿ-uā-ci̍ for Pu-Xian Min.
In 2006, the Taiwanese Romanization System (Tâi-lô), a government-sponsored successor based on pe̍h-ōe-jī, was released. Despite this, native language education, and writing systems for Taiwanese, have remained a fiercely debated topic in Taiwan.
POJ laid the foundation for the creation of new literature in Taiwan. Before the 1920s, many people had already written literary works in POJ,[4] contributing significantly to the preservation of Southern Min vocabulary since the late 19th century. On October 14, 2006, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan announced the Taiwanese Romanization System or Tâi-lô based on POJ as the standard spelling system for Southern Min.
Pe̍h-ōe-jī
Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Pe̍h-ōe-lī, Pe̍͘h-ōa-jī
Vernacular writing
Báihuàzì
Báihuàzì
ㄅㄞˊ ㄏㄨㄚˋ ㄗˋ
Pai2-hua4-tzu4
Bái-huà-zìh
Poe平 ho入 zî平
Pha̍k-oa-chhi
Pha̍k-fa-sṳ
baahk wá jih
baak6 waa2 zi6
Pe̍h-ōe-jī, Pe̍h-ōe-lī, Pe̍͘h-ōa-jī
Pe̍h-uē-jī
Béhwêzzî
Bêh8 uê7 ri7
Bǽh-oe-tu
Bàh-uâ-cê
Due to POJ's origins in the Christian church, much of the material in the script is religious in nature, including several Bible translations, books of hymns, and guides to morality. The Tainan Church Press, established in 1884, has been printing POJ materials ever since, with periods of quiet when POJ was suppressed in the early 1940s and from around 1955 to 1987. In the period to 1955, over 2.3 million volumes of POJ books were printed,[89] and one study in 2002 catalogued 840 different POJ texts in existence.[90] Besides a Southern Min version of Wikipedia in the orthography,[91] there are teaching materials, religious texts, and books about linguistics, medicine and geography.
One of the most popular modern ways of writing Taiwanese is by using a mixed orthography[102] called Hàn-lô[103] (simplified Chinese: 汉罗; traditional Chinese: 漢羅; pinyin: Hàn-Luó; lit. 'Chinese-Roman'), and sometimes Han-Romanization mixed script, a style not unlike written Japanese or (historically) Korean.[104] In fact, the term Hàn-lô does not describe one specific system, but covers any kind of writing in Southern Min which features both Chinese characters and romanization.[102] That romanization is usually POJ, although recently some texts have begun appearing with Taiwanese Romanization System (Tâi-lô) spellings too. The problem with using only Chinese characters to write Southern Min is that there are many morphemes (estimated to be around 15 percent of running text)[105] which are not definitively associated with a particular character. Various strategies have been developed to deal with the issue, including creating new characters, allocating Chinese characters used in written Mandarin with similar meanings (but dissimilar etymology) to represent the missing characters, or using romanization for the "missing 15%".[106] There are two rationales for using mixed orthography writing, with two different aims. The first is to allow native speakers (almost all of whom can already write Chinese characters) to make use of their knowledge of characters, while replacing the missing 15% with romanization.[102] The second is to wean character literates off using them gradually, to be replaced eventually by fully romanized text.[107] Examples of modern texts in Hàn-lô include religious, pedagogical, scholarly, and literary works, such as:
POJ has been adapted for several other varieties of Chinese, with varying degrees of success. For Hakka, missionaries and others have produced a Bible translation, hymn book, textbooks, and dictionaries.[110] Materials produced in the orthography, called Pha̍k-fa-sṳ, include:
A modified version of POJ has also been created for Teochew.[111]
