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'Ph-ōe-jī' ('POJ') () is an orthography in the Latin alphabet created and introduced to Fujian and Taiwan by Presbyterian missionaries in the 19th century. POJ is a popular orthography for the Taiwanese language or Min Nan in general. A version called '' exists for Hakka and is particularly well-suited for the Siyen dialect; the counterpart for Min Dong is Bàng-uâ-cê.

Contents

Examples

The current system

Initials

Finals

Tones

Comparison chart

Origins of the name

History of Ph-ōe-jī

Books in Ph-ōe-jī

Suppression under Japanese rule

Development since the 1990s

Further reading

Examples

POJ	Translation	Audio File
Sian-siⁿ kóng, ha̍k-seng tiām-tiām thiaⁿ.	The teacher talks, the students quietly listen.
Kin-á-jit hit-ê cha-bó· gín-á lâi góan tau khòaⁿ góa.	Today that girl came to my house to see me.
Thài-khong pêng-iú, lín-hó. Lín chia̍h-pá bē? Ū-êng, to̍h lâi gún chia chē ô·!	Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.	Listen (from NASA Voyager)

The current system

In POJ, the traditional list of letters is
:a b ch chh e g h i j k kh l m n ng o o· p ph s t th (ts) u
Twenty-four in all, including the obsolete ''ts'', which was used to represent the modern ''ch'' at some places. The additional necessities are the nasal symbol '' (superscript n; the rare capital form ''^N'' is used for ALL CAPS text, such as book titles or section headings), and the tonal diacritics.
Ph-ōe-jī in its present form has 17 initials, 18 finals and 7 tones.

Initials

b, ch, chh, g, h, j, k, kh, l, m, n, ng, p, ph, s, t, th
Note that unlike their typical interpretation in modern English language, ''b'' and ''g'' are voiced and unaspirated, whereas ''p'', ''k'', and ''t'' are plain unvoiced. ''ph'', ''kh'', and ''th'' are unvoiced and aspirated, corresponding closer to ''p'', ''k'', and ''t'' in English. This choice of notation may be attributed to the European origin of the first scholars to promote romanization.

Finals

★ Vowels: a, i, u, e, o, o·

★ Diphthongs: ai, au, ia, iu, io, ui, oa, oe

★ Triphthongs: iau, oai

★ Nasals: m, n, ng
The nasals ''m, n,'' and ''ng'' can be appended to any of the vowels and some of the diphthongs.
In addition, ''m'' and ''ng'' can function as independent syllables by themselves.
The stops ''h'', ''k'', ''p'' and ''t'' can appear as the last letter in a syllable, in which case they are pronounced as unreleased stops. (The final ''h'' in POJ stands for a glottal stop.)

Tones

Tones are expressed by diacritics; checked syllables (i.e. those ending with glottal stops) are followed by the letter h. Where diacritics are not technically available, e.g. on some parts of the internet, tone numbers may be used instead.
# a (yinping)
# á (shangsheng)
# à (yinqu)
# ah (yinru)
# â (yangping)
# -
# ā (yangqu)
# h (yangru)
Examples for the seven tones: chhiū 象 (elephant), pà 豹 (leopard), bé 馬 (horse), ti 豬 (pig), chôa 蛇 (snake), ah 鴨 (duck), lk 鹿 (deer)

Comparison chart

Origins of the name

According to Tiu Hk-khiam (張學謙), the name Ph-ōe-jī, which literally means "script for the spoken language", is used to discriminate it from the other major written forms of the Chinese language, namely Literary Chinese and Vernacular Chinese. Literary Chinese was used in poems and essays throughout Chinese history prior to the May 4 Movement. Since then, Vernacular Chinese, is now used widely in China and other places where Chinese migrants have settled. Both Vernacular Chinese and Ph-ōe-jī corresponds to some form of spoken Chinese, the former being Mandarin, and the latter being Taiwanese.
Ph-ōe-jī is also called the 'Church Romanization', but advocates of Ph-ōe-jī do not support the use of this name. This is chiefly because it implies the system is used mainly in the context of the Church, but in fact Ph-ōe-jī is often used in other contexts.

History of Ph-ōe-jī

Ph-ōe-jī, as a romanization system in Taiwan, was preceded by the script found in the Sinckan Manuscripts (which literally means "Language of the New Port"), which originated in the 17th century during when Taiwan was under Dutch influence/colonial rule. Sinckan scripts were used up till the 19th century. Ph-ōe-jī, as a romanization system, can be applied not only to the aboriginal languages of Taiwan, but also to the Hoklo and Hakka languages.
In 1860, under the Treaties of Tianjin, foreign missionaries were allowed to preach in China. Catholic and Protestant missionaries flocked to Taiwan soon after. Churches, most prominently the Presbyterian Church, began advocating the use of Ph-ōe-jī. In 1865, Dr James L. Maxwell (1836-1921) spearheaded the missionary movement, setting up a missionary base in Tainan.
Actually, before these missionaries went to Taiwan, they had already been in South-eastern China and in the migrant Chinese communities in South-east Asia for a long time, and had begun romanizing the Min-nan and Hakka languages. Many dictionaries have been published. One, Rev. William Campbell's ''A Dictionary of the Amoy Vernacular, spoken throughout the prefectures of Chin-chiu, Chiang-chiu and Formosa'' 廈門音新字典, Ē-MG IM Ê JĪ-TIÁN), published 1913, is still in use today in Taiwan.
While Ph-ōe-jī was originally a missionary tool for Christian missions, it also has the practical benefits of being easy to read, learn and write. According to Tiu Hk-khiam, Ph-ōe-jī even helps the learning of Chinese characters.

Books in Ph-ōe-jī

Due to its Christian origins, Christian works make up a significant proportion of all works in Ph-ōe-jī. The first New Testament in Ph-ōe-jī (Lán ê Kiù-chú Iâ-so͘ Ki-tok ê Sin-iok) was published in 1873. The Old Testament (Kū-iok ê Sèng-keng) was published later in 1884. The publication of these books was a driving force for the spread of the Church. The first of the Prefecture of Taiwan Church Newsletter, published 1885, was also written in Ph-ōe-jī.
Apart from Christianity, works in such areas as Literature, Mathematics, Medicine have also been published in Ph-ōe-jī.

Suppression under Japanese rule

The 1880s was the peak period of Ph-ōe-jī's development, with ten thousands of users. An important contributing factor was that the Qing Dynasty government did not suppress its usage. So great was its growth was that at the end of Qing rule, usage of Ph-ōe-jī was not limited to the Presbyterians only, but also attained much usage in the general population.
Nevertheless, as Taiwan became a Japanese colony, the use of Ph-ōe-jī was suppressed in preference to katakana. In 1922, anti-Japanese movements led to the establishment of the Taiwanese Cultural Association. Following which, Chhoà Poê-hoé enthusiastically proposed to the association to designate promoting of Ph-ōe-jī as one of its main tasks, which it took up in 1924. The associate decided to publish books in Ph-ōe-jī. However, Chhoà met a setback when he went up to the Japanese colonial government to apply for a permit start study classes on Ph-ōe-jī. Not only was the proposal overthrown by the Japanese, but the Japanese police undertook violent measures to silence and ban it.
Since then, the Japanese attitude toward the Taiwanese tongue became all too obvious. The Taiwan Church Newsletter (台灣教會公報, formerly Prefecture of Taiwan Church Newsletter [Tâi-oân-hú-siâ Kàu-hōe-pò; 台灣府城教會報]), written in Ph-ōe-jī, was banned during World War Two. This is because the spread of Japanese was hampered by the use of Ph-ōe-jī. When World War Two broke out, Japan finally took greater steps to suppress the use of even the Taiwanese tongue itself.
When the KMT took over China, it took similar steps to enforce use of the national language, Mandarin, while suppressing use of Ph-ōe-jī. Numerous examples illustrate the KMT's attack on the use of Ph-ōe-jī. In 1969, it forbade its use in the Church Newsletter. In 1973, copies of Embree's Taiwanese-English Dictionary were confiscated and banned. In 1975, new translations of the Bible into Ph-ōe-jī were also banned. In 1984 the Ministry of Education wrote a letter to Internal Affairs to prohibit its use when preaching. Other material in Ph-ōe-jī was soon outlawed too.

Development since the 1990s

After the lifting of martial law, Ph-ōe-jī began to experience a revival as a result of efforts made by supporters of the "Mother Tongue Movement." In 1990 a few counties governed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) began to use texts written in Ph-ōe-jī for teach elementary school children Taiwanese. This represented the first official instance of Ph-ōe-jī entering the public schools. At this time, the KMT changed its strategy against Ph-ōe-jī, and the Kuomintang-supported Mandarin Promotion Council promoted an alternate romanization scheme, the Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA) in direct opposition to Ph-ōe-jī. The result was internal conflict among Taiwanese language supporters.
However, the mother tongue movement continued to experiment with Taiwanese writing utilizing different romanization schemes, including Ph-ōe-jī, printing various items including the news. Moreover, as digital text became more and more important, Taiwanese supporters began a push to modernize Taiwanese and make it more suitable for digital use. For instance, there are already a number of software packages related to Ph-ōe-jī, and additionally there is an online Ph-ōe-jī dictionary and encyclopedia. In June of 2004, the International Standards Organization (ISO) inserted all of the symbols of Ph-ōe-jī into Unicode following an application by Tè Khái-sū, Tân Pek-tiong, and Tân-Tē Hông-giâu, with help from Michael Everson.

Further reading

★ Chiung, W.-V. (2000). ''Peh-oe-ji, a childish writing?'' Cambridge, Mass: North American Taiwan Studies Association.