The following table contains all the licit spellings of POJ syllables, based on a number of sources.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 Taiwans first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News. In Fujian, use declined after the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China (1949) and in the early 21st century the system was not in general use there. Use of peh-e-j is now restricted to some Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of the language, and native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan. Full native computer support was developed in 2004, and users can now call on fonts, input methods, and extensive online dictionaries. Rival writing systems have been developed over time, and there is ongoing debate within the Taiwanese mother tongue movement as to which system should be used. Versions of peh-e-j have been devised for other languages, including Hakka and Teochew. Early documents point to the purpose of the creation of POJ as being pedagogical in nature, closely allied to educating Christian converts. The author inclines decidedly to the former opinion; having found, from uniform experience, that without strict attention to tones, it is impossible for a person to make himself understood in Hok-kn. Anglo Chinese Of The Amoy Dialect Manual Of TheFrontispiece of Dotys Anglo Chinese Manual of the Amoy Dialect (1853). Through personal communication and letters and articles printed in The Chinese Repository a consensus was arrived at for the new version of POJ, although Williams suggestions were largely not followed. Anglo Chinese Of The Amoy Dialect Manual Can ThereforeThe manual can therefore be regarded as the first presentation of a pre-modern POJ, a significant step onwards from Medhursts orthography and different from todays system in only a few details. From this point on various authors adjusted some of the consonants and vowels, but the system of tone marks from Dotys Manual survives intact in modern POJ. John Van Nest Talmage has traditionally been regarded as the founder of POJ among the community which uses the orthography, although it now seems that he was an early promoter of the system, rather than its inventor. S- gan siat pat-mih hoat-t, ng peh-e-j li n-chheh, h ln chng-lng kha khah khai bat. Lng m-thang phah-sg in-i i bat Khng-ch-j s- m-bin oh chit-h j; i m-thang kha-khin i, kng s gn- s-thak--. Therefore we have striven to print books in peh-e-j to help you to read. William Campbell described POJ as a step on the road to reading and writing Hanzi, claiming that to promote it as an independent writing system would inflame nationalist passions in China, where Hanzi were considered a sacred part of Chinese culture. Taking the other side, Thomas Barclay believed that literacy in POJ should be a goal rather than a waypoint. The first was that if you are to have a healthy, living Church it is necessary that all the members, men and women, read the Scriptures for themselves; second, that this end can never be attained by the use of the Chinese character; third, that it can be attained by the use of the alphabetic script, this Romanised Vernacular. Subsequently the Taiwan Prefectural City Church News, which first appeared in 1885 and was produced by Barclays Presbyterian Church of Taiwan Press, 24 became the first printed newspaper in Taiwan. Ernest Tipson s 1934 pocket dictionary was the first reference work to reflect this modern spelling. Between Medhursts dictionary of 1832 and the standardization of POJ in Tipsons time, there were a number of works published, which can be used to chart the change over time of peh-e-j: 27. The Mandarin Promotion Council produced booklets outlining versions of Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (Bopomofo) for writing the Taiwanese tongue, these being intended for newly arrived government officials from outside Taiwan as well as local Taiwanese. The first government action against native languages came in 1953, when the use of Taiwanese or Japanese for instruction was forbidden. The next move to suppress the movement came in 1955, when the use of POJ for proselytizing was outlawed. At that point in time there were 115,000 people literate in POJ in Taiwan, Fujian, and southeast Asia. In 1964 use of Taiwanese in schools or official settings was forbidden, 44 and transgression in schools punished with beatings, fines and humiliation. The Taiwan Church News (printed in POJ) was banned in 1969, and only allowed to return a year later when the publishers agreed to print it in Chinese characters. But we dont want it published as a book and sold publicly because of the Romanization it contains. Chinese should not be learning Chinese through Romanization. Also in the 1970s, a POJ New Testament translation known as the Red Cover Bible was confiscated and banned by the Nationalist regime. Official moves against native languages continued into the 1980s, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior decided in 1984 to forbid missionaries to use local dialects and romanizations in their work.
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