Taiwanese language

Taiwanese Hokkien
臺灣話 / 臺灣語 Tâi-oân-oē / Tâi-oân-gí / Tâi-oân-gú
Pronunciation	"Tâi-gí/Tâi-gú" in different pronunciations  [tai˧˩ g̃i˥˩] / [tai˧˩ g̃u˥˩] (coastal) [tai˧˧ g̃i˥˩] / [tai˧˧ g̃u˥˩] (inland)
Native to	Taiwan
Native speakers	15 million (1997)
Language family	Sino-Tibetan Chinese Min Southern Min Hokkien Taiwanese Hokkien
Writing system	Latin (pe̍h-ōe-jī), Han characters (traditional)
Official status
Official language in	None, de facto status in Taiwan as one of the statutory languages for public transport announcements and for the naturalization test in Taiwan.
Regulated by	None.
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
Linguasphere	79-AAA-jh
Proportion of residents aged 6 or older using Hokkien at home in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen & Matsu in 2010
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[tai˧˩ g̃i˥˩] / [tai˧˩ g̃u˥˩] (coastal)
[tai˧˧ g̃i˥˩] / [tai˧˧ g̃u˥˩] (inland)

Taiwanese Hokkien (Chinese: ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tâi-oân Bân-lâm-gú; translated as Taiwanese Min Nan), commonly known as Taiwanese (; Tâi-oân-oē / ; Tâi-oân-gú), is a branched-off variant of Hokkien spoken natively by about 70% of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by the Taiwanese Hoklo people, who descended from immigrants from southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty. The Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) romanization is a popular orthography for this variant of Hokkien.

Taiwanese Hokkien is generally similar to the speeches of Amoy, Quanzhou and Zhangzhou, as well as their dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia, but differences occur in terms of vocabulary and various pronunciations of words, in many cases significantly enough to be unintelligible among each other. However, due to the mass popularity of Hokkien entertainment media from Taiwan, Taiwanese has become a prominent variety of Hokkien, especially since the 1980s.

Taiwanese Hokkien is a branched-off variety of Hokkien, a group of Southern Min dialects. Like many Min varieties, it has distinct literary and colloquial layers of vocabulary, often associated with formal and informal registers respectively. The literary layer can be traced to the late Tang dynasty, and can thus be related to Middle Chinese. In contrast, the colloquial layers of Min varieties are believed to have branched from the mainstream of Chinese around the time of the Han dynasty.