page_title: Pe̍h-ōe-jī
section_title: Current status
hierarchical_section_title: Pe̍h-ōe-jī / Current status
caption_attribution_description: English: Shelf of books which use the Pe̍h-ōe-jī romanisation system for Southern Min/Taiwanese.
context_page_description: Pe̍h-ōe-jī is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien and Amoy Hokkien. 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.
  Other related scripts include Pha̍k-oa-chhi for Gan, Pha̍k-fa-sṳ for Hakka, Bǽh-oe-tu for Hainanese, Bàng-uâ-cê for Foochow, Pêh-uē-jī for Teochew, Gṳ̿ing-nǎing Lô̤-mǎ-cī for Northern Min, and Hing-hua̍ báⁿ-uā-ci̍ for Pu-Xian Min.
  During Taiwan under Japanese rule, the use of Pe̍h-ōe-jī was suppressed and it faced further countermeasures during the Kuomintang martial law period.
context_section_description: Most native Southern Min speakers in Taiwan are unfamiliar with POJ or any other writing system, commonly asserting that "Taiwanese has no writing", or, if they are made aware of POJ, considering romanization as the "low" form of writing, in contrast with the "high" form (Chinese characters). For those who are introduced to POJ alongside Han-lo and completely Chinese character-based systems, a clear preference has been shown for all-character systems, with all-romanization systems at the bottom of the preference list, likely because of the preexisting familiarity of readers with Chinese characters.
  POJ remains the Taiwanese orthography "with the richest inventory of written work, including dictionaries, textbooks, literature [...] and other publications in many areas". A 1999 estimate put the number of literate POJ users at around 100,000, and secular organizations have been formed to promote the use of romanization among Taiwanese speakers.
  Outside Taiwan, POJ is rarely used. For example, in Fujian, Xiamen University uses a romanization known as Bbánlám pìngyīm, based on Pinyin. In other areas where Hokkien is spoken, such as Singapore, the Speak Mandarin Campaign is underway to actively discourage people from speaking Hokkien or other non-Mandarin varieties in favour of switching to Mandarin instead.
  In 2006, Taiwan's Ministry of Education chose an official romanization for use in teaching Southern Min in the state school system. POJ was one of the candidate systems, along with Daighi tongiong pingim, but a compromise system, the Taiwanese Romanization System or Tâi-Lô, was chosen in the end. Tâi-Lô retains most of the orthographic standards of POJ, including the tone marks, while changing the troublesome ⟨o͘⟩ character for ⟨oo⟩, swapping ⟨ts⟩ for ⟨ch⟩, and replacing ⟨o⟩ in diphthongs with ⟨u⟩. Supporters of Taiwanese writing are in general deeply suspicious of government involvement, given the history of official suppression of native languages, making it unclear whether Tâi-Lô or POJ will become the dominant system in the future.
caption: Some books which use pe̍h-ōe-jī, including textbooks, dictionaries, a bible, poetry, and academic works
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