The article is not explicit about it - just saying "Taiwanese", which may or may not refer to Taiwanese Mandarin - but maybe the patients native tongue was not

The article is not explicit about it - just saying "Taiwanese", which may or may not refer to Taiwanese Mandarin - but maybe the patients native tongue was not Mandarin but Taigi/Hokkien (which is what IME people most often mean when they say just "Taiwanese" without qualifier) or even Hakka. While Taiwanese people not speaking Mandarin natively are somewhat rare abroad, it would explain the difficulties in interpretation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Hokkien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Hokkien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Taiwan