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If most people aren't able to use those systems, I think it's about as good as unwritten, especially if the target audience is your everyday speaker who wouldn'

by vore 4y ago

If most people aren't able to use those systems, I think it's about as good as unwritten, especially if the target audience is your everyday speaker who wouldn't be familiar.

tokinonagare 4y ago
I disagree. It makes a big difference: creating a writing system is not a simple as it seems and it's a task that require quite a lot of work, especially when there is huge dialectal variations in-between dialects. When a system already exist it means there is already a bunch of tools available such as dictionaries, input method[1], a corpus of texts even if small or medium, including text books. That can be used both for AI and teaching. This make the task way less daunting than doing everything from scratch. In case of Taiwanese, there is a small but existing corpus of literature, as a 5 seconds Google/Wikipedia search shows[2][3]. [1] https://aclanthology.org/O16-1026.pdf https://aclanthology.org/O16-1026.pdf [2] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%BA%E8%AA%9E%E7%99%BD%E8%A9%B1%E6%96%87#%E4%BB%A3%E8%A1%A8%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%BA%E8%AA%9E%E7%99%BD%E8... [3] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B0%E6%96%87%E5%B0%8F%E8%AA%AA https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B0%E6%96%87%E5%B0%8F%E8...
Apocryphon 4y ago
Most people are able to use those systems, it’s just the demand to learn Hokkien/Min Nan/Taigi is fairly low and thus there’s nothing like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone support for the dialect, or many tutors nor language books for them.
samus 4y ago
The problem is that most speakers were never taught how to use these systems. Most people only learn Pinyin and written and spoken Standard Chinese in school. Cantonese survives and is thriving because it dominates as a spoken language in education and in public. Even so, only few people are familiar with any of the romanization systems for Cantonese. In Taiwan, Hokkien and other languages are not so established, and were even suppressed for some time. Therefore, it's not so surprising that even fewer people know about writing systems for these.

by vore 4y ago

If most people aren't able to use those systems, I think it's about as good as unwritten, especially if the target audience is your everyday speaker who wouldn't be familiar.

tokinonagare 4y ago

I disagree. It makes a big difference: creating a writing system is not a simple as it seems and it's a task that require quite a lot of work, especially when there is huge dialectal variations in-between dialects. When a system already exist it means there is already a bunch of tools available such as dictionaries, input method[1], a corpus of texts even if small or medium, including text books. That can be used both for AI and teaching. This make the task way less daunting than doing everything from scratch. In case of Taiwanese, there is a small but existing corpus of literature, as a 5 seconds Google/Wikipedia search shows[2][3]. [1] https://aclanthology.org/O16-1026.pdf https://aclanthology.org/O16-1026.pdf [2] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%BA%E8%AA%9E%E7%99%BD%E8%A9%B1%E6%96%87#%E4%BB%A3%E8%A1%A8%E4%BD%9C%E5%93%81 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%87%BA%E8%AA%9E%E7%99%BD%E8... [3] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B0%E6%96%87%E5%B0%8F%E8%AA%AA https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B0%E6%96%87%E5%B0%8F%E8...

Apocryphon 4y ago

Most people are able to use those systems, it’s just the demand to learn Hokkien/Min Nan/Taigi is fairly low and thus there’s nothing like Duolingo or Rosetta Stone support for the dialect, or many tutors nor language books for them.

samus 4y ago

The problem is that most speakers were never taught how to use these systems. Most people only learn Pinyin and written and spoken Standard Chinese in school. Cantonese survives and is thriving because it dominates as a spoken language in education and in public. Even so, only few people are familiar with any of the romanization systems for Cantonese. In Taiwan, Hokkien and other languages are not so established, and were even suppressed for some time. Therefore, it's not so surprising that even fewer people know about writing systems for these.