User:Yli11/Language selection
I would like to work with Kangze Peng (Steven).[1] Below are the three languages I want to work on and some first-step research as required:
Taiwanese
1. Language Typology Taiwanese (Taiwanese Hokkien for distinction) is a Sinitic language belonging to the Southern Min branch, distinct from Mandarin with different phonology and vocabulary. It is a tonal, monosyllabic-based language with a high degree of code-switching with Taiwanese Mandarin. Key features include complex sandhi rules, lexical tones, and significant Japanese, Malay, and Indigenous loanwords. it relies on word order and specific particles rather than inflectional morphemes to express grammatical relationships. Therefore, it aligns with the description of Analytical Languages (Isolated Languages). Words generally do not change form for tense, gender, or number. Lexicon-wise, it is influenced, though different with many Sino languages. Whereas Mandarin attaches a syllabic suffix to the singular pronoun to make a collective form, Taiwanese pronouns are collectivized through nasalization. It also contains significantly more Japanese loanwords as a result of colonization. [2] Taiwanese shares ISO code with other Southern Min (Hokkien) variants, its code is nan.
2. Influence and Status It is mutually intelligible with the Amoy (the Xiamen variant) and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in China, and with Philippine Hokkien to the south in the Philippines, spoken altogether by about 3 million people. The mass popularity of Hokkien entertainment media from Taiwan has given prominence to the Taiwanese variety of Hokkien, especially since the 1980s.
3. Written System and Text Availability Until the late 19th century, Taiwanese speakers wrote mostly in Classical Chinese, although songbooks using Han characters are attested from the 1820s. Among many systems of writing Taiwanese using Latin characters, the most used is called Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) and was developed in the 19th century, while the Taiwanese Romanization System (Tâi-lô) has been officially promoted since 2006 by Taiwan's Ministry of Education. Nonetheless, Taiwanese speakers nowadays most commonly write in Mandarin, though many of the same characters are also used to write Taiwanese.[3] The Ministry of Education also has a dictionary provided: https://sutian.moe.edu.tw/zh-hant/[4].
Southern Min (Hokkien)
1. Language Typology In overall terms of its typology, Southern Min appears to behave like Sinitic languages in general, being analytic in tendency. Thus, it does not possess inflectional paradigms for case, gender, tense, number or person. Nonetheless, it also shows agglutinative features, including a substantial inventory of affixes and clitics used on nouns and verbs, a proclivity for compounding and reduplication, but also a propensity for fusion through syllable contraction. Structurally speaking, there are many word types, starting with words constituted of a simple monomorphemic monosyllable and moving through combinations of root + affix to polysyllabic compounds and reduplicated forms. [5]
2. Influence and Status It is native to and originating from the Minnan region in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern China, with roughly 5 million speakers of its variants [6]. (Code: ISO 639-3: nan). Hokkien is also widely spoken within the overseas Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Brunei, Vietnam, and elsewhere across the world. Mutual intelligibility between Hokkien dialects varies, but they are still held together by ethnolinguistic identity. Its writing system uses Sinographs. In maritime Southeast Asia, Hokkien historically served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups, and it remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, and Brunei. [7]
3. Written Text Availability While unlike Taiwanese Hokkien that has the official status recognized by the state, there are popular documented texts remained. Examples include Koa-á-chheh (Min Nan Chinese: 歌仔冊, lit. 'song book'), a form of vernacular literature of Hokkien language written in Chinese characters. Hokkien can be written in the Latin script using one of several systems. A popular system is POJ, developed first by Presbyterian missionaries in China and later by the indigenous Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. Use of POJ has been actively promoted since the late 19th century, and it was used by Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News. A more recent system is Tâi-lô, which was adapted from POJ. Since 2006, it has been officially promoted by Taiwan's Ministry of Education and taught in Taiwanese schools. Xiamen University has also developed a system based on Pinyin called Bbánlám pìngyīm. The use of a mixed script of Chinese characters and Latin letters is also seen.
Chuukese
1. Language Typology Chuukese is an Austronesian language of the Micronesian subgroup spoken primarily in Chuuk State of the Federated States of Micronesia. Typologically, it exhibits a predominantly verb-initial (VSO/VOS) word order, nominative–accusative alignment, and an aspect-prominent verbal system in which tense is largely inferred from discourse. Morphologically, Chuukese is moderately agglutinative and largely suffixing, with verbal agreement markers indexing subjects and a productive system of reduplication encoding aspectual, distributive, and intensity-related meanings. Nominal morphology is relatively limited but typologically salient in its strict distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, realized through possessive suffixes and classifier constructions. Phonologically, the language has a small inventory with contrastive vowel length and predominantly CV syllable structure. Overall, Chuukese exemplifies core Oceanic typological patterns while maintaining a degree of morphological regularity that makes it particularly suitable for computational modeling and low-resource linguistic analysis.[8]
2. Influence and Status Chuukese is a Chuukic language of the Austronesian language family spoken primarily on the islands of Chuuk in the Caroline Islands in Micronesia. There are communities of speakers on Pohnpei and Guam. Estimates show that there are about 45,900 speakers in Micronesia. It is one of the dialects making up the Chuukic subgroup of Micronesian languages, together with its close relatives like Woleaian and Carolinian. The language is used as a first language by all in the ethnic community. It is used as a language of instruction in education.
3. Written Script and Tax Availability Chuukese's writing system is the Latin Script. Chuukese is also heavily influenced by borrowed words from English, Japanese and Spanish. Since most people in Micronesia speak English, it’s no surprise it has had an impact, with many English loanwords making their way into Chuukese. English’s influence stems from the fact that, after World War II, the FSM became a United Nations Trust Territory governed by the United States. As such, English is widely spoken and used both in government and the media, as well as in schools. It’s not just English, though. Chuukese has also absorbed many Japanese words, since it was under Japanese administration under the League of Nations mandate between 1914 and 1944. Prior to this, Micronesia was a German protectorate. Spain was the first colonial power to claim Micronesia, back in the 16th century. It retained considerable influence until it sold the islands to Germany in 1899. ([9]),,,
