This study examines the intricate relationship between language ideology, Taiwanese identity, and the adoption of the romanized Taiwanese system (Pe?h-oe-ji) within the Taiwanese language (Tâigí) speaking community, against the predominance of Mandarin. It explores the multifaceted motivations of Tâigí users for preferring Pe?h-oe-ji, including…

This case study investigates the reading processes of two bilingual teachers who speak English as a second language and use different first languages--Mandarin Chinese and Korean. The two participants read researcher-selected digital texts in English and in their respective first language, retold the texts, and answered comprehension questions…

Jawi is the orthography in which Malay has been written since the Middle Ages, when it was adapted from the Arabic script. Introduced by Muslim traders, it was adapted to Malay phonology using diacritics that modified six letters. It was used until the Roman script (Rumi) brought in by European traders and colonisers began to supplant it in the…

Chinatowns, as neighborhoods for overseas ethnic Chinese, have garnered considerable scholarly attention from linguistic landscape (LL) researchers in recent years. These investigations tend to treat old immigrants who have been tied to the neighborhoods for generations as the key text producers of LL, with far too little attention paid to the LL…

This study investigates the effect of Facebook on Arabic language attrition, i.e., decrease in language proficiency, as exhibited in the use of Colloquial instead of Standard Arabic, use of foreign words although Arabic equivalents exist, and committing spelling errors. A sample of Facebook posts and a corpus of spelling errors on Facebook were…

This dissertation explores Bai language use in Jianchuan County, China. On the basis of interviews with 42 language users, transcripts of spontaneous conversation and elicited narratives, excerpts from Bai texts in an alphabetic orthography and Chinese characters, and six months of participant observation, I demonstrate how language users'…

Information and communication technology appears to have had a profound impact on language use in Japan. An important issue arising from this is said to be the increase in the use of Chinese characters (kanji) outside the official standard. This development has made a re-appraisal of the existing script policy necessary in order to accommodate the…

This paper describes how Chinese-English bilinguals in Taiwan use their languages in asynchronous computer-mediated communication, specifically, via Bulletin Board System (BBS) and email. The main data includes two types: emails collected from a social network and postings collected from two BBS websites. By examining patterns of language choice…

Author described efforts to modernize a system of writing, extremely difficult to teach and to learn, and assessed the benefits of changing from traditional characters to a Latin alphabet including the cost that would be involved: the separation of modern Chinese writing from the heritage of the past. (Editor/RK)

Based on travel to the People's Republic of China, language changes and reform are reported. New meanings of old expressions and new expressions are listed and discussed. Language reform consists of: popularization of Putonghua, simplification of the characters, and romanization of the Chinese Language. (SW)

Since the Japanese writing system seems to frighten secondary school students as a compulsory study, the author recommends teaching only Romanized Japanese at the high school level. (PMP)

Reviews the history and development of the Pinyin grapheme system for the transcription of Chinese, and contrasts Pinyin graphemes with those of several other systems for Chinese. It is argued that Pinyin should be accepted as the standard system for Chinese transcription. (JL)

The construction of an intermediate course in Mandarin Chinese for business purposes is discussed. Following an introduction in part one, part two considers the progress of trade relations between Taiwan, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the United States. Part three gives a brief review of materials already in print that might help in…