Taiwanese Hokkien

Taiwanese Hokkien (/ˈhɒkiɛn/ HOK-ee-en, US also /ˈhoʊkiɛn/ HOH-kee-en), or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taigi (Chinese: 臺語; Tâi-lô: Tâi-gí), Taiwanese Southern Min (Chinese: 臺灣閩南語; Tâi-lô: Tâi-uân Bân-lâm-gí), Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.

Taiwanese is generally similar to Hokkien spoken in Amoy, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou, as well as dialectal forms used in Southeast Asia, such as Singaporean Hokkien, Penang Hokkien, Philippine Hokkien, Medan Hokkien, and Southern Peninsular Malaysian Hokkien. It is mutually intelligible with the Amoy and Zhangzhou varieties at the mouth of the Jiulong River in mainland 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.