“Dear Mr. Derbyshire–A slight correction: Tai Yu [the common spoken

language opf Taiwan] is a slightly mutated version of Xiamen (City) dialect

not Fujian dialect. As you may know, the other main dialect of Fujian

Province is Fuzhou, which is a completely different dialect and

incomprehensible to speakers of the min nan dialects of which Tai Yu is

one.”

Got that? “Dialect” is not a very happy usage in the Chinese context. It

brings to an American mind something like the difference between Texas

speech and Bostonian. These dialects are much farther apart than that, more

like separate languages. (The whole issue confused by the fact that WRITTEN

Chinese, being non-alphabetic, can be used to represent all of them.)