Why Write Penang Hokkien in Romanised Form

When I embarked on the journey to develop Taiji Romanisation, a writing system for Penang Hokkien, one of the earliest decisions I have to make is whether to use Chinese characters or to create one that is uniquely its own. It was not a difficult decision to make, for I easily settled to create a writing system for it.

One may say that part of the decision comes from my being from my own English background. That would not be untrue. Being English educated, I would personally prefer reading Penang Hokkien in romanised form. However, beyond my own personal preference, the decision to write in romanised form is also influenced by the romanised form of Penang Hokkien already in existence in the streets. This appears in the signages of food items at coffee shops and hawker centres, and in how the Chinese people spell their names.

I subscribe to the ideal of "one nation one heritage". When George Town was inscribed as a World Heritage Site, a great deal of attention was focused on its built heritage, while much of its intangible heritage remains neglected. One of these is Penang Hokkien. In my opinion, one of the crucial steps in developing this language is in making it accessible to all communities in the country. Rather than regarding Penang Hokkien as the intangible heritage of the Chinese in Penang, we should regard it as the shared heritage of all Malaysians. To make it a shared heritage, Penang Hokkien should be made easy to learn by all communities as well as any foreigner coming to Penang.

Some have argued that by developing Penang Hokkien as a romanised language, we are severing its ties to its Chinese heritage, and that we would lose our appreciation of the etymology of words in Hokkien. I counter such argument by pointing to Malay. Once upon a time, Malay was written only in jawi script. However, a romanised form was created, and was eventually made the official written form for Malay. Today, many people can be fluent in Malay without learning how to write it in jawi. This development has unlocked the language and made it more easily accessible by people of various communities. In the same vein, we should approach the development of Penang Hokkien.

Although any form of development to Penang Hokkien is important, the priority at the moment is to develop a written form for the language. An orthography for Penang Hokkien can be the basis for future literary works in the language. Without that, it will remain an oral language that is easily threatened with extinction. The orthography has to be more sophisticated than simply transcribing the sounds of the spoken language. I argue that the written language, being an artificial, created form of communication, has to be more precise than the spoken language, in order for it to convey nuances and depth of thought.

About this website

Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.