Hsinchu County
Hsinchu County romanized in various other ways, is a county in north-western Taiwan. The population of the county is Hakka. Zhubei is the county capital, where the government county office is located. A portion of the Hsinchu Science Park is located in Hsinchu County. Before the arrival of the Han Chinese, the Hsinchu area was home to Taokas plains aborigines, the Saisiyat, the Atayal. After the Spanish occupied northern Taiwan, Catholic missionaries arrived at Tek-kham in 1626. Minnanese and Hakka came and began to cultivate the land from the plains near the sea towards the river valleys and hills. In 1684, Zhuluo County was established during Qing more Han settled near Tek-kham. A Chinese city was established there in 1711 and renamed Hsinchu in 1875, it became part of Taipeh Prefecture. In the late 19th century, Hoklo people dominated the coastal plain area, forcing the Saisiyat and Atayal tribes to move to areas around Jianshi and Wufeng, while the Hakka and Taokas settled together in the river valleys and hills area.
Japanese occupation of Taiwan began after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Hsinchu became known as Shinchiku and, by 1920, its prefecture covered the areas of modern-day Hsinchu County and City and Taoyuan. After the handover of Taiwan from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945, Hsinchu County was established on 25 December 1945; the county's Xiangshan Township was incorporated into Hsinchu City on 1 July 1982. Hsinchu County is located at the northwest part of Taiwan Island, it borders Taoyuan City to the north, Miaoli County to the south, the Taiwan Strait to the west, Xueshan and Dabajian Mountain to the east. With an area spanning up to 1,427.59 km2, Hsinchu County area composed of uplands and mountains, except for the alluvial plains of the Fengshan River and Touqian River mouth area and some ancient river land. The average climate in Hsinchu County is mild. Hsinchu County controls 1 city, 3 urban townships, 6 rural townships and 2 mountain indigenous townships. Zhubei City is the seat of Hsinchu County which houses the Hsinchu County Government and Hsinchu County Council.
The incumbent Magistrate of Hsinchu County is Yang Wen-ke of the Kuomintang. The administrative division of the county are: Colors indicate the common language status of Hakka and Formosan languages within each division; the population of the county consists of Hakka, Hoklo and new immigrants. The Hakka people constituted around 84% of the total population in 2014, while the aborigines consisted of Atayal and Saisiyat people; as of January 2017, the total population was 547,794, with 267,599 females and 280,195 males in 187,644 households. After the founding of Hsinchu Science Park in 1980, a high number of high-tech industries began to grow and expand outside the park, attracting workers coming to work and settle in the county. Education in Hsinchu County is administered by the Education Department of Hsinchu County Government; the county is home to the Minghsin University of Science and Technology and Ta Hwa University of Science and Technology. Hsinchu County is home to the gas-fired Hsintao Power Plant with a capacity of 600 MW located in Guanxi Township.
Hsinchu County houses the Baoshan Dam, supplying cooling water for factories in the Hsinchu Science Park and neighboring Hsinchu City. The dam can contain water up to 5,470,000 m3 with a catchment area of 3.2 km2. Beipu Citian Temple Mount Dabajian Former Residence of Zhang Xueliang Green World Ecological Farm Leofoo Village Theme Park Little Ding-Dong Science Theme Park Rueylong Museum Shei-Pa National Park Tapung Old Fort Zhudong Animation and Comic Creative Park Zhudong Timber Industry Exhibition Hall Beipu Old Street Neiwan Old Street Emei Huge Buddha Statue The Hsinchu Station of the Taiwan High Speed Rail is located in the county at Zhubei City. Hsinchu County is crossed by three Taiwan Railways Administration lines, which are the Liujia Line, Neiwan Line and Western Line. Hebe Tien, singer-actress and a member of girl group S. H. E Joe Chen, actress Cyndi Wang, singer-actress Joanne Tseng, actress Landy Wen, singer Miu Chu, singer Chen Ying-git, singer Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan Santa Clara, United States Ipswich, Australia Hsinchu County Government website Hsinchu County Government website
Hokkien
Hokkien or Minnan language, is a Southern Min Chinese dialect group originating from the Minnan region in the south-eastern part of Fujian Province in Southeastern China, spoken there. It is spoken in Taiwan and by the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia, by other overseas Chinese all over the world, it is the mainstream form of Southern Min. It is related to Teochew, though it has limited mutual intelligibility with it, whereas it is more distantly related to other variants such as Putian dialect and Leizhou dialect due to historical influences. Hokkien served as the lingua franca amongst overseas Chinese communities of all dialects and subgroups in Southeast Asia, remains today as the most spoken variety of Chinese in the region, including in Singapore, Indonesia and some parts of Indochina; the Betawi Malay language, spoken by some five million people in and around the Indonesian capital Jakarta, includes numerous Hokkien loanwords due to the significant influence of the Chinese Indonesian diaspora, most of whom are of Hokkien ancestry and origin.
Chinese speakers of the Quanzhang variety of Southern Min refer to the mainstream Southern Min language as Bân-lâm-gú / Bân-lâm-ōe in Mainland China and Taiwan. Tâi-gí in Taiwan. Hok-kiàn-ōe in Burma, Singapore and Indonesia. Lán-lâng-ōe in the Philippines. In parts of Southeast Asia and in the English-speaking communities, the term Hokkien is etymologically derived from the Southern Min pronunciation for Fujian, the province from which the language hails. In Southeast Asia and the English press, Hokkien is used in common parlance to refer to the Southern Min dialects of southern Fujian, does not include reference to dialects of other Sinitic branches present in Fujian such as the Fuzhou dialect, Putian dialect, Northern Min, Gan Chinese or Hakka. In Chinese linguistics, these dialects are known by their classification under the Quanzhang division of Min Nan, which comes from the first characters of the two main Hokkien urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Hokkien originated in the southern area of Fujian province, an important center for trade and migration, has since become one of the most common Chinese varieties overseas.
The major pole of Hokkien varieties outside of Fujian is Taiwan, during the 200 years of Qing dynasty rule, thousands of immigrants from Fujian arrived yearly. The Taiwanese dialect has origins with the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou variants, but since the Amoy dialect known as the Xiamen dialect, is becoming the modern prestige standard for the language in Mainland China. Both Amoy and Xiamen come from the Chinese name of the city. There are many Minnan speakers among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia as well as in the United States. Many ethnic Han Chinese emigrants to the region were Hoklo from southern Fujian, brought the language to what is now Burma and present day Malaysia and Singapore. Many of the Minnan dialects of this region are similar to Xiamen dialect and Taiwanese Hokkien with the exception of foreign loanwords. Hokkien is the native language of up to 80% of the Chinese people in the Philippines, among, known locally as Lan-nang or Lán-lâng-oē. Hokkien speakers form the largest group of overseas Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines.
Southern Fujian is home to three principal Minnan Proper dialects: Chinchew, Chiangchew, originating from the cities of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Traditionally speaking, Quanzhou dialect spoken in Quanzhou is the Traditional Standard Minnan, it is the dialect, used in and Liyuan Opera and Nanying music. Being the Traditional Standard Minnan, Quanzhou dialect is considered to have the purest accent and the most conservative Minnan dialect. In the late 18th to the early 19th century, Xiamen became the principal city of southern Fujian. Xiamen dialect is adopted as the Modern Standard Minnan, it is a hybrid of the Zhangzhou dialects. It has played an influential role in history in the relations of Western nations with China, was one of the most learnt dialect of Quanzhang variety by Westerners during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century; the Modern Standard form of Quanzhang accent spoken around the city of Tainan in Taiwan is a hybrid of the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects, in the same way as the Amoy dialect.
All Quanzhang dialects spoken throughout the whole of Taiwan are collectively known as Taiwanese Hokkien or just the Taiwanese language. Used by a majority of the population, it bears much importance from a socio-political perspective, forming the second major pole of the language due to the popularity of Taiwanese-language media; the varieties of Hokkien in Southeast Asia originate from these dialects. The Singaporeans, Southern Malaysians and people in Indonesia's Riau and surrounding islands variant is from the Quanzh
Atayal people
The Atayal known as the Tayal and the Tayan, are a Taiwanese indigenous people. In 2014, the Atayal people numbered 85,888; this was 15.9% of Taiwan's total indigenous population, making them the third-largest indigenous group. The meaning of Atayal is "genuine person" or "brave man"; the first record of Atayal inhabitance is found near the upper reaches of the Zhuoshui River. However, during the late 17th century they crossed the Central Mountain Ranges into the wilderness of the east, they settled in the Liwu River valley. Seventy-nine Atayal villages can be found here. Taiwan is home of a number of Austronesian indigenous groups since before 4,000 BC. However, genetic analysis suggests that the different peoples may have different ancestral source populations originating in mainland Asia, developed in isolation from each other; the Atayal people are believed to have migrated to Taiwan from Southeast Asia. Genetic studies have found similarities between the Atayal and other people in the Philippines and Thailand, to a lesser extent with south China and Vietnam.
The Atayal are genetically distinct from the Amis people who are the largest indigenous group in Taiwan, as well as from the Han people, suggesting little mingling between these people. Studies on Mitochondrial DNA polymorphisms suggest ancient migrations of two lineages of the various peoples into Taiwan 11,000-26,000 years ago. Recent DNA studies show that the Lapita people and modern Polynesians have a common ancestry with the Atayal and the Kankanaey people of the northern Philippines; the Atayal are visibly different from the Han Chinese of Taiwan. Intermarriage with Chinese produced a significant number of Atayal-Chinese mixed offspring and celebrities such as Vivian Hsu, Vic Zhou, Yuming Lai, Kao Chin Su-mei. According to stories told by their elders, the first Atayal ancestors appeared when a stone, cracked apart. There were three people. One man and one woman who lived together for a long time and loved each other much, but the boy wouldn't dare approach her. Whereupon, the girl came up with an idea.
She left her home and found some coal with which to blacken her face so she could pose as a different girl. After several days, she crept back into their home and the boy mistook her for another girl and they lived ever after. Not long after, the couple bore children, fulfilling their mission of procreating the next generation; the Atayal custom of face tattooing may have come from the girl blackening her face in the story. The Atayal people have a well-developed culture, they lived by fishing, hunting and growing crops on burned-off mountain fields. Atayal practice crafts such as weaving, net knotting, woodworking, they have traditional musical instruments and dances. The Atayal are known as skilled warriors. In a practice illegal since the Japanese Colonial Era, to earn his facial tattoo a man had to bring back at least one human head; the Atayal were known to be fierce fighters as observed in the case of the Wushe Incident, in which the Atayal participated in an uprising against colonial Japanese forces.
Lalaw Behuw was the weapon of the Atayals. Traditional Aboriginal weapons have featured in movies; the Atayal are proficient weavers, incorporating symbolic patterns and designs on their traditional dress. The features are of geometric style, the colors are bright and dazzling. Most of the designs are horizontal lines. In Atayal culture, the horizontal lines represent the rainbow bridge which leads the dead to where the ancestors' spirits live. Argyles, on the other hand, represent ancestors' eyes protecting the Atayal; the favorite color of this culture is red because it represents power. The Atayal people are known for using facial tattooing and teeth filing in coming-of-age initiation rituals; the facial tattoo, in Squliq Tayal, is called ptasan. In the past both men and women had to show that they had performed a major task associated with an adult before their faces could be tattooed. For a man, he had to take the head of an enemy, showing his valor as a hunter to protect and provide for his people, while women had to be able to weave cloth.
A girl would learn to weave when she was about ten or twelve, she had to master the skill in order to earn her tattoo. Only those with tattoos could marry, after death, only those with tattoos could cross the hongu utux, or spirit bridge to the hereafter. Male tattooing is simple, with only two bands down the forehead and chin. Once a male came of age he would have his forehead tattooed. For the female, tattooing was done on the cheek from the ears across both cheeks to the lips forming a V shape. While tattooing on a man is quick, on a female it may take up to ten hours. Tattooing was performed only by female tattooists; the tattooing was performed using a group of needles lashed to a stick called atok tapped into the skin using a hammer called totsin. Black ash would be rubbed into the skin to create the tattoo. Healing could take up to a month; the Japanese banned the practice of tattooing in 1930 because of its association with headhunting. With the introduction of Christianity, the practice declined, tattoos are now only seen on the elderly though it is no longer banned.
However, some young people in recent years have attempted to revive the practice. By 2018 only one traditionally tattooed Atayal person survived, Lawa Piheg, tatt
Miaoli
Miaoli City is a county-administered city and the county seat of Miaoli County, Taiwan. Its name Miaoli was coined using two Hakka words and city, which phonetically approximate Pali from the Taokas language. Miaoli has a high percentage of Hakka people, it had the second highest residential price and the highest commercial price for land in Miaoli County as of 2004, at NT$28,601 per square meter and NT$63,317 per square meter, respectively. Miaoli Hsien was at first eliminated under Japanese rule. Bioritsu Cho was established in 1901, it was divided over Shinchiku Chō and Taichū Chō in 1909. From 1920 to 1945, Byōritsu Town, Enri Town and six villages were under the jurisdiction of Byōritsu District, under Shinchiku Prefecture. On 16 August 1950, Miaoli City was designed as the county seat of the newly established Miaoli County. On 25 December 1981, Miaoli Township was upgraded from township to a county-controlled city as Miaoli City; as of January 2017, the population of Miaoli City was estimated at 89,850.
The city is administered as 28 villages: Beimiao, Fuan, Fuxing, Gongjing, Jiangong, Jingmiao, Nanshi, Shangmiao, Shuiyuan, Weixin, Wensheng, Xinmiao, Yuhua, Yumiao and Zhongmiao. Miaoli County Government Miaoli County Council National United University Chiou Chang-hai Commemorative Monument Gongweishiu Tunnel Lai’s Chastity Stone Arch Martyr's Commemorative Tower Miaoli County Urban Planning Exhibition Center Miaoli Craft Park Miaoli Mountain Park Miaoli Railway Museum Thinking Mother Pavilion Yuching Temple TRA Miaoli Station TRA Nanshi Station Bus stations in the city is the Miaoli Bus Station of Hsinchu Bus. - Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Miaoli City Office
Simplified Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language; the government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s to encourage literacy. They are used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong and the Republic of China. While traditional characters can still be read and understood by many mainland Chinese and the Chinese community in Malaysia and Singapore, these groups retain their use of simplified characters. Overseas Chinese communities tend to use traditional characters. Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name colloquially; the latter refers to simplifications of character "structure" or "body", character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, more complicated forms.
On the other hand, the official name refers to the modern systematically simplified character set, which includes not only structural simplification but substantial reduction in the total number of standardized Chinese characters. Simplified character forms were created by reducing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of Chinese characters; some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms. Some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the same pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character the simplest amongst all variants in form. Many characters were left untouched by simplification, are thus identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies; some simplified characters are dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters in those where a component is replaced by a simple symbol.
This has led some opponents of simplification to complain that the'overall process' of character simplification is arbitrary. Proponents counter that the system of simplification is internally consistent. Proponents have emphasized a some particular simplified characters as innovative and useful improvements, although many of these have existed for centuries as longstanding and widespread variants. A second round of simplifications was promulgated in 1977, but was retracted in 1986 for a variety of reasons due to the confusion caused and the unpopularity of the second round simplifications. However, the Chinese government never dropped its goal of further simplification in the future. In August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters; the new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was implemented for use by the State Council of the People's Republic of China on June 5, 2013. Although most of the simplified Chinese characters in use today are the result of the works moderated by the government of the People's Republic of China in the 1950s and 60s, character simplification predates the PRC's formation in 1949.
Cursive written text always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print are attested as early as the Qin dynasty. One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lufei Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China. Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and therefore proposed that a reform be initiated, it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or abolished. Lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, "If Chinese characters are not destroyed China will die". Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the economic problems in China during that time. In the 1930s and 1940s, discussions on character simplification took place within the Kuomintang government, a large number of Chinese intellectuals and writers maintained that character simplification would help boost literacy in China.
In 1935, 324 simplified characters collected by Qian Xuantong were introduced as the table of first batch of simplified characters, but they were suspended in 1936. The PRC issued its first round of official character simplifications in two documents, the first in 1956 and the second in 1964. Within the PRC, further character simplification became associated with the leftists of the Cultural Revolution, culminating with the second-round simplified characters, which were promulgated in 1977. In part due to the shock and unease felt in the wake of the Cultural Revolution and Mao's death, the second-round of simplifications was poorly received. In 1986 the authorities retracted the second round completely. In the same year, the authorities promulgated a final list of simplifications, identical to the 1964 list except for six changes (including the restoration of three characters, simplified in the First Round: 叠, 覆, 像.
Geographic coordinate system
A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position and two or three of the numbers represent a horizontal position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude and elevation. To specify a location on a plane requires a map projection; the invention of a geographic coordinate system is credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who composed his now-lost Geography at the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. A century Hipparchus of Nicaea improved on this system by determining latitude from stellar measurements rather than solar altitude and determining longitude by timings of lunar eclipses, rather than dead reckoning. In the 1st or 2nd century, Marinus of Tyre compiled an extensive gazetteer and mathematically-plotted world map using coordinates measured east from a prime meridian at the westernmost known land, designated the Fortunate Isles, off the coast of western Africa around the Canary or Cape Verde Islands, measured north or south of the island of Rhodes off Asia Minor.
Ptolemy credited him with the full adoption of longitude and latitude, rather than measuring latitude in terms of the length of the midsummer day. Ptolemy's 2nd-century Geography used the same prime meridian but measured latitude from the Equator instead. After their work was translated into Arabic in the 9th century, Al-Khwārizmī's Book of the Description of the Earth corrected Marinus' and Ptolemy's errors regarding the length of the Mediterranean Sea, causing medieval Arabic cartography to use a prime meridian around 10° east of Ptolemy's line. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes' recovery of Ptolemy's text a little before 1300. In 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England as the zero-reference line; the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911.
In order to be unambiguous about the direction of "vertical" and the "horizontal" surface above which they are measuring, map-makers choose a reference ellipsoid with a given origin and orientation that best fits their need for the area they are mapping. They choose the most appropriate mapping of the spherical coordinate system onto that ellipsoid, called a terrestrial reference system or geodetic datum. Datums may be global, meaning that they represent the whole Earth, or they may be local, meaning that they represent an ellipsoid best-fit to only a portion of the Earth. Points on the Earth's surface move relative to each other due to continental plate motion and diurnal Earth tidal movement caused by the Moon and the Sun; this daily movement can be as much as a metre. Continental movement can be up to 10 m in a century. A weather system high-pressure area can cause a sinking of 5 mm. Scandinavia is rising by 1 cm a year as a result of the melting of the ice sheets of the last ice age, but neighbouring Scotland is rising by only 0.2 cm.
These changes are insignificant if a local datum is used, but are statistically significant if a global datum is used. Examples of global datums include World Geodetic System, the default datum used for the Global Positioning System, the International Terrestrial Reference Frame, used for estimating continental drift and crustal deformation; the distance to Earth's center can be used both for deep positions and for positions in space. Local datums chosen by a national cartographical organisation include the North American Datum, the European ED50, the British OSGB36. Given a location, the datum provides the latitude ϕ and longitude λ. In the United Kingdom there are three common latitude and height systems in use. WGS 84 differs at Greenwich from the one used on published maps OSGB36 by 112 m; the military system ED50, used by NATO, differs from about 120 m to 180 m. The latitude and longitude on a map made against a local datum may not be the same as one obtained from a GPS receiver. Coordinates from the mapping system can sometimes be changed into another datum using a simple translation.
For example, to convert from ETRF89 to the Irish Grid add 49 metres to the east, subtract 23.4 metres from the north. More one datum is changed into any other datum using a process called Helmert transformations; this involves converting the spherical coordinates into Cartesian coordinates and applying a seven parameter transformation, converting back. In popular GIS software, data projected in latitude/longitude is represented as a Geographic Coordinate System. For example, data in latitude/longitude if the datum is the North American Datum of 1983 is denoted by'GCS North American 1983'; the "latitude" of a point on Earth's surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the Equator and to each other; the North Pole is 90° N. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the Equator, the fun
Pe̍h-ōe-jī
Pe̍h-ōe-jī is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese Taiwanese Hokkien and Amoy Hokkien. Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News. During Taiwan under Japanese rule, the use of Pe̍h-ōe-jī was suppressed and it faced further countermeasures during the Kuomintang martial law period. In Fujian, use declined after the establishment of the People's Republic of China and in the early 21st century the system was not in general use there. Taiwanese Christians, non-native learners of Southern Min, native-speaker enthusiasts in Taiwan are among those that continue to use Pe̍h-ōe-jī.
Full native computer support was developed in 2004, users can now call on fonts, input methods, extensive online dictionaries. Rival writing systems have evolved, there is ongoing debate within the Taiwanese mother tongue movement as to which system should be used. Versions of pe̍h-ōe-jī have been devised for other Chinese varieties, including Hakka and Teochew Southern Min. In the 2006, the Taiwanese Romanization System was developed based on pe̍h-ōe-jī for official use to write Hokkien phonetically; the name pe̍h-ōe-jī means "vernacular writing", written characters representing everyday spoken language. The name vernacular writing could be applied to many kinds of writing and character-based, but the term pe̍h-ōe-jī is restricted to the Southern Min romanization system developed by Presbyterian missionaries in the 19th century; the missionaries who invented and refined the system used, instead of the name pe̍h-ōe-jī, various other terms, such as "Romanized Amoy Vernacular" and "Romanized Amoy Colloquial."
The origins of the system and its extensive use in the Christian community have led to it being known by some modern writers as "Church Romanization" and is abbreviated in POJ itself to Kàu-lô. There is some debate on. Objections to "pe̍h-ōe-jī" are that it can refer to more than one system and that both literary and colloquial register Southern Min appear in the system and so describing it as "vernacular" writing might be inaccurate. Objections to "Church Romanization" are that some secular writing use it. One commentator observes that POJ "today is disassociated from its former religious purposes." The term "romanization" is disliked by some, who see it as belittling the status of pe̍h-ōe-jī by identifying it as a supplementary phonetic system instead of a fully-fledged orthography. Sources disagree on which of the two is more used; the history of Peh-oe-ji has been influenced by official attitudes towards the Southern Min vernaculars and the Christian organizations that propagated it. Early documents point to the purpose of the creation of POJ as being pedagogical in nature allied to educating Christian converts.
The first people to use a romanized script to write Southern Min were Spanish missionaries in Manila in the 16th century. However, it was used as a teaching aid for Spanish learners of Southern Min, seems not to have had any influence on the development of pe̍h-ōe-jī. In the early 19th century, China was closed to Christian missionaries, who instead proselytized to overseas Chinese communities in South East Asia; the earliest origins of the system are found in a small vocabulary first printed in 1820 by Walter Henry Medhurst, who went on to publish the Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language, According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms in 1832. This dictionary represents the first major reference work in POJ, although the romanization within was quite different from the modern system, has been dubbed Early Church Romanization by one scholar of the subject. Medhurst, stationed in Malacca, was influenced by Robert Morrison's romanization of Mandarin Chinese, but had to innovate in several areas to reflect major differences between Mandarin and Southern Min.
Several important developments occurred in Medhurst's work the application of consistent tone markings. Medhurst was convinced that accurate representation and reproduction of the tonal structure of Southern Min was vital to comprehension: Respecting these tones of the Chinese language, some difference of opinion has been obtained, while some have considered them of first importance, others have paid them little or no intention; the author inclines decidedly to the former opinion. The system expounded by Medhurst influenced dictionary compilers with regard to tonal notation and initials, but both his complicated vowel system and his emphasis on the literary register of Southern Min were dropped by writers. Following on from Medhurst's work, Samuel Wells Williams became the chief proponent of major changes in the orthography devised by Morrison and ada
