Dear Yan, I'm Babuza, an aboriginal from central Taiwan, now being a family doctor at Kaohsiung. What I care is can we use the writing tomake clear what's in our mind, to pass experience and wisdom, if any, to the generations to come? That is what the writing system is for. And apparently you can read my letter. That's it. The bare facts told us that the TOJ(Taioanji, POJ) has met these requirements very well in the past 150 years. This is orthography, as in English, Japanese, and a lot others. I currently also teach Medical Taiwanese, Introduction To Tai-gi in KMU(Kaohsiung Medical U). I found I could teach quite well withoutusing any Han Character at all. Babuza ----- Original Message -----

From: Yan, M ; ; ['taigu'](https://web.archive.org/web/20060117083302/mailto: "") Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 7:26 PM Subject: RE: [TGB] Konrad's introduction
Babuza: Before we discussion the issue further, pleasecheck out the articles on "ideo-phonetic language" in the Aletheir Univ. publication, Tainan Mato. Ideo-phonetic is NOT ideographic. The former is a spelling language, while the latter is a graphic language which includes Han-ji. Thx.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hokkchu [mailto:]
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 8:08 AM
To: Yan, M; ; 'Konrad Hsu Aschenbach'; 'taigu'
Subject: Re: [TGB] Konrad's introduction

Tai-ke CTT! Tui MR.Yan lai kong, kho-leng kan-ta Big-5 chiah-si bun-ji, ki-tha e long m-si. In-ui i kong e bun-te ma chhut-ti Eng-gi kap ki-tha, pau-ham Tiong-kok-hi(chiu-si kan-thee Han-ji). Na-si an-ne chiu bo su-iau liau si-kan kong tho-lun lah. Babuza

----- Original Message ----- From: Yan, M ; Yan, M ; ['taigu'](https://web.archive.org/web/20060117083302/mailto: "") Sent: Friday,August 22, 2003 7:20 PM Subject: RE: [TGB] Konrad's introduction
Levin:

"Thx" is a corrupted American word for "Thanks" to close. "Ideo-phonetic" is
not "ideographic". The "ideographic" writing in Chinese is also called Han
Characters.

Taiwanese "ideo-phonetic" language is a spelling language by a 99-letter
alphabet. Said alphabet consists of 3 kinds of letters, namely phonetic to
indicate pronunciation, tonal to lead tonal variation, and radical to
differentiate meaning among the homonyms. There is no Chinese Character per
se in the alphabet.

For example, if I write in Peh-oe-ji "hong". You don't really know what I
mean. You might argue that you could find out in the text. Or rather, you
will "guess" from the text, because in a Peh-oe-ji dictionary "hong" carries
too many meanings (homonyms). If I assign "a middle-tone (the 7th tone, or -
in Church coding) and a radical-wood symbols to it", it indicates "a word
sounds like 'hong' in the 7th tone in the wood category", which seems to
mean "maple" without ambiguity in Taiwanese. This is the basis for the
Taiwanese ideo-phonetic spelling, no Characters for sure.

Thx.