Could we have a Taiwanese course?

[WasleyShe]

I believe it would be great if more people could learn this beautiful language. It is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken mainly by people in Taiwan, but also many people in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and China. I haven't seen this language be discussed much in Duolingo. Please upvote this and or comment if you are interested! Thank you!

[jimnicholson]

I think you need to be more specific.

Wikipedia thinks the term is ambiguous:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_language_(disambiguation)

Ethnologue thinks it's an alternative name of this:
https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nan

The best thing is to identify the ISO 639-3 code for it.

If you do, then you can follow this: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/15014194

[epingchris]

In Taiwan, the language most commonly associated with the term "Taiwanese language" would be "Taiwanese Hokkien" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Hokkien), which is a variety of the Southern Min language(s) (mutual intelligibility is debatable among certain varieties). If I'm not mistaken, outside of Taiwan, the varieties spoken in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, or the Philippines are most often referred to as simply "Hokkien", even though there may be distinct differences among them, and also between them and the varieties spoken in Fujian Province, China.

Unfortunately ISO 639-3 only has a code for Min Nan language (nan), not further down. Is having an ISO 639-3 code a prerequisite for having a language course on Duolingo?

The problem with a "Min Nan" course would be that there are so many differences between the varieties, and there's not really one single standard that unifies them all (there are standard dictionaries and orthography for Taiwanese in Taiwan, but I don't know for the other varieties). Although I think the Arabic course deals with this issue by kind of having a mish-mash of MSA and various varieties, so maybe we could do the same for "Min Nan" if necessary? (Come to think of it, the same would be true for English, Spanish, Portuguese and all the other pluricentric languages...)

As for the steps to follow (https://www.duolingo.com/comment/15014194), I'm a bit lost on the step "Is the course for English native speakers? Yes -> Go to the general "Duolingo (in English)" forum and follow Step Z, where you'll replace "XXX" with "English". So am I supposed to search for "Taiwanese in English" in the "Duolingo (in English) forum"? That seems to lead back to this discussion: so essentially what we can now do is vote, comment, and wait?

[pentaan]

https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204979660-How-can-I-suggest-a-new-language-course-

[miacomet]

Glossika's Taiwanese course should be out for free later today. Check it out!

[kongthui]

http://gandalf.humanistic.org/~luibenghan/oh-tai-gi/

[epingchris]

I would also love to have a Taiwanese / Taiwanese Hokkien / Hokkien / Min Nan course, and would be happy to contribute if it happens!

[psionpete]

Why? Don’t they speak Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan?

[piguy3]

Don't they speak English in Wales? And yet apparently you've seen it worth your time to achieve level 16 in Welsh. Perhaps you have a relative who speaks it or Welsh heritage or have lived there or visit there often or just find it interesting. Well for some people such conditions obtain for Taiwan and Taiwanese.

[WasleyShe]

There are many languages spoken. Officially, it's Mandarin, but many people also speak languages such as Taiwanese, or Hakka, Japanese, or aboriginal languages as well.