Taiwan Credit Insight 2: The Official Language

Most people in Taiwan speak "Taiwanese". So which language is it's official one?

The Official language of Taiwan is Mandarin (Traditional Chinese).

Before 1945, Japanese was the official language and taught in schools. Mandarin has been the only officially sanctioned medium of instruction in schools in Taiwan since the late 1940s, following the handover of Taiwan to the government of the Republic of China in 1945.

However, the language with the most native speakers in Taiwan is “Taiwanese” spoken by about 70% of the population. The Formosan languages are the ethnic languages of the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan, making up about 2% of the island's population. Persons who emigrated from Mainland China after 1949 (12% of the population) mostly speak Mandarin Chinese.

Taiwan uses Traditional Chinese characters while Mainland China replaces these characters by Simplified Chinese characters. Although Traditional Chinese characters are also used in Hong Kong, a small number of characters are written differently in Taiwan. Administered by the Taiwan Ministry of Education, The Standard Form of National Characters is the orthography standard employed in Taiwan. Such differences between Taiwan and Hong Kong relate to orthodox and vulgar variants of Chinese characters.

More details to be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Form_of_National_Characters

http://english.moe.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=14786&ctNode=11446&mp=1

This Credit Insight is an extract from the book Happy Customers Faster Cash, Taiwan Edition and it is now on sale at Amazon.

This book is a learning tool for people engaged in the credit process. It contains three extensive chapters about credit management, business culture and communication with the focus in Taiwan. A chapter is dedicated to discussing various aspects of Taiwan company credit reports.