Where the issue of language is con-cerned, Taiwan in the 1990s has a diversity of views. For instance, on the question of what qualifies as Taiwanese language, the majority language, commonly referred to as "Taiwanese" (taiyu) is not necessarily accepted by the other ethnic groups as the sole representative. In an attempt to balance out contention, somewhat ponderous titles such as "Holo Taiwanese" and "Hakka Taiwanese" appear in some native language course texts. It seems that everyone has his or her own definition of what exactly constitutes "Taiwanese language."
Even among those making concerted efforts to promote Taiwanese language, agreement on the formal name for Taiwanese is conspicuously absent. Some feel that the majority language spoken in Taiwan today is already quite different from the language spoken in southern Fujian Province on the Chinese mainland. Consequently, they hold that "Taiwanese" should no longer be called "southern Fujianese."
Additionally, the characters designating the language, pronounced holo in the local Fujianese tongue, have evolved into an elegant and widely used homonym deemed unacceptable by scholars for its implication that the Taiwanese language originates from China's Yellow River Basin area, the historical veracity of which they dispute. As a result, they prefer to represent the pronunciation with alternate characters, yet do not necessarily agree on exactly which characters to use. Evidently, the preferred name for this language alone could be debated endlessly.
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