Hoyloy is, in case you were wondering, the nativ language of the majority Taiwanese. Although it is quite usually referred to as Taiwanese, Hoyloy, used as an optional English word or otherwise with the indigenous pronunciation where the digraph 'oy' stands for the sound 'o' similar to that for the word 'code' and the stress falls on the second syllable, outranks as a time-honored specific name for the people and their language.
The Hoyloy speaking people in Taiwan are principally descendants of immigrants from the southern coastal part of Hokkien (Fujen in Mandarin) in China. There were some immigrants from the city called Dtioytziu (Chaozhou in Mandarin) on the northern border of Canton to Hokkien, but their speech was wrongly considered as belonging to the Hakka family by many who dubbed them Dtioytziu-Hakka. Nowadays their descendants speak the same as the common Hoyloys do. Quite a few people of Hakka ancestry even speak Hoyloy far better than Hakka.
The term of Hoyloy -- disregard the confusingly different writtern forms in kanji (Chinese characters) you may come across -- is derived from that of Hoklo in Hakka, which, through the blending of the borrowed sound 'hok'*1 for Hokkien and the indigenous sound 'lo' for fellow(s) of..., means literally 'fellow(s) of Hokkien'. The conversion from Hoklo to Hoyloy is made through pragmatic sound exchange* 2 between the two languages. To be sure, the use of the term began in Dtioytziu with its surrounding areas inhabited by Hakkas, as it is mentioned in the Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy (1873) by Rev. Douglas Carstairs that ancestors of the people living in the city immigrated many centuries ago from Hokkien and 'to this day they are distinguished from other inhabitants of the Canton province by the appellation "Hok-lo" that is the persons from Hok-kien or Fuh-kien' (appendix V, p610). The term has been, nevertheless, readily applied by the Hakkas arriving in Taiwan to the people who speak and behave to their ears and eyes as the same as or similar to those living in Dtioytziu.
*1. When put in writing with kanji, this sound is usually represented by the character
for 'to learn' deprived of its meaning -- similar to a rebus -- as examplified by the
entry of 'Hoklo' in kanji in the Hakka dictionary (1926) by D. MacIver.
*2. In the breakdown the conversion between the two first syllables is comparable to
that between 'hok-tong' (lit. learning hall = old name for school) and 'oy-dtng' except
for the retaining of the initial 'h', the supposed ending glottal stop to replace the
final 'k' in the syllable 'hok' being extremely diminished or dropped because of the
low pitch tone. For the second syllable, the 'o' sound of 'lo' in Hakka similar that of
'or' in English is replaced by that similar to the 'o' of 'so' in English.
The name of Taiwanese ('Taiwango' in Japanese) for the language was adopted, besides naming Hakka as Cantonese, by the Japanese adminstration soon after they started colonizing the island country in 1895. It is noteworthy that word Hoyloy appears as an entry in the two valuable dictionaries of the language, one by Ogawa with volume one published in 1931 and volume two in 1932 and the other by Higashikata published in 1931. The Higashikata definition is straightforward but the Ogawa definition sounds presumptive.
While it is estimated that over thirty million people out of Taiwan speak the language by various names with minor variations in pronunciation and vocabulary, Hoyloy as spoken in Taiwan mostly will be covered with the Web pages presented here.
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Last updated -- June 22, 2008
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