Those who are aware of it call it Taiwanese I lived on Taiwan and, as I say, I never heard it called anything else. Sure, most English speakers aren’t aware of it, but most English speakers aren’t aware of anything that isn’t on Entertainment Weekly that doesn’t mean there are no standards. To treat “Taiwanese” as an English standard is absurd If it’s a Hoklo term, used only by the Hoklo, who don’t pronounce the k, how the dickens did the k get there? This name has been employed for centuries and centuries by the Hoklo people to refer to themselves. The term Hoklo does not seem to be of Chinese origin, and historically has no standard Chinese character representation. So the putative debate seems particularly futile. As for “Hoklo,” I think I have run across it once or twice, but it’s a completely marginal term and will never be anything else (I’m speaking of English use, of course). There are far more minority-language speakers in France (Breton, Alsatian German, &c.), but you don’t hear any complaints about calling the majority language “French,” and for good reason. There are hardly any speakers of those languages left, and they play essentially no role in the life of the nation.

As for its ignoring the Austronesian languages of the island, I’m sorry, but that’s life. So it’s not comparable to “American” (which is used by some as a quirky alternative but is not at all widespread) it’s the standard name. “Do you speak Taiwanese?” “Mainlanders never learn Taiwanese.” &c &c. In the first place, I’ve never heard anyone, Chinese or waiguoren, refer to the majority language of Taiwan as anything but Taiwanese. OK, I’m all for proper language names, but this seems silly to me.

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