PETALING JAYA: Chinese dialects, once frequently spoken by the Chinese community, seem to be fading from daily use as Mandarin takes centre stage. Timothy Tye, 60, the founder of Learn Penang Hokkien, has long championed the revival of northern Hokkien. Since 2013, Tye has been uploading Penang Hokkien content online, describing it as his mission to revive the dialect and introduce it to a global audience. That same year, he introduced the Taiji romanisation system, a simplified method designed to help English speakers learn Hokkien, and later authored the Penang Hokkien Dictionary, which was adopted by the Penang government in 2023. “Before I invented the Taiji romanisation, there was no ­writing system to learn Penang Hokkien.”However, Tye maintained that learning Hokkien should not be at the expense of other languages.

Source: The Star December 24, 2025 00:50 UTC