Photo by Clementrossignol.
Wade-Giles or Pinyin?
Singaporean Taoists are moving to provide all their literature (canonical texts, websites, etc.) in English as well as Mandarin, and the newest priest-training college also plans to be bilingual. This is no huge surprise in an ex-British colony, but I was surprised to see the breakdown according to the 2000 census cited on the CIA Factbook (not Facebook). Mandarin is the most spoken language at 35% of the population, followed by English at 23%. Hokkien comes in 4th at 11.7% and Cantonese 5th at 5.7%. The article, from the Straits Times, gives the Taoist segment as 9% of the population, but they’ve clearly rounded the census figures up from the actual figure of 8.5%.
Singapore’s dominant religion is Buddhism, at 42.5%, although even they have moved to include English-speaking devotees with one monastery launching a magazine targeting young people, as well as what the Straits journo describes as “the Net”.
Yen Feng ‘English-friendly religion‘, Straits Times (4/10/09)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m surprised that Cantonese % was so low – maybe we are just more vocal
Taoism looks better than Daoism. I know a shallow response for such a deep subject. Moreover spelling it “Taoism” allows academics to look down at those who then pronounce it starting with a T sound instead of a D sound.
You’ll note that I used the T in my post; this is deliberate resistance on my part to the unquestioned shift in academia to Pinyin.