1: Dialects Can Be Written Meh?

They can!    

If you have heard your parents say that "dialects cannot be written", well... you can prove them wrong! Here are some examples of dialects in the written form...

Extract from a Buddhist repentance sutra - Hokkien characters and Singapore ad-hoc Hokkien Romanisation

Extract from Towkay Ho Seh Boh - Singapore ad-hoc Hokkien romanisation

Wikipedia article in Cantonese - Cantonese characters

Letter written by a Hokkien migrant in Singapore - Peh-oe-ji romanisation

Extract from a Hokkien songbook - Hokkien characters

However, they are also somewhat correct. In modern-day Singapore, Chinese dialects are mostly exclusively spoken, and not written in. Most native speakers in Singapore additionally do not know how to write, read or spell in these languages, which limits dialects to spoken contexts in almost all instances.

Most Chinese languages aside from Mandarin lack any standard, state-sponsored writing forms. This means that material written in these languages may utilise different systems and conventions or may not even follow any at all!

Therefore, writing in these languages is left somewhat inconsistent and unstandardised from text to text, and is mostly left to the intuition and knowledge of the reader to figure out what the writer wants to express through his writing. 

You may notice that at large, there are two different ways in representing Chinese languages in text. Romanisation, and Chinese characters. The following pages will explain what these two important concepts are in Chinese writing. 

~桂壱 :3