section_path: Demographics/Languages
section_name: Languages
paragraph_text: Languages
  
  The Republic of China does not have any legally designated official language. Mandarin is the primary language used in business and education, and is spoken by the vast majority of the population. Traditional Chinese is used as the writing system.
  
  Around 70% of Taiwan's population belong to the Hoklo ethnic group and are native speakers of Taiwanese Hokkien. The Hakka group, comprising some 14–18 percent of the population, speak Hakka. Although Mandarin is the language of instruction in schools and dominates television and radio, non-Mandarin Chinese varieties have undergone a revival in public life in Taiwan, particularly since restrictions on their use were lifted in the 1990s.
  
  Formosan languages are spoken primarily by the indigenous peoples of Taiwan. They do not belong to the Chinese or Sino-Tibetan language family, but to the Austronesian language family, and are written in the Latin alphabet. Their use among aboriginal minority groups has been in decline as usage of Mandarin has risen. Of the 14 extant languages, five are considered moribund.
  
  Since the May Fourth Movement, written vernacular Chinese had replaced Classical Chinese and emerged as the mainstream written Chinese in the Republic of China. Classical Chinese continued to be widely used in government documents until reforms in the 1970s to shift the written style to a more integrated vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文). On 1 January 2005, the Executive Yuan also changed its long-standing convention on the direction of writing in official documents from vertical to horizontal. Standalone Classical Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions, such as religious or cultural rites. The National Anthem of the Republic of China (中華民國國歌), for example, is in Classical Chinese. Most official government, legal, and judiciary documents, as well as courts rulings use a combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style. As many legal documents are still written in Classical Chinese, which is not easily understood by the general public, a group of Taiwanese have launched the Legal Vernacular Movement, hoping to bring more vernacular Chinese into the legal writings of the Republic of China.
  
  Taiwan is officially multilingual. A national language in Taiwan is legally defined as "a natural language used by an original people group of Taiwan and the Taiwan Sign Language ".