At least there are some people who use it (e.g. wikipedia). I guess it is like Wade Giles, until the arrival of an actual standard, it will continued to be used as the quasi-standard.
I know quite a few people that use the taiyu-modified bopomofu (do they use that in school?) but that won’t help in an English article.
I couldn’t agree more. Why the insistence on insertion of Church? It’s a creaky, antiquated system. Yuck. It’s not as if any significant percentage of readers know it, after all. 
[/quote]
What other widely (relatively speaking) used standards are there? (Other than the dreadful Taiyu Tongyong :raspberry: …even the DPP government rejected that turkey!)
I know in places like Singapore and Malaysia, you see Hokkien names written like “Thye Hock Swee” and “Teow Huat Soon”, but I wouldn’t call these any kind of standard.
I know, I know, but it’s not really functionally a standard, is it? And when a so-called standard misleads more than it informs, why use it?
Personally I’d do a series of Internet search of all the various terms and choose the one that crops up most often. After all, your alternative is to use … what? A non-standard, non-system devised by some twat in some dusty Taiwanese office somewhere who will NEVER be called to account for ANYTHING he says or does. You have to admit, the opinion of a 14-year-old in Peoria is worth at least as much as that of any 60-year-old local pen-pusher.
I followed your advice. Type in “oracle blocks Taiwan.” First hit is Lonely Planet Taiwan. 
Let me suggest searching for “divination blocks taiwanese”.
I know, I know, but it’s not really functionally a standard, is it? And when a so-called standard misleads more than it informs, why use it?[/quote]
English spelling is standardized, init? When it comes to pronounciation, it is the most misleading standard I know. Why do you use it?
I agree that Taiwanese church romanization is not very good. But it is systematic, so until there is a new, better, official, more widely used standard, I would suggest to continue using it.
By the way:
zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poa%CC%8Dh-poe
Ah, nice. And there is a link to David Jordan’s Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors which can be read online in it’s entirety.
Nice article, I never really got how it worked before.
I think the actual thingies aren’t called poa̍h-poe, but poe-chîⁿ, and poa̍h-poe is the act of throwing them on the floor. Can anyone confirm this?
Actually, the Ministry of Education officially adopted and announced a romanization system for Taiwanese Minnan (臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案使用手冊) in 2006, and as far as I know that is still the “official” (i.e. government sanctioned) standard in Taiwan at the moment (it is somewhat different from TLPI, Tongyong, and the Church system). For details, see: english.moe.gov.tw/public/Attachment/871614393171.pdf
In that system, I believe the romanization of the term in the OP should be “puah pue”.
[quote=“Rotalsnart”]Actually, the Ministry of Education officially adopted and announced a romanization system for Taiwanese Minnan (臺灣閩南語羅馬字拼音方案使用手冊) in 2006, and as far as I know that is still the “official” (i.e. government sanctioned) standard in Taiwan at the moment (it is somewhat different from TLPI, Tongyong, and the Church system). For details, see: english.moe.gov.tw/public/Attachment/871614393171.pdf
In that system, I believe the romanization of the term in the OP should be “puah pue”.[/quote] [Edit: and yes, I understand this to be the verb for the action, as RiceT points out]
I guess the only thing to do now is go down to the temple and use the blocks to sort this out.
Now that you mention it, it would probably have been more rational and saved everyone, and society, a lot of aggravation if they had taken this approach to the whole Hanyu versus Tongyong (or other) system for romanizing Mandarin – if everyone would have agreed to let the cups fall where they may.
If you enter 杯 into the online Taiwanese dictionary, you get a list of Taiwanese terms with that word in them. Among them, 跋杯 is defined as 跋杯筊, “to toss beijiao”.
The items themselves are defined as “siūⁿ杯” (apparently there is no character for the first syllable), or siūⁿ-poe.
This must be the origin of the term “shimbui” used in early editions of Lonely Planet Taiwan.