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About the Taiwanese Language
There is a common misconception that Chinese is one language with differing dialects. The truth is that Chinese makes more sense if considered as a language family, rather than a language on its own, much like the Romance family of languages from Europe. Just as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian and so on all derive from Latin, so Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min (the group Taiwanese belongs to) and more derive from ancient Chinese.
Taiwanese and Mandarin (the most widely-spoken Chinese language) are mutually unintelligible. Put a monoglot Mandarin speaker together with a monoglot Taiwanese speaker and the only way they will be able to communicate is by writing (presuming that they can both read and write). It is important too to note that this is not because written Chinese is some kind of universal language, but rather that written Chinese is actually a form of Mandarin learned by speakers of all Chinese languages. To continue the comparison with Romance languages, it's similar to the Middle Ages in Europe, when Latin was the only written standard used, and was shared across countries and people who spoke very different languages.
If English is a language and American English a dialect of that language, then the equivalent comparison in the case of Taiwanese is that Southern Min is the language and Taiwanese a dialect of that language. Just as American English and British English are (mostly) intelligible to speakers of the other dialect, the same is true of Taiwanese and other varieties of Southern Min, such as Ē-mn̂g (Amoy/Xiamen) dialect and the versions of Hokkien spoken in Chinese communities around South East Asia.
Just as within American English there are further subdivisions of dialect and accent (Pittsburgh, Texan, New York etc.), so in Taiwanese there are different versions in different parts of the country. People from Gî-lân, Tâi-pak, Tâi-tiong, Lo̍k-káng and Tâi-lâm all have distinctive accents and in some cases different vocabulary than those in other areas of the country. Tâi-lâm is viewed as being the centre of Taiwanese language culture, indeed the city is home to both the National Museum of Taiwanese Literature and the 'prestige dialect' of Taiwanese.
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