「白話字」(Pèh-oē-jī)mā號做「教會羅馬字」、「台灣字」、「咱人字」,伊是19世紀後半期ê sî-chūn透過傳教士傳入台灣ê主要teh書寫台語kap客語ê羅馬字系統。白話字對19世紀尾20世紀初台灣ê全民教育、文化啟蒙kap文學創作有真大ê影響kap貢獻。本研究tī 2012年透過教會問卷普查kap田野訪問調查方式針對台灣基督長老教會會內ê白話字使用人口kap現況做調查。本論文lóng總訪問29位白話字使用者,平均年歲是75.8歲。大多數ê使用者是細漢ê sî-chūn tī教會「主日學」學tio̍h白話字。平均1禮拜半點鐘至1點鐘ê學習時間。受訪者lìn有人學kúi pái ê時間就ē-hiáu白話字,mā有人ài學kúi個月chiah ē-hiáu。Ùi受訪者年歲kap訪談內容發現,大約1970年代以後,lú來lú濟ê教會主日學真明顯無koh teh教白話字,致使教會內ê白話字使用者有真明顯老化kap斷層ê現象。
Peh-oe-ji, also known as 'church Roman scripts', 'Taiwanese characters' or 'people's scripts', was a Romanized writing system invented by missionaries for writing Taiwanese and Hakka languages in the second half of nineteenth century. Peh-oe-ji had great influences and made substantive contributions to public education, cultural enlightenment, and literary creations especially in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. This paper surveys the population of Peh-oe-ji users and its usages in the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan through census and field investigation conducted in 2012. A total of 29 Peh-oeji users with the average age of 75.8 were interviewed. Most users learned Pehoe- ji during Sunday school when they were children. They spent an average of 30~60 minutes per week in class. The users usually acquired the reading skills after several classes or months of learning. The investigation also reveals that the population of Peh-oe-ji users declined noticeably starting the 1970s when Taiwanese Peh-oe-ji was no longer prominently taught in church Sunday schools.