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why are there always subtitles on chinese/taiwanese videos/shows?

just wondering why in everything chinese/taiwanese the videos always have chinese subtitles somewhere? even the news and variety shows o.O

Public Comments

1. I'm not positive, but I think it is because some words in Chinese (which is what is spoken in Taiwan by the way) can mean more than one thing. Since there are four tones in Chinese, one word can mean four different things, depending on which tone is used. The subtitles are probably there for clarification because even if a word can mean four things, the way it is written is different than it's other meanings. That way the people listening can read it if they aren't sure what is being said.
2. I suppose it is because oral Chinese is actually several different languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) written Chinese is basically the same and can be understood for any Chinese person (no matter what variety of Chinese they speak).
3. More than one language in China, mainly Mandarin and Cantonese.
4. I asked my friend this once (who is a native from Taiwan) and he said its simply to avoid Ambiguity. It's mostly for the older crowd, since the younger generation doesn't really get confused by the speech, etc. Also, to address the speaker above me - Cantonese is written differently than Mandarin. Also, there are more characters for Cantonese.
5. Most of the dialogs in drama are quite different from everyday language, that they may involve words not commonly used. So it is helpful to have them written down so that we can make sure we know what was said. This is not that different from the closed caption option we now have in the American TV. I always put them on, especially in those more knowledge intensive shows so that I could be sure to know what was said. Chinese has the additional challenge because there are so many words pronounced exactly the same, and even more sounding pretty close to each other. Also, written Chinese has many more poetic expressions that we readily understood when reading them, but they were seldom spoken in every day life so it is not that easy to understand verbally.
6. Chinese write the same way but pronounce the character (word) differently. Mandarin being the national language and each province got their own dialect. Older Taiwanese tends to speak Hokkien and younger ones Mandarin. Hongkong speak cantonese so is the province of canton. Mandarin is being made as national language