By Taiwanese, parent comment was referring to Taiwanese Hokkien, which is mutually unintelligible with Standard Mandarin. Even in writing, Taiwanese written at its spoken register is at best read with great difficulty by Mandarin speakers.
Hokkien is used on the mainland also, especially in southern Fujian, of course. Not that it matters in any case, I’m sure Taiwanese hokkien has drifted over the last century.
What is interesting is that Fujianese are the first to go abroad, so minnanhua can be more common than mandarin in SE Asia and even Europe.
I don't think we are in contradiction. Taiwanese Hokkien is a variety of Min, which is a dialect that shares ancient roots with the Mandarin dialect. My maternal grandmother speaks Teochew, an offshoot of the more common standard Hokkien in the area where I live.
Unlike Mandarin, most dialects have not undergone the same nationalist push to write their spoken language, so literature in the spoken language is few and far between. However, Christian proselytizers are often very determined to translate the Bible into local spoken languages, and are often one of the first significant works in any spoken language/dialect's literature. Hence I am not surprised that it is the Bible that top-commenter found digitally-disadvantaged Chinese characters not encountered in literature outside of Taiwanese Hokkien. You may be right in a sense that these same characters may be encountered in other Min dialects, but they would still be pronounced differently.
