The fascinating thing about bilingual contracts, which date from before the start of the 19th century, is that even 100 years after the Dutch left Taiwan, the Roman alphabet they introduced was still being used among the people of the plains to transcribe native languages. Effectively, it was their own form of writing, which might have survived if not for the subsequent influx of settlers and cultural assimilation by the Chinese.
這種出現在清嘉慶年間以前的契約，最有意義的地方，在有來自荷蘭人教導的羅馬拼音番文，直到荷蘭人離開台灣一百多年，仍在平埔族中使用，若不是日後漢人大量入境而漢化之下，平埔族幾乎就有自己的使用文字了。