Taipei - A Taiwan newspaper and a private foundation on Tuesday said that people had chosen the Chinese character Luan - chaos - as the Word of the Year for 2008.

Out of the 61,624 people who cast votes, 7,936 people chose Luan, the United Daily News (UDN) and the Hsu Yuan-chih Memorial Foundation said.

The UDN and the foundation launched the campaign to select the Word of the Year in October, inviting the public to find one word to summarize the situation of Taiwan in
2008.

They offered a shortlist of 72 Chinese characters and opened a telephone hotline for the public to call in to vote for their choice.

To encourage the public to participate, the UDN and the foundation offered prizes, including a car priced at 500,000 Taiwan dollars (15,000 US dollars).

Several countries conduct selections for the Word of the Year with the Society of the German Language starting the process in Germany in 1971 and the American Dialect Society launching a search in the United States in 1991.

But the most publicized selection takes place in Japan.

On December 12 every year and watched by a crowd of tourists and media, a priest at the Kiyomitzudera Buddhist temple in Kyoto waves a large brush to write the Word of the Year on white cardboard in black ink. This year, Japan's selection was Change. (dpa)