David Blundell will give a lecture on Saturday titled “Taiwan roots of the Austronesian Language and Culture,” at the Legislative Yuan, sharing the stage with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kolas Yotaka, who will discuss the current state of Aboriginal affairs in Taiwan.
Blundell, a professor at National Chengchi University who has been doing anthropological and archaeological research in Taiwan since the early 1980s, will discuss how the majority of Austronesian languages find their origins in Taiwan.
“It’s a history that dates back between 4,500 to 3,500 years,” Blundell told the Taipei Times, when Taiwan’s Aboriginal groups first started to travel to what is today’s Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Photo: Huang Ming-tang, Taipei Times
“They weren’t colonists,” Blundell says, “but traders.”
Blundell, who has recently edited Taiwan Since Martial Law: Society, Culture, Politics, Economics and Austronesian Taiwan: Linguistics, History, Ethnology, Prehistory, says that the “Formosans” would trade nephrite jade, grain and pottery to southeast Asia where they would also pass on their languages.
Their languages became incubators for other languages, which Blundell numbers at around 1,200 today, all of which fall under the Austronesian family.
“If the language incubated in Indonesia, it became a different kind of language ... just as European languages became differentiated,” he says, a pattern that repeated itself throughout the region and as far as Madagascar.
Kolas told the Taipei Times through a spokesperson that she will discuss the current land rights issues facing Aborigines.
The lectures will be held at 10am in English at the Legislative Yuan complex, 1 Jinan Rd, Taipei City (台北市濟南路1號). Admission is NT$100 and includes light refreshments.
Attendees must register with Jerome Keating by 10pm tomorrow at: jkeating@ms67.hinet.net.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the Control Yuan said it had been “left with no choice” but to ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the constitutionality of the central government budget, which left it without a budget. Lost in the outrage over the cuts to defense and to the Constitutional Court were the cuts to the Control Yuan, whose operating budget was slashed by 96 percent. It is unable even to pay its utility bills, and in the press conference it convened on the issue, said that its department directors were paying out of pocket for gasoline
On March 13 President William Lai (賴清德) gave a national security speech noting the 20th year since the passing of China’s Anti-Secession Law (反分裂國家法) in March 2005 that laid the legal groundwork for an invasion of Taiwan. That law, and other subsequent ones, are merely political theater created by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to have something to point to so they can claim “we have to do it, it is the law.” The president’s speech was somber and said: “By its actions, China already satisfies the definition of a ‘foreign hostile force’ as provided in the Anti-Infiltration Act, which unlike
Mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the fairest Disney live-action remake of them all? Wait, mirror. Hold on a second. Maybe choosing from the likes of Alice in Wonderland (2010), Mulan (2020) and The Lion King (2019) isn’t such a good idea. Mirror, on second thought, what’s on Netflix? Even the most devoted fans would have to acknowledge that these have not been the most illustrious illustrations of Disney magic. At their best (Pete’s Dragon? Cinderella?) they breathe life into old classics that could use a little updating. At their worst, well, blue Will Smith. Given the rapacious rate of remakes in modern
President William Lai’s (賴清德) March 13 national security speech marked a turning point. He signaled that the government was finally getting serious about a whole-of-society approach to defending the nation. The presidential office summarized his speech succinctly: “President Lai introduced 17 major strategies to respond to five major national security and united front threats Taiwan now faces: China’s threat to national sovereignty, its threats from infiltration and espionage activities targeting Taiwan’s military, its threats aimed at obscuring the national identity of the people of Taiwan, its threats from united front infiltration into Taiwanese society through cross-strait exchanges, and its threats from
RSS