The nation faces a great challenge to keep indigenous tribal languages alive, as the government’s tribal language proficiency test program is seeing fewer and fewer participants, the Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) said.
Council officia Chiang Wen--chuan (蔣文鵑) said that for the past two years, not a single person has registered to take the proficiency test for Thao — one of the 43 languages and dialects spoken by the 14 officially recognized Aboriginal tribes in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the tribal language tests for Saaroa and Tona Rukai have had no participants this year, the first time this has happened, Chiang said.
A total of 1,160 people took part in the tribal language exams this year and 47.4 percent of test takers passed — a 5 percent drop compared with last year, according to the council.
There are about 600 Thao living in the Sun Moon Lake region in Nantou County, Chiang said, adding that today, only the tribe’s middle-aged and elderly members can speak fluent Thao.
Young indigenous people normally speak Mandarin when communicating with tourists visiting the area, leaving few occasions for them to use their mother tongue, Chiang said.
The council has started to compile a digital tribal language dictionary and it also organizes language courses and promotes tribal language speaking within indigenous communities.
Its language program is expected to recruit 400 students in January, Chiang said.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
RSS