UNESCO has long defined Taiwan’s indigenous languages, as well as Hakka and Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) as endangered languages.
Endangered languages are defined as a language that is not used in schools and that less than 70 percent of the population use, meaning that people using such a language would no longer be able to communicate in their mother tongue during their daily activities within two or three generations.
In other words, the language could die out even if native speakers have access to a rich source of literature and media in their native language and even if new works in the language are created.
However, given an absence of practical usage, all language-related cultural relics become a matter of historical research and nostalgia.
Taiwan came under the rule of a new foreign power 50 years ago and the native languages of all the peoples in Taiwan were banned from use in schools and were diminished as local dialects or low, coarse and inferior languages.
This poisonous attitude left a dark shadow that remains in people’s minds today.
These attitudes continue to spread and hurt the coming generations.
Society has created a single-language Mandarin monster; simply asking parents to teach their children their native language at home as a way of maintaining different languages is not only absurd, it is also an excuse for a government looking to shirk its responsibilities.
Although there are many non-governmental organizations that promote native languages and make great contributions to the study, creativity and passing on of Taiwan’s languages, and although the government also has a few policies in place, regardless of how much effort language organizations exert and regardless of how many academic language research institutes the government creates, it is still not possible to guarantee that Taiwan’s many languages will not die.
Now is the time to wrest back the right to use native languages in schools. Taiwanese children from all ethnic groups must be allowed to use their native language and hear it spoken in school, from elementary school onwards.
The Ministry of Education should establish a system that encourages and rewards schools, and supervise kindergarten and elementary-school teachers to gradually increase the use of local native languages — whether it be in all school activities or a single class — from greetings to complicated sentences.
The goal should be to increase the use of native languages to 50 percent or more.
When teachers begin to use different languages in school, the prejudice and toxic attitudes toward these languages will begin to disappear, and that would be the first step toward language equality.
Only if native languages are taught in schools will parents begin to teach their children their native language at home and it is the only way that all of Taiwan’s native languages can continue to be passed on from generation to generation.
Huang Wung-hong is a professor of physics at National Cheng Kung University.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
Sasha B. Chhabra’s column (“Michelle Yeoh should no longer be welcome,” March 26, page 8) lamented an Instagram post by renowned actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) about her recent visit to “Taipei, China.” It is Chhabra’s opinion that, in response to parroting Beijing’s propaganda about the status of Taiwan, Yeoh should be banned from entering this nation and her films cut off from funding by government-backed agencies, as well as disqualified from competing in the Golden Horse Awards. She and other celebrities, he wrote, must be made to understand “that there are consequences for their actions if they become political pawns of
RSS