The Hakka language: An ethnic marker
Language is a carrier of culture, and it is also an essential element of ethnic studies that is inextricably tied to a people’s history and fate.
“In Taiwan you can find every kind of Hakka accent,” says Hsu Cheng-kuang, who grew up in Liudui, Kaohsiung. “But it wasn’t until I went up north for university that I learned that there were different Hakka accents.” Chang Wei-an, meanwhile, cites an interesting historical anecdote: “During the Japanese era, Taiwan’s Hakka dialects were mistaken for Cantonese.” It was only after the Japanese armed forces sent Hakkas to work as interpreters in Guangdong (Canton) that they discovered that the languages were completely different.
The preservation of Hakka language has always been a focus of Hakka movements, and the language is an important component of the ethnicity’s soul. “The first Hakka dictionary was written by a foreign missionary.” Deeply committed to the continued vitality of Hakka, Chang Wei-an discovered and photographed a Hakka pronunciation chart at the Basel Mission headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. That society of missionaries is believed to have been the first to establish a presence in Hakka communities in Guangdong, and it made important contributions to preserving and reviving Hakka culture. The dictionary is a good demonstration of the close connections between Christianity and Hakka culture.
In Christianity and Hakka Culture, edited by Chang Wei-an and Chang Han-pi, a professor in the College of Hakka Studies at National Central University, the authors have collected essays about Hakka culture by Christian clerics, opening innovative avenues for Hakka research. Among these works, one by Zeng Chang-fa, chairman of the Hakka Mission Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, argues that saving the Hakka language is a mission of the highest urgency. The Hakkas, by Chen Yundong, which won an award from the Ministry of Education for its “outstanding contribution to promoting native languages,” makes an even stronger case for the importance of native languages. These academic works, which are responding to a sense of crisis, have become important references for government policy makers.
Amendments to the Hakka Basic Act, which took effect on January 31, 2018, made Hakka an officially designated national language. Hakka-language radio stations, such as Hakka Radio, Formosa Hakka Radio and New Hakka Radio, as well as the Hakka E-Learning Center of the Hakka Affairs Council, are important mainstream promoters of the use of Hakka. These institutions have made major contributions to promoting the widespread use of Hakka as a spoken language, bolstering a sense of Hakka identity, and igniting a latent sense of Hakka consciousness.
The varied rice dishes and other components of Hakka cuisine have crossed over to become important parts of Taiwanese food in general. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)