Cherish mother tongues, communicate in Mandarin

Dear Editor,

In his letter published in the June issue of Sinorama (May domestic edition), Mr. Sim Kok Lean suggests that Taiwanese should be made a compulsory subject for all pupils in Taiwan's elementary and junior high schools, and that to overcome the divisions between ethnic groups in Taiwan, every Taiwanese should be able to speak and understand Taiwanese. I disagree with Mr. Sim's view, for three reasons: Firstly, people in Taiwan already have a common language: Mandarin Chinese. The various groups in Taiwan (Southern Fujianese, Hakka, aborigines, and recent mainland immigrants) should all maintain their own mother tongues, but everyone should make more use of the common language that all these groups understand-Mandarin-to communicate with each other, understand each other, and dispel prejudice. Secondly, if one rigidly requires all schoolchildren to learn Taiwanese (Southern Fujianese), then the minority languages such as Hakka and the aboriginal languages will disappear all the more quickly. Thirdly, at present Southern Fujianese does not have a widely used written form with which everyone is familiar, so it is not suitable as a common language for all Taiwanese.

Mother-tongue promotion

should not be divisive

Linda, USA(tr. by Robert Taylor)

Dear Editor,

In his letter in June's Sinorama (May domestic edition), Mr. Sim Kok Lean suggests that Taiwan should adopt the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system, and I thoroughly agree. But I find his other suggestions-that the Tongyong Pinyin system should be incorporated into Taiwan's education system as a compulsory part of the junior high school and elementary school curriculum, and that if Taiwanese (Southern Fujianese) were universally spoken, this would dispel conflict between different ethnic groups-highly debatable.

The idea behind nativism was the hope that everyone should understand and love Taiwan together, yet today it seems to have become a code word for Hoklo chauvinism. One of the achievements of the nativist movement is that Taiwan's local languages are no longer suppressed. But a side effect of the mother-tongue movement has been to make the various ethnic groups strongly aware of their mutual differences, and in fact this has deepened inter-ethnic mistrust. People have forgotten that the most widespread and widely used language in Taiwan, the one that everyone can understand, speak and write, is standard Mandarin Chinese. Our mother tongues are the languages our mothers speak: mothers are the best teachers, and the home is the best classroom. As long as people of each ethnic group continue to speak their mother tongue at home, then our mother tongues will never disappear; and if everyone speaks Mandarin in public situations, then we will have gone a long way towards ethnic harmony.

If studying Southern Fujianese is made compulsory, but our other mother tongues are deliberately neglected, then I am afraid that a "mother-tongue war" will be inevitable. There is a causal relationship between the mother-tongue movement and the divisions between ethnic groups in Taiwan. This is an issue we cannot ignore.