In comparison to the official language of Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese is beginning to take pride of place in classrooms, mass transit systems, and other public places. Many people only use Taiwanese, and are happy to talk about its many advantages. Feelings have run so high that language has become a cause for inter-group conflict.
"How do you write pineapple, tomato, and pomegranate in Taiwanese?" This is not a question from a school exam. Rather, it is a question posed this October by legislator Chen Kuang-fu to Lin Ching-chiang, the minister of education. Take note: The legislator asked how to write these words, not how to say them.
Lin Ching-chiang is a native Taiwanese. The legislator was not testing his Taiwanese ability, but was raising doubts that there was still an inadequate degree of "Taiwanese-ness" in the standard textbooks for language and social studies for the recently revamped curriculum. Legislator Chen feels that Taiwanese language should not just have a supporting role in this curriculum, but should be, along with other subjects focusing on Taiwan, one of the main axes.
Since the Nationalist government came to Taiwan in 1949, textbooks have all been in Mandarin Chinese. However, since the lifting of martial law in 1987 opened the way for open discussion of language policy, there have been continual calls for the inclusion of Taiwanese in textbooks. At the most extreme, some people say that textbooks should be written entirely in Taiwanese. Others advocate partly or wholly replacing traditional Chinese literature such as Tang dynasty poetry with Taiwanese literature (such as essays by the writer Lai Ho from the Japanese occupation era or Taiwanese-language poetry). Just as the world of politics has become complicated by the pluralization of national identities ("Taiwan" vs. "China"), linguistic pluralization is another characteristic of Taiwan in the 1990s.
Tangled disputes
Ten years after the lifting of martial law, it appears there has been little change in Taiwan's linguistic environment. However, outside the mainstream media-which operates almost exclusively in Mandarin Chinese-the change has certainly not been small. In particular, the so-called holo language group (referring to Taiwanese based on the southern Fujian dialect), spoken by more than 70% of the population, is no longer seen as a lower-class language, but is spoken with pride as an element of in-group belonging, local culture, and identification with Taiwan. Government officials who cannot speak Taiwanese are often put through the wringer in questioning by Taiwanese-speaking legislators. Taiwanese is now standing side-by-side with Mandarin (a.k.a. Beijing speech, Huayu, and putong-hua) as a language of power.
There is an unbreakable connection between language and group identity. For politicians, if you speak the language of a certain group, then you represent people who identify with that group. Taiwan Provincial Governor James Soong, whose heritage traces back to Hunan Province in mainland China and who did not speak Taiwanese in his early life, now uses Taiwanese slang to express himself. Indeed, this has become his virtual trademark. When Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian, a native Taiwanese speaker, visits Hakka or aboriginal areas, he always says one or two things in the language of his audience.
How should we interpret the phenomenon of politicians speaking the language of their target group? When Mayor Chen uses bits of Hakka or aboriginal languages, some people see this as giving these disadvantaged groups a morale boost, as promoting the use of their mother tongues. On the other hand, however hard Governor Soong studies Taiwanese, there are provincial assembly members who say to him: "Don't assume that just because you can give a speech in Taiwanese that you really know what is best for Taiwan!"
Today disputes over the use of Taiwanese are not limited to political circles, but have extended into everyday life. Many mainlanders who cannot speak Taiwanese often meet scorn: "You have eaten Taiwan rice all your life, but you still don't understand Taiwanese?!" Some private companies consider Taiwanese ability in hiring people, just as some organizations required Mandarin Chinese in the past.
The Mucha line was the first line to be opened in Taipei's mass rapid transit system. At each stop, there is an automated announcement telling passengers the station name. In the first six months of operation, announcements were made in Mandarin and English. Later, this was changed to Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Hakka. Without any public discussion, English was simply discarded.
Formosa TV, which has always based its program production on the principle of "Taiwan first," plans to make drama series based on "works of Taiwanese literature." It held a seminar to which it invited "writers of Taiwanese literature." From the moderator to the presenters to the discussants, virtually everyone spoke only in the southern Fujian-based Taiwanese dialect. This sparked a protest from the Hakka writer Li Chiao. He delivered a segment of his address in Hakka "in order to instill some balance."
Huang Chun-ming, a writer from Ilan, adds that today people have too narrow a definition of "Taiwanese." They think it only refers to southern Fujian dialect, and they don't consider that aboriginal and Hakka are also "Taiwanese." This is simply chauvinism.
Is Taiwanese low class?
Language is a symbol. At the most basic level it is a tool for communication. But it is intimately related to culture, history, economic conditions, and particularly to political power. In Taiwan, the population of just over 20 million is divided into a number of groups, including Fujianese, Hakkas, aborigines, and mainlanders. Today, people of Fujian ancestry, who are the majority, are asserting themselves, and people from other groups, who also consider themselves "Taiwanese," naturally are protesting.
Taiwan people have such complex feelings about language because of history. Taiwan was occupied by Japan from 1895 to 1945, and beginning in 1937 the Japanese began a policy of eradicating Chinese culture and replacing it with Japanese culture. As part of this, Taiwanese was banned, and households that spoke Japanese particularly well were rewarded. This policy created the impression among Taiwanese that the Taiwanese language was non-mainstream, and Taiwanese became a second-rate language.
Wang Yi-ting, formerly an official in the provincial government, who came to Taiwan from mainland China and participated in the transfer of power from the Japanese to the Nationalist government, wrote in his autobiographical work Passage Though a Crucial Era: "After retrocession, all of the intellectuals in Taiwan could use only Japanese. When they discussed formal problems, it was necessary for them to use Japanese. They only used southern Fujian dialect at home or around the village."
After retrocession, about two million mainlanders, soldiers and civilians, came to Taiwan. Language policy then was to promote the sole use of Mandarin Chinese. The government adopted extreme measures-banning the use of Japanese and southern Fujian dialect. Wang wrote: "This was equivalent to stripping those intellectuals who could only speak Japanese or Taiwanese of their right to express their opinions, receive information, or discuss problems in public venues." He adds: "There was a clear political reason for banning Japanese, but it was going too far to ban Taiwanese." He argues that, in the early days when the government took over in Taiwan, the language issue was certainly one area in which mistakes were made.
The most serious effect of the government's insistence on promoting Mandarin Chinese for 40 years in Taiwan has been the virtual loss of the mother languages of aborigines and Hakkas. Taiwanese has survived only because people of Fujianese ancestry are the majority in Taiwan. However, though policies designed to suppress the use of all dialects (such as fining or hanging humiliating placards on students who spoke dialect in school, or restricting time dedicated to programming in local dialects as did the broadcasting law promulgated in 1976) the impression was deepened that Taiwanese was relatively crude-a "low class" language that, though perhaps more intimate, was not suitable for elegant situations.
Identity problems, language problems
Speech became much more free after the lifting of martial law. Many people began openly expressing their intense dissatisfaction with the government's language policy. Because of the unhappy past, like a pendulum swinging the other way, many people began strongly expressing their feelings about language.
Some people refused to speak anything but Taiwanese in public. In the past, at meetings of the Democratic Progressive Party, some party members were shouted down for using Mandarin Chinese. To display their feelings about group, regime, or national identity, many people made a special point of using one particular language.
Last year, a professor of mathematics at National Taiwan University taught his class in "mathematical methods and reasoning" entirely in Taiwanese. Such an overt declaration of Taiwanese language preference in the classroom brought many skeptical looks from society. The professor, Yang Wei-che, stated that he used Taiwanese as the language of instruction to promote "self-awareness."
He explains: "A country is a product of the will of the people, and does not have a transcendental existence. It is the same with the so-called 'national language'." He argues that the "national language"-which is what Beijing dialect has been called in Taiwan under the Nationalist government-should actually include Taiwanese, Hakka, and Mandarin, as well as aboriginal languages (which have Polynesian roots). His point is that he does not abide by the current definition of the national language as including only Beijing dialect. In public settings, he insists on using his own "national language" to speak. Moreover, he argues, in the places where the public business is conducted, such as the legislature, using one's mother tongue "is not only a right, it is a duty."
People express their autonomy through use of their mother tongue in order to advertise their strong feelings of group identity. This is not easy for those in the out-group to accept. "To say that in public settings certain people can use what they consider to be their own 'national language' is actually just another form of linguistic compulsion. Is it really less tyrannical than the past situation of 'Mandarin Chinese only'?" wonders one political observer.
Tai Kuo-hui, a professor in the department of history at National Chengchi University, argues that many people have treated the language issue irrationally, and have indiscriminately mixed up language with conflicts over political power and national identity. "After retrocession, the island was swept with a fever for studying Mandarin Chinese. Why? Because everyone was rushing to identify themselves with China. It was only later, after the February 28 incident caused animosity to arise between people of different provincial identities, that the fever to study Mandarin subsided and those who spoke Mandarin were seen as 'pigs'," he says.
Today, the historical burden carried by Mandarin as the language of the rulers from mainland China is further complicated by the fact that this same Beijing dialect is the official language of the Communist Party that rules mainland China (though in the PRC it is called putonghua, meaning "the common language"). The Communists have their own designs on Taiwan, and few people in Taiwan are anxious to identify with mainland cultural symbols. Clearly there are many fascinating undercurrents beneath the feelings that people have about language in Taiwan.
Tai argues that Taiwan's language problem arises from cleavages over national and regime identification rather than over the worth of any given language per se. After Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule, there were a number of problems over language, also in part because of reluctance to identify too closely with symbols of Beijing's cultural power. (See the article "Hong Kong Embraces the Chinese Language" in the September 1998 issue of Sinorama.) Language preference can become a serious point of social cleavage when it is connected to differences in regime or national identity.
Pluralization and cacophony
Differences of opinion about national identity cause some people to express themselves virulently on the question of language. But the pluralization of society in Taiwan makes the problem increasingly difficult to resolve. For example, some people feel that because people of Fujianese ancestry are the great majority, the language that they use-Taiwanese-should be the official language. But this proposal has attracted criticism from other groups.
In a 1996 survey conducted by the Formosa Foundation, 61% of Fujianese-Taiwanese approved of making Taiwanese an official language. However, 61% of mainlanders opposed this. Hakkas who expressed an opinion were evenly divided on the question, with 40% on either side.
In October, Sinorama conducted a survey in the four cities of Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung and Ilan. One of the questions was: "Which language do you think is most appropriate for public occasions such as meetings of the legislature or school instruction?" 68% of the respondents answered "Mandarin Chinese."
Language is closely intertwined with political power. In 1987, the linguistic scholar Huang Hsuan-fan did a survey of Taipei residents. More than half of the respondents stated that their first language was Taiwanese. But only 41% of respondents felt that their "mother tongue" was Taiwanese. Huang says that many people who learned Taiwanese at home from their families came to believe that Mandarin is their mother tongue due to factors of "social psychology."
The 1996 Formosa Foundation survey showed similar results. Of respondents under 30 years of age, 80% considered themselves to be "Taiwanese of Fujian ancestry" while 11% identified themselves as "mainlanders." But only 71% considered Taiwanese to be their mother tongue, while 24% said it was Mandarin. It is apparent that a significant number of Taiwanese still see Mandarin as their "mother tongue."
Yet drawing a sharp line between dialects would fail to tell the whole story of language in Taiwan. Huang, in another survey, discovered that in both city and countryside, an even more common form of language usage is a combination of Mandarin and Taiwanese, perhaps also Hakka, and even Japanese and English. The survey conducted by Sinorama in October found a similar result.
It is thus most accurate to identify the language of Taiwan's people as a "hybrid." One can frequently hear sentences that exhibit mixing up of cultures, such as this basically Mandarin sentence leavened with words from other tongues: "Zhege ren bu shi shodo, jiushi takapaiki." It means: "This guy is either shodo [from the Japanese for 'short circuit'] or else he's takapaiki [Taiwanese for 'cracked skull']." Here's another common example: "Na shi shei de call-ji?" It means: "Whose call-ji is that?" Ji, meaning machine, is combined with the English word 'call,' to make pidgin English for 'pager.'
This phenomenon is well known in post-modernist theory, which stresses the fragmentation and intermixing of forms of expression. Utilizing different languages side by side in conversation offers terrific opportunities for creativity. However, purists see "hybridization" as nothing more than mish-mash and confusion, or merely a popular fad that lacks depth.
Linguistic post-colonialism
The mixture of languages represents to a considerable degree the mixture of cultures. For people who prefer the purity of a single language, this means chaos. But anyone who does some research into the origin of languages will quickly find that it is impossible to discover any truly pure language. People who today call for a "return to Taiwanese" or "priority for Mandarin" are setting themselves at odds with the natural language environment.
This is all the more so considering that "cultural diversity" is gaining increasing respect in the late 20th century. Cultural pluralism is stimulating, and if the results are cumulative and interactive, there are certain to be benefits.
Colonial settlers in Central and South America brought Spanish and Portuguese with them. Existing Indian languages were eradicated. Yet, the cultural melange that resulted has given the world writers like Garcia Marquez. The Taiwanese writer Huang Chun-ming suggests that in both creative writing and media, linguistic single-mindedness is just simple narrow-mindedness.
However, it is also an undeniable fact that "culturally pluralizing" languages which penetrate from outside a culture often create status distinctions in the colonial territory, and are an obstacle to local elite identification with their own culture.
When Tai Kuo-hui was studying in Tokyo, he heard fellow students say that university texts in India were all in English. In 1962 india lost a war with China. Tai suggests that one reason was that most of the rank-and-file soldiers could only speak Indian languages, whereas officers-trained in a system that used mainly English instructional materials-could not communicate with them.
In the case of Taiwan, for political reasons-Taiwan having just been liberated from Japanese territorial and cultural imperialism-it is understandable that Japanese (the Taiwan equivalent to India's English) was banned. But that does not mean it was equally necessary to ban Taiwanese, a policy which created alienation between state and society.
In a more recent historical example, the return of Hong Kong to PRC rule, although Beijing naturally hopes Hong Kong people will adopt Mandarin, they are moving gradually. Meanwhile, Cantonese is still commonly used.
On the other hand, many people also suggest that if Hong Kong wants to escape the bounds of its tiny territory, it cannot ignore Mandarin, the common language spoken by 1.5 billion people around the world. Today, some Taiwanese doing business in mainland China are more successful than Hong Kong businessmen, and some suggest this is because Taiwanese speak better standard Chinese then people from Hong Kong. What is the best path to steer between encouraging local culture and maintaining access to larger language communities?
I speak therefore I am
For some people, the prerequisite to pluralization is equality of status. They would like Taiwanese to have equal status with Mandarin, and there are even those who advocate priority for Taiwanese. Other people are striving hard to shatter the image of Taiwanese as a low-class, crude language. After the repression of Taiwanese in the Japanese occupation era, "Taiwanese with higher levels of education could not speak Taiwanese. Taiwanese was mainly used by farmers and laborers. It is more expressive and earthier, but also carries an image of being inelegant," says Chiang Wen-yu, an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Taiwan University.
Today the wheel is turning. "The intellectual elite" are speaking Taiwanese. Taiwanese news presenters on television have broken free of the stereotype of plain-speaking rustics, and are now sophisticated and good looking young men and women. In fact, many people are talking about the ways in which Taiwanese is said to be superior to Mandarin.
Chiu Shui-chin, a primary-school teacher in Ilan, says that Taiwanese retains even more classical Chinese pronunciation than modern Mandarin does. Beijing dialect, he says, was diluted by the Mongolian language spoken by the elite of the Yuan dynasty and the Manchurian language spoken by the rulers in the Qing dynasty. There are many things in Beijing dialect that "don't make sense." Thus he feels that studying Taiwanese allows one to understand Han Chinese culture even more deeply. In particular, reading classical poetry with a Taiwanese pronunciation allows one to express its phonetic beauty to an even greater degree.
Lin Feng-chu is a teacher who has begun a Taiwanese-language reading society in Kaohsiung. She says that one can learn many venerable old terms by speaking Taiwanese. This is because many words in Taiwanese are direct descendants of ancient Chinese terms and continue to use the ancient characters for them (whereas these ancient terms have been replaced by completely different modern expressions in Mandarin). For example, "to study" in Taiwanese is tatse (_*U), whereas in Mandarin it is dushu (_-). Both expressions mean "to read books," but in Mandarin the second character shu is the ordinary modern term for "books," while the character tse in Taiwanese is the classical term.
Is Taiwanese thus really more elegant and intellectual than people have given it credit for? In fact, there has not been much change from traditional to modern Taiwanese. "What has changed is people's linguistic identification, which is a function of external political and economic values," says Chiang Wen-yu. After all, it is really impossible to say whether one language is "better" than another. Some have pleasing pronunciation, others have logical and simple grammar; each has some subjects that are covered in great richness and subtlety, and others that are treated thinly or not at all.
Taiwanese has not been standardized, and some wonder at the limits to its expressiveness, in particular whether it is as useful for intellectual expression as is Mandarin Chinese.
The example of Hong Kong may be instructive here: As of this September, Cantonese has replaced English as the language of education in Hong Kong middle schools. But some say that due to differences in meaning between words in Can-tonese-a spoken, not written, dialect-and the standard Chinese characters used to write them, some ideas have become "muddled" in the texts. in Taiwan, after professor Yang conducted his mathematics class in Taiwanese last year, some people suggested that subjects like mathematics or natural sciences could be taught in Taiwanese, but wondered whether Taiwanese was up to explaining the subtleties of the humanities and social sciences.
Chiang says that in theory any language can be applied to any situation. All languages can be spoken, written down, used for teaching, and used for creative thought and literature. "Every language has many levels, you just have to give them a chance to survive," she states. Take aboriginal languages for example. It is generally believed that the tribal experience of aboriginal peoples is far removed from modern technology. But if everyone suddenly decided to modernize the Ami language, words could be found to express technology. The same naturally applies to Taiwanese.
However, though there are many people singing the praises of the hidden elegance of Taiwanese, in fact there are very few people involved in trying to make Taiwanese more functional, for example by standardizing Taiwanese pronunciation or the characters for written Taiwanese.
Why study Taiwanese?
For those truly concerned about the future of Taiwanese, perhaps the problem that requires the most serious consideration is how to escape from sentimentality or emotion in weighing the use of Taiwanese against other languages.
Naturally, sentimental attachment to a language is not wrong. The Charter of the United Nations clearly states that speaking one's mother tongue is a fundamental human right. Chiang Wen-yu explains that language reflects culture and a particular worldview. For example, there is one Taiwanese expression that says: "If someone steals melons when they are small, they will steal buffalo when they grow up." The point is that the cultivation of a child's character should begin early. Another says: "Monkeys also fall to the foot of the tree." It means that nothing in life is certain. These Taiwanese expressions are closely connected to the early period of society in Taiwan. For many people, they are deeply meaningful.
Today, language policy in Taiwan is "to promote Mandarin, and respect mother tongues." The problem is no longer how to save Taiwanese-language culture, but how to transmit it to the next generation. The "local education" policy adopted in 1996 began classes in "mother tongues" in many primary schools. But even after several years there is still a serious shortage of teachers.
Not only that, but there are disputes over how best to teach mother tongues. Some argue that children should learn mother-tongue expressions that would be of use in daily life. But others suggest that if a vivid Taiwanese-language environment is maintained, children will naturally learn the Taiwanese that is used in daily life, so it is not necessary to teach this in schools. If you are going to bring Taiwanese into the educational system, what is taught should go to a much deeper level than what kids can just pick up at home. For example, schools could teach the Taiwanese pronunciation of classical literature and texts. There is still no consensus on the direction that mother-tongue education should take.
Many parents are concerned, moreover, that mother tongue education may be a weighty addition to the already heavy educational burden on their children. In particular, with primary schools across Taiwan set to begin classes in English in September of 2001, many people are not at all certain that English and Taiwanese classes will not clash.
Yu Bo-cyuan, an associate researcher in the Institute of Ethnology at the Academia Sinica, did a survey in October of all the teachers at the Chiuchuang primary school in Taipei. When asked, "What is more important, classes for teaching English or classes for teaching students their mother tongues?" 42% answered that "mother tongue education is more important," while 48% argued that they are "equally important." However, when asked which of the two classes should be canceled should there be a conflict between them, 81% said mother tongue classes should be given up first. Clearly there is a gap between their preferences and actual behavior. Obviously even those on the front lines of mother-tongue education find it hard to resist global trends.
Respect natural language rules
None of these various opinions can hide one fact. The new generation who will lead Taiwan in the 21st century cannot necessarily speak Taiwanese well. In a number of surveys, there has been a marked decline in the use of Taiwanese by younger people. A sample survey conducted by Sinorama discovered that only about a third of people under 30 years old said that they speak southern Fujianese fluently; this is much lower than the 60% of people over 30 who gave the same response. While Taiwanese may not be facing the crisis of survival that aboriginal languages and Hakka are, one still cannot say that its future looks bright.
From a broader perspective, languages are continually rising and falling. According to one estimate, there are more than 6100 "revitalized" languages in the world. In some cases languages have been strengthened because of the breakup of larger countries, restoring local languages. In other cases there have been policies to strengthen the rights of minority peoples and a number of languages close to extinction, such as the Pingpu aboriginal language in Taiwan, have been formalized and disseminated.
Were young people to have the right to decide which language to use, the younger generation who will lead Taiwan in the 21st century might suggest that questions of provincial origin or group identity aren't important. It just matters whether the language "feels right" for expressing just what you mean.
The resurgence of Taiwanese is linked to the current political environment. In the long run, it may turn out that "Mandarin Chinese only" or "Taiwanese first" are merely transient historical moments. The real language world has its own rules. Perhaps the best way is to "respect the pre-sent." Perhaps expressions like LKK (meaning "old fogey") or SPP (meaning "no class")-in which people actually say the Roman letters as abbreviations for the phonetically spelled Taiwanese terms lao-ko-ko and song-pia-pia-are the real future of Taiwanese: a great melting pot.
p.29
Folk art is a haven for local language, religion, and culture. One example is Taiwanese opera. But many people are saying that Taiwanese opera lyrics are being excessively "Mandarinized" and are losing their local color.
p.30
Politicians say that speaking in local languages is a way of showing respect for ethnic groups, but others have their doubts. The photo shows Taiwan governor James Soong, an avid learner of Taiwanese, stumping for votes at election time.
p.31
Taiwanese is also a way of winning over customers in business. Eva Air, which calls itself "the wings of Taiwan," makes its in-flight announcements first in Taiwanese, and only then in Mandarin. (photo by Diago Chiu)
Taiwanese-language news anchors are no longer plain-looking rustics, but sophisticated and attractive young people.
p.33
Some people are currently advocating increasing the proportion of Taiwanese literature in school textbooks, and Lai Ho's Taiwanese poetry from the Japanese occupation era is being revived. The photo was taken at the Lai Ho museum in Changhwa.
p.34
Unlike the Japanese era, after WWII it was no longer necessary to hide to study Mandarin Chinese. But the policy of repressing local languages to encourage Mandarin caused serious harm to the local "mother tongues." (photo taken in Lukang, 1964, by Huang Hsiu-ying)
p.35
Language is one of the marks of group identity. When the "New KMT Front," the predecessor to today's New Party and closely identified with "mainlanders," went to Kaohsiung to publicize its views, there was a confrontation with people with a strongly Taiwanese identity. (The photo was taken in 1993.)
p.36
English is the international language, and English supplementary schools are all over Taiwan. Children are devoting more and more time to studying English, threatening to cut into the time available for mother-tongue classes.
p.37
How to encourage mother tongues without getting into "chauvinism" is a key issue for future mother-tongue education. The photo shows a mother-tongue speech competition for aboriginal children in Taitung.
p.38
The generation which will take over in the 21st century is not necessarily going to follow the same linguistic rules of the game as their parents. Languages rise and fall according to their own rules, not based on what people say they want.
Taiwanese-language news anchors are no longer plain-looking rustics, but sophisticated and attractive young people.
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)