Why English and not Taiwanese?
Apparently it didnât originate at Cambridge, but someone at Cambridge took an interest in it.
[quote=âMatt Davisâ]This text circulated on the internet in September 2003. . . . It struck me as interesting - especially when I received a version that mentioned Cambridge University!
There are elements of truth in this [meme], but also some things which scientists studying the psychology of language (psycholinguists) know to be incorrect.
Update:
Iâve found a www page that tracked down the original demonstration of the effect of letter randomisation to Graham Rawlinson. Graham wrote a letter to New Scientist in 1999 (in response to a paper by Saberi & Perrot (Nature, 1999) on the effect of reversing short chunks of speech). In it Graham says:
Rawlinson, G. E. (1976) The significance of letter position in word recognition. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Psychology Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham UK.[/quote]
https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/people/matt.davis/cmabridge/
Matt Davis is [a? the?] Senior Medical Research Council Research Scientist at Cambridge University.
http://www.neuroscience.cam.ac.uk/directory/profile.php?MattDavis
Thereâs some other scientific stuff on the 'net along those general lines.
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Taiwan may as well be the 52nd states of the US, since almost every Taiwanese of the upper class has some sort of American fever.
Yeah, makes English the official language and lingua franca to replace Chinese. I donât mind, for Iâm proficient in both language.
I canât say anything against it. Even if the government didnât make a big deal out of it, just the awareness that English has been made an official language might somehow help boost English fluency levels here, assuming greater fluency is what the folks here want.
Iâm in favor of more English, universal language and all thatâŚ
But (1) this proposal is a pipe dream, and (2) a blanket policy would result in more bad translations and more misunderstandings.
A more practical soltuion (still a dream, but perhaps not from a pipe):
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Put together a list (with input from all levels of government, NGOâs, and the general public) of services, signs, and publications that are not offered in English (or not being updated) and figure out which ones would be most beneficial to the general public and for the achievement of the governmentâs goals.
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Hire native speakers to proofread everything. (I donât care how lofty a personâs qualifications are! If the Council of Grand Justices canât figure out whatâs wrong with the official translations of its decisions by other lofty persons, that means loftiness is being squandered on both sides.)
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Well, why not work it like this?
[0. Make English the second official language.]
You mean make English âofficialâ but not equal?
Iâm thinking in Canadian terms, i.e. two official languages means two equal languages, and failure to provide the same level of service in either language results in lawsuits, plus the lower levels of government set additional rules, so you get the language police in Quebec telling Italian restaurants to translate strange foreign words like spaghetti into French, and so onâŚ
I suppose it doesnât matter what you call it, except in symbolic terms, but symbolism is important in politics, and any perceived slight against Taiwanese cultural identity would not go down well with the electorate.
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I was merely proposing one item of a to-do list to combine with your two items. I figured that that item, if resolved upon but not acted upon, might sort of stare disappointedly at the country (the way my personal to-do list items used to stare at meâI say âused toâ because I rarely make to-do lists anymore, but thatâs another subject), which would, I think, increase the likelihood that the country would eventually take action.
But disappointed stares aside, in my experience itâs kind of hard to meet a goal if I donât set a goal. I think it might work that way for nations as well.
Besides, it ainât like itâs some shockingly novel idea:
[quote]In a bid to increase Taiwanâs competitiveness, Premier Yu Shyi-kun yesterday promised to make English the nationâs second semi-official language over a period of six years.[/quote]âKo Shu-ling and Lindy Yeh, âEnglish to be made official,â Taipei Times, May 1, 2002
They donât even hire native speakers to proofread English textbooks or tests like TOEIC, TOEFL, etc. XD
We can dream.
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Maybe Ms. English should appoint a special âEnglish Task Forceâ or somethingâŚ
Ainât going to happen. Very little political gain; very large political cost, with speakers of Taiwanâs myriad other languages almost certain to be (rightly) pissed off.
Guy
Youâre killing me manâŚ
- All
- We do. Someone upstairs thinks they know better. And I am not talking about God.
Yes, so we should petition the Feline Yuan to fix it and install you as the new Upstairs. 
(I think you need to get your citizenship first though.)
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And wait 10 years.
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If that ever happened, wouldnât they have to drop the Chinese requirement for citizenship?
Ah, yes, but you would need to pass the test in one of the two languages, and surely the English test would be⌠difficult. 
I think I understand why speakers of Taiwanese would be upset. I wouldnât agree with them, but I would certainly see their point. It seems to me that the purpose of a second language would be an extroversion as opposed to an introversion. The Taiwanese language is great, if you speak Taiwanese. To me, it seems a second official language would be to bring more people in; not to exclude them. It seems like a weak attempt to âopen Taiwan to the rest of the world.â On a national level, itâs kind of odd to see the generational divide between non-speakers of Taiwanese and whatnot. If they were to adopt a second official language, it really should be Taiwanese. However, I donât think this political posturing has anything to do with national identity.[quote=âSuper_Fire, post:37, topic:159881, full:trueâ]
Pay Rocket no mind, sheâs a textbook SJW
[/quote]
This is not a truly original thought, but when did being a warrior for social justice become pejorative? Now, this has nothing to do with @Rocket, cuz I know heâs just doing his thing over there and most likely doesnât have the weight of the world on his shoulders. But I have this friend back home - one of my oldest grade school chums - whoâs a pro bono lawyer in one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S., and this cat basically lives and breathes social justice. He represents the people nobody wants to represent. And when he sees something wrong, egregiously wrong, he stands up and says, âFuck no.â I donât see how I could possibly cast his personal crusade in a dim light. I wouldnât dream of making a meme of him. I think we need more people like him in the world. I donât see a reason to spite a righteous man - when heâs being righteous.
Now, I can also see the motivation for scoffing at a so-called warrior for justice, much in the same way I see uneducated hillbillies throwing shade at âliberal elitesâ. Granted, the SJW world is full of hypocrisy. What world isnât? Iâm just wondering when it became wrong to want to see something right in the world for a fuckinâ change, you know?