Aboriginal languages are officially national languages

According to this article:

Back in March of 2017, before the new national language development act was put into vote, NPP was already talking about strengthening native languages listening and comprehension abilities among pre-school children. Many of what NPP said made it into the final draft of the national language development act.

But the burning question many Forumosans will want to ask is, does the NPP think foreign languges like English should remain forbidden in kindergartens?

Don’t think I’ve come across them talking about that.

Update:

1 Like

Well I’m glad.

Thanks to the new law, Hualian and Taidong started releasing official documents in Aboriginal languages for the first time!

1 Like

Interestingly, the name of the village mayor 謝忠淵 (Xie Zhong-yuan) is spelt differently in the document and on his own seal.

The document spelt it as Kuciw Siy Cong Yin, but his seal says Kuciw Siy Cong Yen.

We still got a long way to go I guess, but it’s a start and way better than nothing.

So, from now on, every official documents must be translated in 8-14 aboriginal languages?
Remember these languages are not mutually intelligible.
You can’t pick only one or few of them, because they are of equal importance.

While this is a good and sympathetic gesture towards acknowledgement of native people heritage, that’s bit redundant don’t it?

EU must translate all its official documentations/reports in 24 languages. While, most of the delegates could speak either English, French, German or Spanish.
That alone, make unnecessary cost.


http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.516.186&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Since the Aboriginal communities here are suffering from being marginalized culturally and economically, I see creating a bunch of translator jobs for them all across Taiwan as the first step towards reversing their status as economic minority.

I’m also waiting to see documents translated into Taigi and Hakka. I want to see students given the choice to take entry exams, written exams at the DMV, and pretty much everything, in their own language of choice.

That could be a great ethical policy in the name of humanity.
I somehow afraid it will backlashed to the policy makers.
Hakka and Taigi speakers would surely demand equality and we are gonna have even more languages to go.

DMV already one step ahead of you, I guess.
I recall, the test could be taken even in Indonesian, Viet, Thai and Filipino (other than English and Mandarin Chinese of course).

A national language shows unity.
Two or three national language shows diversity.
More than 10 national language …??? it wil end in disastrous mis-translation and mis-understanding.

I guess, they should add an end-note, like:
“whenever a different interpretation arise, the Mandarin Chinese version will rule over the other version.”

And why shouldn’t Taigi and Hakka be treated as equals to Mandarin and all Aboriginal languages?

You are thinking of nationality in terms of nation states which is an European invention for less than 200 years.

There are many modern countries with multiple national languages today, and those who tries to enforce a fabricated unity will be the ones that break apart.

That is pleasant news. I hope the trend would keep up.

They’re not saying every single gongwen ever written has to be translated into every aboriginal language, are they?

Not yet. I don’t know if the new law even has any regulation on what has to be release or provided in what language.

In Canada I think a minority language user has to be above a certain number in a region before the government requires stuff to be issued in that minority language.

I don’t understand the dilemma.

Countries like Singapore for example, have multiple national languages (English plus Chinese, Malay, and Hindi), but don’t have everything accomplished in all languages or signage everywhere. They have picked one which is English and they add more where needed.

Well, it’s not that they picked one, it’s just that they were last colonized by the English.

That being said, I was visiting Kyoto earlier this year and on a tour train I sat across from an Indian couple. They spoke an Indic language to each other. When I asked where they are from, they both said Singapore in unison. I was pretty impressed by that.

No. It means that the officials are free to choose to write documents pertinent to indigenous matters in the main language used by the majority of the people involved.

For example, the sample documents from Hualien are in Am is. The ones from Pingtung are using Rukai.

The invitation to the aboriginal language congress taking place in August is written in Chinese and a dialect from central Taiwan that is spoken by 500 people and might disappear soon unless efforts are made to preserve it.

Singapore takes multiculturalism pretty seriously.

National languages of Singapore are English (official documents/ruled over the other), Mandarin Chinese with Simplified script, Malay and Tamil.
They don’t use Hindi. The Indians in SG nominally from South Eastern. Hindi is the language of the North (Delhi).
Lee Kuan Yew in one of his interview said that he (Singapore) choose English due to fairness, so that everyone must come out from their comfort zone and learn.

Some have surmised that Singaporean multilingualism is a clever means of keeping the Chinese communities together politically (by forcing them all to use Mandarin, and not recognizing any other Sinolects) and other communitites split up (such as Indians, who are required to educate their children in Tamil or whatever rather than English, as many would prefer).