“I think the preservation of language important in a cultural context.”
Its rot like this that kills languages off. Preserving languages just leads to the exclusion of new words. The French love to do this.
Where would English be if it didn’t soak up new words from everywhere? Languages that are not allowed to evolve, that are not allowed to be “diluted” by foreign words, eventually die out.
So you think no effort should be extended on the part of the Taiwanese to preserve their language. What’s more if you knew anything at all about Taiwanese you would know that it is comprised of a good deal of foreign language, especially, English by way of Japanese usage of English words.
What a moron!
I am still not convinced that romanized taiwanese is better than using characters for teaching of Taiwanese.
As I have already mentioned. there are bound to be some instances where characters can not properly or accurately render the Taiwanese, but I would guess that over 90% of Taiwanese can be written in characters without any problem.
Would anyone from the pro-romanization camp care to provide a concise list of the advantages (or even disadvantages, if you want!) of that system over characters for the teaching of Taiwanese to young children?
Why bother confusing the poor kids anymore when the roman alphabet is perfectly satisfactory. (btw, zhuyin fuhao would need major modifications to accommodate Taiwanese)
Bahasa Indonesia is a language that was invented as the national language of Indonesia following independence. It is mostly based on Malay with some loan words from Dutch and English.
Why bother confusing the poor kids anymore when the roman alphabet is perfectly satisfactory. (btw, zhuyin fuhao would need major modifications to accommodate Taiwanese)[/quote]
Note the ‘ala’, of course I’m not suggesting trying to superimpose a Mandarin system onto Taiwanese, but a new system entirely.
BTW, what are they planning on teaching the kids anyway? It seems to me that Taiwanese spoken around the island can be quite different. Do they get a Taipei-Taiwanese because it’s the seat of government, or a Tainan-Taiwanese because A-Bian is from there, or what? Is there an ‘eclectic’ vocabulary being proposed?
Imagine five years from now. Kids will have had a pretty good grounding in the romanized version of Taiwanese by then.
How many of them do you think are going to be using it for anything? They may use it when they have to, for essays in school etc, but if they want to write in Taiwanese for themselves, such as writing speeches in Taiwanese or noting down the words to a song in Taiwanese, do you think they are going to use the romanized Taiwanese system they learned in school?
No. They will write in Chinese characters.
In Chinese, there is a difference between 語 (yu3) and 話 (hua4).
Both is translated as language. But Yu3 is to refers to perfect language, and hua refers to imperfect language.
According to Chinese perception I think, look at sample below:
語:
華語 Chinese
英語 English
法語 French
西語 Spanish
德語 German
話:
泰國話 Thai
印尼話 Indonesian
菲律賓話 Philipino
etc…
rgds
anton xie
Anton
Could u say a bit more about how that ties in with the topic of this thread?
Are u saying that Taiwanese is a ‘perfect’ language and therefore…Sorry, what are u tryiing to say exactly?
Please elaborate. Thanks.
p.s. Can u speak Taiwanese fluently? If so, we would value your comments on the government’s proposal to teach Taiwanese in elementary schools using a romanized system of Taiwanese.
What’s the purpose of promoting Tai-yu? Is it to help the language, or the people who speak it? In education, for example, is it meant to benefit the kids? In what way? And is there really a big population of adults who don’t understand Mandarin, or is all this some fancy sort of cultural enrichment project?
If most people can get along quite well without Tai-yu, and if almost everybody learns Mandarin as a matter of course, why not just accept Tai-yu’s marginalization? Does society really gain that much by cultivating its use in broader society? (Better trade relations with Fujian, perhaps?) Like, is there some really great poetry in Tai-yu that I don’t know about? (No one seems concerned that Japanese is dying as a native language of Taiwan, and that seems far more practical.) Sometimes language death is really “language euthanasia.”
Language is inherently political. When we draw a circle around a group of people and tell them “they” are a “people,” and their various ways of speaking are a language, and the model of that language is the speech of a certain city or body of literature, that’s basically nation-building (or nation-dismantling, as the case may be). It’s like religious schism. People get offended when you even suggest that, for instance, Black English should be considered a separate language from regular English, or that Afrikaans is really Dutch. And the Turks don’t even want to hear that there is such a thing as Kurdish.
Notice how much of our discussion of language issues really amounts to dissatisfaction with other people’s speech habits. I mean Jesus, why don’t they just establish separate schools for people who want instruction in Taiwanese, or whatever? What business does the Ministry of Education even have in the issue of what languages people speak, and how they speak them?
It surprises me! There has never been one in recorded history, and the government can barely decide anything on matters like this it seems.
Hopefully I’m behind the times and you are correct. Has anyone heard about this and know where to find out more about it?
To learn the language effectively students will need to learn a romanization or bopomo based phonetic system, just like they do for mandarin. if they really want to write in taiwanese they will need it because they will definitely want to use words that they don’t know the character for unless they have but a good deal of time into learning them–keep in mind there are many common taiwanese words that have never in recorded history had a common character association–or fall back on baihuawen meaning loans etc.
in fact such mixed romanization/character usage has long been common, you will find it in a lot of taiwanese writing and textbooks.
spack, romanization or any other consistent phonetic system is easier for anyone than characters because with the command a of a few symbols, one can easily transcribe any word that thye can sound out, that is, all words in the language. characters are a far inferior form of writing for any language.
[quote=“antonxie”]In Chinese, there is a difference between 語 (yu3) and 話 (hua4).
Both is translated as language. But Yu3 is to refers to perfect language, and hua refers to imperfect language.
According to Chinese perception I think, look at sample below:
語:
華語 Chinese
英語 English
法語 French
西語 Spanish
德語 German
話:
泰國話 Thai
印尼話 Indonesian
菲律賓話 Philipino
etc…
rgds
anton xie[/quote]
So how do you account for the difference between Guoyu/Hanyu/Huayu and Putonghua?
BTW, Is there a language called Philipino? I thought the most spoken language was Tagalog.
I’ve been talking to some Taiwanese about this problem and now I’m even more confused!
Did you know that policy makers in their infinite wisdom have selected different and often obscure Chinese characters to represent the Taiwanese words?
For example, “to go out” 出去 in Taiwanese characters (Yes, that’s right - characters that have been selected to be actual Taiwanese characters) is being taught as 啄齒. The adjective participle thingie (的) is being taught using 兮instead. What on earth for?
So, kids have to learn Taiwanese not just through a romanized phonetic system, but also using a different set of Chinese characters!! To me, that is truly incredible.
Now I don’t know what to think. Romanized Taiwanese looks more appealing now. Isn’t it sad that kids not even 10 years old are being used in an ill-advised and politiczed language experiment?
now you’re getting the picture spack. there has been a lot of dispute regarding how taiwanese should be transcribed in characters.
are you sure that 啄齒 is not being used for chhui khi or teeth? i recall seeing that although 嘴齒 is commonly used. 啄齒 for 出去 is wrong, the latter are clearly the correct characters for chhut khi and are known by all. for another thing 齒 is second tone in taiwanese while 去 is third.
there is a sound linguistic reason for not using 的. it is a baihuawen sound loan word without the meaning “of” in classical chinese or the sound “e” in minnan. as such it would be a corruption. there are other characters that have been traditionally used here, the one you mention is a sound loan, preferable to the baihuawen meaning loan. believe me this character will be the least of anyone’s worries trying to learn to write taiwanese with characters!
Basically according to Ethnologue, there about 6500 languages in the world. I don’t know how many exactly, but probably no more than 1000 have a writing system. By the way, how many languages can you think of? Probably not more than one or two hundred at most, and those of course are all ones with writing systems. Usually it is those Bible tarnslators traveling into the jungles and giving these languages writing systems for the first time, and of course it’s always in a romanized script.
And by the way, Cantonese and Minnan are considered by the linguists of Ethnologue to be separate languages based on statistical and historical data (including other languages of China as well).
Taiwanese (= Minnan = Hokkien) is the same dialect as spoken in Xiamen. There are two main accents: Zhangzhou and Quanzhou. Here in Taipei, most people speak with Quanzhou (for example the word [勿會] “cannot” (the two characters should be merged together) is pronounced ‘be’ in Quanzhou accent and ‘boe’ in Zhangzhou accent, and more or less mutually intelligible).
Several Romanizations already exist for writing Taiwanese. In addition, there are at least two differing adaptations of Zhuyin Fuhao for Taiwanese, and there are Zhuyin Fuhao for Hakka as well. It wouldn’t take an expert to figure out that ㄍwith a curl on it is Taiwanese’ breathy-voiced ‘g’, especially if it’s a language you already speak.
Many, many children learn Taiwanese as a first language at home before they ever get to school. Of course there are many, many parents that speak to them only in Mandarin so they won’t feel burdened once they get to school, but if they’re coming from a Taiwanese family, chances are those children have had more exposure to Taiwanese than Mandarin by the time they start school.
I don’t think it is the goal of schools to teach children Taiwanese since many already speak it (those that come from Taiwanese-speaking families). It is rather expanding their vocabulary, giving them a tool to record the speech in writing, and better their ability to discuss things in the language. 遮兮(个)代誌毋是赫呢歹了解 (chit-e taichi m-si hiah-ni phaiN liaokai).
啄齒 means teeth and 啄 means mouth. 出去 means to go out. As mentioned before they have different pronunciations and different tones. As a side note 恬去 (tiam7 khi3) means to shut up, and it is not 齒 khi2 here but 去 khi3.
Personally, I prefer typing Taiwanese in romanization because I can do it so much faster than characters, but if I need to type in characters, I can always find a character for what I need.
There are some useful characters that can’t be typed, and I usually just put their components in such as [勿會], [勿愛], [亻因], [辶日]迌 and so on. Here is a site with some characters used in Taiwanese:
home.kimo.com.tw/kiatgak/choji.htm
Kasu kong, chia u lang siuN ka goa liansip Taigi, goa ma oan-gi. In-ui goa ka-ki e Taigi a-boe hiah-ni ho, so-i goa hi-bang chia u lang siuN liansip.
So, why not just use ‘normal’ mandarin for Taiwanese? Surely, if anyone sees the words 出去 they can say ‘chhut khi’? Why the need for new characters? I don’t know much Taiwanese (hardly any), but surely normal Chinese characters can be used to write most Taiwanese words? All this is going to be incredibly difficult for young kids to take in.
You might like to think that romanization is the answer but you can bet schools are going to spend years testing and reviewing students’ knowledge of the system, in addition to learning all those apparently newly invented Taiwanese characters.
The example I gave about the ‘woodpecker teeth’ was shown by reporters to numerous lawmakers. None were able to give the ‘correct’ Taiwanese pronounication or meaning.
FUBAR I believe would be an appropriate expression to describe this whole situation!
Because there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Why bother inventing yet another system when a perfectly adequate one exists.
Regarding characters, whether or not characters are taught there still needs to be some sort of phonetic system. So why not use a romanised pinyin?
[quote=“Mr. Science”]What’s the purpose of promoting Tai-yu? Is it to help the language, or the people who speak it? In education, for example, is it meant to benefit the kids? In what way? And is there really a big population of adults who don’t understand Mandarin, or is all this some fancy sort of cultural enrichment project?
If most people can get along quite well without Tai-yu, and if almost everybody learns Mandarin as a matter of course, why not just accept Tai-yu’s marginalization? Does society really gain that much by cultivating its use in broader society? (Better trade relations with Fujian, perhaps?) Like, is there some really great poetry in Tai-yu that I don’t know about? (No one seems concerned that Japanese is dying as a native language of Taiwan, and that seems far more practical.) Sometimes language death is really “language euthanasia.”
Language is inherently political. When we draw a circle around a group of people and tell them “they” are a “people,” and their various ways of speaking are a language, and the model of that language is the speech of a certain city or body of literature, that’s basically nation-building (or nation-dismantling, as the case may be). It’s like religious schism. People get offended when you even suggest that, for instance, Black English should be considered a separate language from regular English, or that Afrikaans is really Dutch. And the Turks don’t even want to hear that there is such a thing as Kurdish.
Notice how much of our discussion of language issues really amounts to dissatisfaction with other people’s speech habits. I mean Jesus, why don’t they just establish separate schools for people who want instruction in Taiwanese, or whatever? What business does the Ministry of Education even have in the issue of what languages people speak, and how they speak them?[/quote]
Well said, Mr. Science.
The more dying or waning languages we artificially sustain or resuscitate, the more we divide the peoples of the world and increase the likelihood of intercommunal strife and wars.
Not that Taiwanese has ever come anywhere near to dying or is likely to do so. If it survived all those decades of active suppression by the KMT, it is not going to die out within 50 years (as one poster suggested) now that it is has such powerful political support and is enjoying such a huge resurgence.
Let scholars and whoever chooses to do so work to keep languages alive and vibrant, if they wish for any reason to make that their purpose. But let’s keep the government out of it and keep it out of the compulsory education system.
And yes Cranky, of course it’s only the WRITTEN form of Mandarin that’s so difficult. That’s what I meant my words to imply. I’m sure that the spoken forms of all languages are equally easy for their native speakers to master.
Spack, mandarin and taiwanese are simply different languages, you will not be able to simply graft the characters from one onto the other without creating a bastardized and confusing system.
you are right though that learning the system will be a challenge for young children, most adults could not be bothered as your legislators demonstrate. thus the need for romanization, which i think you take too negative a view of. with a romanization or even a bopomo system under their belt, they will be able to write anythin they want, using such characters as they are able too, and learning more as they go along. this has been a common method of writing taiwanese and is the way to go. unfortunately many scholars are so attached to characters and cannot accept any such idea.
jack1234’s 這个代誌毋是赫呢歹了解 is a good example, it’s very simple taiwanese but i bet your legislators would have trouble with that, anyone would have to study it first.
jack, li ing siaN-mi nng-te phah tai-bun? wa ga li gang-khoan siuN-be lian-sip tai-gi. khong-giaN wa toa tai-oan zap-saN ni, m-goh goa-e tai-gi goh chin bai. to-sia, hit-e link chin ho.
Like Cranky Laowai who has quite a good grasp of the linguistics issues involved, I also fall into the Romanization camp for writing Taiwanese. I’m sure several of you are familiar with the Presbyterian Church Romanization system that was first introduced in the 19th century; there is a good body of literature in Church Romanization, and it has served as a default writing system for alphabetic writing among Taiwanese.
One system that no one has yet mentioned, however, is MLT/TMSS (Modern Literal Taiwanese/Taiwan Modern Spelling System). This is a system that Prof. Liim Keahioong invented in the 1940s. It is considered a substantial improvement over Church Romanization because it encodes Taiwanese tones into the spelling, similar to YR Chao’s Gwoyeu Romatzyh.
MLT is taught in the US at various Taiwanese schools around the country. For a quick introduction, see:
tacpa.org/wdcts/mlt/mlt.html
tacpa.org/wdcts/mlt/taiguo.com/
groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&l … edu&rnum=1
Prof. Pai Chou has an interesting article on the issues involved in developing a writing system for Taiwanese at:
daiwanway.dynip.com/tw/writing.shtml
I, however, do not agree with his distinction between writing systems and sound systems. Many writing systems that are currently in use began as what he would call phonemic systems (Turkish, Finnish, Hangul, Vietnamese), but phonetic drifts and language variations always introduce irregularities that are codified by a standard lexical representation. His usage of the term ‘morphophonemic’ is also off (He seems to think that homonyms with different spellings such as ‘cite’ and ‘sight’ indicates that the writing system is morphophonemic; this is not what morphophonemic writing means). Finally, take the problem of having too many homonyms in the language with a grain of salt.
Prof. Liim has a website with a number of articles on his writing system at
edutech.org.tw/index-1.htm
edutech.org.tw/Topics-T.htm
Unfortunately, that site is not very well organized, and the writing is awkward, making it very difficult to find good introductory articles. Those interested, however, may take a stab at:
edutech.org.tw/Prospects/Tiau.htm
edutech.org.tw/June-2001-T.htm
Though a few improvements can be made, MLT/TMSS appears to be quite a well-design and well thought-out writing system. In the US, at least, it has been used to teach young Taiwanese-Americans their ancestral language.
[quote=“daltongang”]
jack, li ing siaN-mi nng-te phah tai-bun? wa ga li gang-khoan siuN-be lian-sip tai-gi. khong-giaN wa toa tai-oan zap-saN ni, m-goh goa-e tai-gi goh chin bai. to-sia, hit-e link chin ho.[/quote]
To type in Taiwanese, you might try the hotsys program:
Keep practicing; I was able to understand you fine. Please remember, though, ‘I’ should be ‘gwa’ not ‘wa’. Many Mandarin speakers drop the /g/ when speaking Taiwanese because Mandarin does not include the voiced velar stop.