Under the revised Language Development Bill, Taiwan will stop defining Mandarin Chinese, the lingua franca of China, as the official language.
Instead, it will list Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka and Taiwan’s aboriginal tongues as its “national languages,” Chiu Chuang-liang, director of the cabinet’s council for Cultural Planning and Development, said.[/quote]
I think they forgot to add the English language to this plan.
I wonder which language they will use in school. Mandarin in the North, Minnan in the South, Hakka in the middle, and Aborigines in the mountains? :yay:
As I understand it, Mandarin will still be the OFFICIAL language, however there will be an uncertain number of NATIONAL languages. (At least including Taiwanese, Hakka, and 12 aboriginal tongues.) Statements to the effect that “all the languages spoken in Taiwan will be equal” must be taken cum grano salis, in view of the vast number of foreign languages which have native speakers here. (I know of several native Esperantists.) English has not yet figured into the discussion. Whatever they might say about it, I can’t imagine that it would change anything practical. I gather that the major effect of “national” language status would be that efforts to promote the language in question could expect to receive government funding. Possibly speakers of those languages would also enjoy the right to communicate with the government in them.
Yes, I know it sounds like a joke, but it’s perfectly true. When Esperantists have kids, they sometimes make a point of speaking to them in E-o as they grow up. Sometimes E-o is the main communication language of the parents, though not in any of our cases. Of course there aren’t any MONOLINGUAL native Esperantists, that would be cruel.
Abandoning the “official” language and allowing children to study in their mother tongue is such a great thing. It’s in line with the UN Declaration of Human Rights and also is in tune with education research. I think it’s a great thing.
twocs… for some people… mother tongue comes from the motherland, and they officially go in Mandarin… or, what can you expect all those ball scratchers goods for nothing public workers will do if suddenly they have to speak Taiwanese? Get a red shirt and go to the Taipei Main Station?
maybe if they would start speaking english and spanish… they would get somewhere… but then again, they have to loose their student lifes studying Chinese history…
[quote=“Belgian Pie”]Taiwan is turning into a backwater instead of a regional hub …[/quote] If that is actually true is it due to the fact that languages other than Mandarin exist and are now recognized as legitimate? Will this diminish the Mandarin ability of the general public? I’m not following your logic…
Gosh, I am outing myself here, but were I come from, we do not speak the official language outside school or with any body, but tourists and teachers for that matter. Like in Taiwan, we speak the local language 99% of the day and learn the official language from TV, bedside stories and later in school. All newspapers, books, TV news etc. are in the official language and no local language is tolerated in school.
Why can’t Taiwan learn from my country??!!
It’s my impression that around the world most governmental legislation concerning “official languages”, whether that be adopting official languages, changing them, or abandoning them, is politically motivated.
I can’t see this particular policy change making much of a difference on the ground, though, at least not on its own. Part of the reason is that over the last few years some steps have already been taken to encourage the teaching of other languages than Mandarin.
[quote=“twocs”]Abandoning the “official” language and allowing children to study in their mother tongue is such a great thing. It’s in line with the UN Declaration of Human Rights and also is in tune with education research. I think it’s a great thing.[/quote]Two things here. Many (the majority of?) elementary-school aged kids here already receive Taiwanese language classes in school. But I don’t think that Taiwanese really counts as the “mother language” of most kids. I taught elementary-aged kids in Taichung for five years. That was in a fairly working-class area and most of the kids weren’t from particularly rich families. Yet they were fluent in Mandarin and not so fluent in Taiwanese. Mandarin was their “language of eloquence” to use Maoman’s phrase. Not surprising, really. Most of the time I’d see kids and their parents out and about, the parents were speaking to the kids in Mandarin, and I guess the same happens when they’re at home.
It could be a good thing if governmental policies encourage study of other languages too, though I’m afraid I’m a bit of a pragmatist when it comes to the topic of endangered languages. I recently read Mark Abley’s book: “Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages” but I’m not convinced that there’s something of intrinsic value in every language in and of itself. But I can see that from a cultural viewpoint at least it would be good to continue and extend support of Taiwanese, Hakka, and aboriginal languages in Taiwan.
Of course I don’t think that study of Mandarin should suffer as a result. It’s a language of learning and of international communication. As you know, twocs, Krashen recommends that kids in bilingual programs study key subject matter in their native languages first. He feels that the evidence shows that learning new topic matter in an unfamiliar language is inefficient. What I’ve seen in my teaching experience so far seems to back this up. For the majority of kids in Taiwan, I think that Mandarin is their native language, and it’s certainly one in which they have good access to easily-comprehensible study materials.
More like it diminishes the image of the ROC government because instead of dealing with real concrete issues, it panders to nonsense like this. Making a category of national languages that serve no purpose other than pandering to a voting base.
Only the aboriginal languages are going extinct and probably needs a lot of intervention to keep it alive on Taiwan.
