This is an excellent example of how much trouble the mighty greens have had imposing their political will. At a certain green TV station for example, management can’t seem to stop its anchors from referring to ‘dalu’ even though station policy is to say ‘zhonngguo’. And it is in small details like this one that reactionary blue civil servants attempt in their own small way to subvert the current government policies.
Anyway, look how long its has taken them to start doing something about all those Sinocentric terms in textbooks. It’s going to take two or three more terms of Green rule before this problem get solved.[/quote]
Actually, I woukld have thought the opposite was true, that the aim was not to offend (or presume) for those people who don’t identify with being Taiwanese. A clumsy fit for a clumsy problem, but a little above the absurdity of Taiwaner.
Just out of curiosity, why is it wrong to say “Taiwan people”?
Is there a grammatical rule anywhere that makes it wrong, or is it just wrong because you don’t say “England people”, “China people”? If it’s grammatically wrong, what about “Taiwan politics”, “Taiwan law”, “Taiwan art”, and all those other combinations you can see all over the place in Taiwan.
Wow, Feiren, I never knew that the Taipei Times was actually run by the blues. I should write them a letter telling them to get rid of their overwhelming pan-blue bias and running all of those pro-Ma op-ed pieces.
Hannes, it’s not necessary as “Taiwanese” is the adjective form for Taiwan and works just fine in most cases. “The Taiwan people” sounds like Chinglish, probably because it is.
If the convention is to use the adjective form of a country to describe things of or pertaining to that country, as I understand it, it is incorrect to use the noun form. I’m sure there are exceptions, but the examples I cited just come across as poor English, leading me to wonder what the motivation was for the substitution.
[quote=“Poagao”]Wow, Feiren, I never knew that the Taipei Times was actually run by the blues. I should write them a letter telling them to get rid of their overwhelming pan-blue bias and running all of those pro-Ma op-ed pieces.
Hannes, it’s not necessary as “Taiwanese” is the adjective form for Taiwan and works just fine in most cases. “The Taiwan people” sounds like Chinglish, probably because it is.[/quote
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,510 from taipeitimes.com for “Taiwanese people”.
Looks like the TT favors ‘Taiwanese people’ over ‘Taiwan people’.
It also looks like they are inconsistent. Which shouldn’t be too surprising.
HG: The management at the green stations aren’t too worried about offending non-Taiwan-identifying Taiwanese. They know those people are watching. They are afraid of offending green viewers–who are watching and are very vocal about their discontent when sinocentric term like Guoju gets used. I’m afraid Taiwan’s become much more obviously polarized in the past few years. Mainly because the greens are tending to speak up a lot more in public.
Maybe “Taiwanese” just sounds too much like you are referring to the “Minnan” population as opposed to the “Waishengren”, “Kejiaren” and “Yuanzumin”.
“People of Taiwan” might seem to be too inconvenient for some writers.
I wonder how long it takes for editors to get used to Chinglish over time. If you hear it all the time it sounds normal eventually.
I don’t think there’s a grammatical rule to say why “Taiwan people” is wrong – in some cases Taiwan is used as an adjective as well (Taiwan geography, Taiwan politics, the “Taiwan question”).
BUT it does sound --painfully – like Chinglish – and I can’t really think of similar examples where it works (America people, Spain people, Russia people). I wouldn’t use it.
Why not say the “23 million people of Taiwan” – that sounds perfectly fine and sensible to me. But I guess for the ‘powers-that-be’, it’s not about being sensible…
[quote=“hannes”]Maybe “Taiwanese” just sounds too much like you are referring to the “Minnan” population as opposed to the “Waishengren”, “Kejiaren” and “Yuanzumin”.
“People of Taiwan” might seem to be too inconvenient for some writers.
I wonder how long it takes for editors to get used to Chinglish over time. If you hear it all the time it sounds normal eventually.[/quote]
Why would anyone think that people whose ancestors are from a certain area in Fujian are “real Taiwanese” while people whose ancestors are from another area or even from Taiwan itself are not? If anything I’d think we should be working to get rid of such fallacious ideology rather than promoting it. Use it across the board.
As for editors getting used to Chinglish, I’d guess that at that point you should probably start looking for another line of work.
I completely agree. They should never use it. And the folks at SET should never use ‘dalu’ when they mean China.
‘Taiwan’ used an adjective is an editorial rule that used to be enforced many if not all KMT-run rags in the bad old days. Sandy might know more about this. The point was very much that Taiwan is not a nation. Old habits die hard even when the reasons for them have been forgotten by most.
Yup. And the place where one of the posters here now works was one of the worst culprits. But we’re no longer under the crushing yoke of the KMT and their goonish thugs, people. Rise up! Throw off your shackles and SPELL! SPELL! SPELL! Taiwanesesesesesesesesesesesese! See? I’m FREEEEEEEEEEE!
I was on the USA’s Central Intelligence Agency site recently and they refer to Taiwanese as an ethnicity (including Hakka) 84%. The people of Taiwan are refered to as Taiwan people or people of Taiwan as both singular and plural terms. I still think Taiwanese sounds better and is more appropriate.
The Taiwan Ren are opposed to using “ese” because of the association with the Chinese. If it was just the association with the Japanese, they wouldnt mind.
now they prefer Taiwan Ren (Taiwan people directly translated in English) . Makes sense . Just coin a new word Taiwanren instead of Taiwanese. Who said language cant be changed?