Too cool. Oh, I hope this comes to Taipei.
From the troupe’s English-language introduction:
In order to make theatre more accessible to the Tainanese, the troupe has utilised various dramatic forms to explore different local issues that may concern our audiences in their daily life. We even ask our actors to speak good Min-nan-yu, or Taiwanese (as opposed to Mandarin, the official language of Taiwan), in many of our productions, so that the local audiences can easily identify themselves with the characters and feel less intimidated by the language barrier.
Good. This is a basic point but one all too seldom ignored or dismissed: Until relatively recently Mandarin was a foreign language in Taiwan. The native language for most in Taiwan has been Taiwanese/Hokkien/Hoklo.
As an aside, I note that the ticket outlet translates Táinánrén jùtuán (台南人劇團) as the “Tainaner Ensemble”. Tainaner? Is that really what gets used in English for people from Tainan?
via Lomaji
Erh…hopefully not. There was a fad movement on the Net to jettison the word Taiwanese in favor of the supposedly superior neologism “Taiwaner” (btw, nothing to do with the German word). Some youthful elements of the “pro-Taiwan” movement (among others) embraced it rather enthusiastically and in my opinion uncritically. (Never mind that no one’s ever suggested abandoning the word “Chinese” on the same ground and more importantly actually followed through.) Alas, here we possibly see a residual effect of this sad meme.
Yeah, the “Taiwaner” silliness seems to crop up every few years, which would put us on schedule for another spate of it soon.
There have been a few rants against the -ese of Chinese. But they haven’t ever caught on as much as Taiwaner.
Hmm… you have a point. Somehow, “Tainaner” just doesn’t roll off the tongue the way say, “Beijinger”, does.