Category Archives: Aborigine languages

Taiwan citizenship and Mandarin

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Today’s Taipei Times has the following note:

Citizenship changes proceed

Foreign nationals seeking Taiwanese citizenship will be required to have a basic grasp of Mandarin and an understanding of the rights and responsibilities of being a Taiwanese citizen if an amendment to the Nationality Law (國籍法 guójí fǎ) is passed. The amendment was approved by the legislature’s Home and Nations Committee yesterday and sent for further screening to a legislative plenary session. According to the amendment, the Ministry of the Interior will set the standards regarding basic language ability and knowledge of citizen rights and responsibilities. The ministry will also be responsible for testing applicants. Vice Minister of the Interior Chien Tai-lang (簡太郎) said that the amendment is aimed at bringing naturalization laws in line with those of such English-speaking countries as the US, Canada and New Zealand.

According to an official U.S. government Web site on U.S. citizenship and immigration services, “To be eligible for naturalization, you must be able to read, write, and speak basic English.” (Emphasis mine.)

The few Web pages I’ve scanned about Canadian citizenship are not as specific about the language requirement. I get the impression, though, that being able to read and write French or English is not required as long as speaking ability exists. I didn’t see anything specific about the English-language requirement for New Zealand, either.

Official talk of a language requirement for ROC (Taiwan) citizenship surfaced about a year ago. At the time, I called the Ministry of the Interior to inquire about the situation. If applicants for citizenship are required to be able to read and write Mandarin in Chinese characters, this would be a substantial barrier to naturalization — much more so than being able to read or write a language that is written in an alphabetic script.

I was told that reading and writing Chinese characters would not be required. I hope that is still the intention of the government.

I also inquired whether languages of Taiwan other than Mandarin would be acceptable, and I was told they would be. Thus, someone able to speak Taiwanese (Hokkien, Minnan, Holo…), Hakka, or, rather less likely, one of the languages of Taiwan’s tribes, would be able to meet the language requirement without knowledge of Mandarin. I hope that this, too, is still the intention of the government.

I suspect some of the ambiguity may lie in how Guóyǔ (國語) is translated. Most of the time the word refers to Mandarin. Recently, however, the government has occasionally chosen to translate Guóyǔ not as “national language” (i.e. Mandarin) but “national languages” (i.e. the more than one dozen languages of Taiwan: Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka, and the languages of Taiwan’s tribes).

romanization in old documents by Pingpu (Taiwan tribe)

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平埔族人 曾用羅馬拼音寫契約
記者溫筆良／枋寮報導 05/10 04:06

中央研究院台灣研究所博士研究員陳秋坤最近發現，平埔族人在清朝乾隆到嘉慶年間，使用羅馬文字拼音書寫契約，閩南話中的「牽手」、「抓狂」等都沿用自平埔族用語，閩南話也可以用羅馬文字拼寫出來。

專門研究台灣近代史的陳秋坤博士最近受高雄縣政府委託，以大崗山地區古契約書為題作專題研究，在高雄、屏東地區蒐集近兩、三百年來的古契文書，找出清朝康熙、乾隆年間到民國初年的各種土地買賣契約。

陳秋坤昨天說，平埔族、漢人買賣土地可推演到荷蘭人佔據台灣時代，當時荷蘭人教導不識字的平埔族人用羅馬拼音書寫買賣契約，買賣雙方用羅馬拼音書寫閩話或漢字，把買賣約定內容寫成白紙黑字。

陳秋坤說，難得發現的羅馬拼音平埔族文字，流傳至今已找不到可以完全解讀的人，不過還好這些羅馬拼音都有漢字對照，互相比對可以完全了解契約內容。有深入研究價值，正帶領研究人員深入研究。

對客家六堆有深入研究的客家公益會理事長李貴文說，用羅馬拼音書寫平埔族、閩南話，在台南、高屏曾發現過，但數量稀少，中央研應引導專家作更入研究，根據古契約文書留下資料，閩南話常用的「牽手」、「抓狂」、「搞丟」都是平埔族用語，平埔族漢化後繼續使用。

state of Tsou language, dictionary

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From a Reuters article in the Taiwan News:

Aborigines battle to save their culture
Taiwan’s Tsou tribe struggles to preserve langauge and mores
2005-03-14

[…]Aside from Christian missionaries, no foreigners intruded on them until the Japanese colonization from 1895 to 1945.

The Japanese stopped customs that they considered barbaric, such as the Tsou practice of taking human heads as war trophies. The Mayasvi was itself halted for a about a decade.

Then, when the Chinese Nationalist government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the mainland to the Communists, the Tsou language was smothered. The Nationalists imposed Mandarin Chinese in schools and banned all other languages and dialects.

“People say we are gradually losing our culture but it’s actually happening very quickly,” said Liao Chin-ying, a Chinese primary school teacher who married into a Tsou family in the neighbouring village of Dabang, next to Tefuye.

She said less than 10 percent of young people can speak Tsou, compared to 90 percent of the elderly. The government now allows schools to teach Tsou once a week, but Liao thinks that is not enough to pull the language back from the brink of extinction.

“If you don’t teach the mother tongue, then you lose your culture. Without your mother tongue, your culture becomes fossilized and doesn’t truly exist any more,” she said.

Dying language

Liao speaks only Tsou to her 2-year-old daughter but says her little girl insists on replying in Mandarin because the other children in the village do not speak their native tongue.

Christian missionaries are trying to help preserve the Tsou language by using a romanization system.

“Some of the priests here speak better Tsou than me,” said Yangui Iuheacana, a Tsou woman who teaches village children how to spell Tsou words using the alphabet.

“They’re helping to put together the first-ever Tsou dictionary and are translating the Bible into Tsou,” she said.

It’s easy to see why small villages like Tefuye and Dabang, with only about 1,200 residents between them, fear assimilation. Mandarin is essential for anyone seeking further education or work, and for men doing compulsory military service.

Yet Tsou pride in tradition is evident everywhere, from the carefully observed Mayasvi to the scars on Peongsi’s arms and legs – the legacy of his numerous tussles with boars, bears, deer, goats and monkeys.

The Tsou still teach their boys how to hunt and farm up in the lush mountains far away from Taipei’s bustling streets and the high-tech microchip plants that helped turn the leaf-shaped island into the world’s 15th-largest economy.

I’d be surprised if this is really the first Tsou dictionary. Has no one at Academia Sinica, for example, made one already?

naming recommendation, continued

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And another article on what I hope will soon become more than just a group’s recommendation.

（記者徐銀磯∮台北報導）針對目前原住民與外籍配偶在辦理戶籍登記時，只能以諧音漢字來登記一事，婦女團體昨天表示，應修改姓名條例，讓原住民和外籍人士可用羅馬拼音直接登記為本名。

婦女新知基金會副董事長、南洋台灣姊妹會顧問夏曉鵑指出，依據修正後「姓名條例」第一條第三項中規定，中華民國民與外國人、無國籍人結婚，配偶及所生子女的中文姓氏，應符合國民使用姓名的習慣但對許多外籍配偶嫁到台灣後，因姓名條例的規定，辦理戶籍登記時只能用中文名字登記，無法用羅馬拼音登記，導致這些外籍配偶只能用諧音漢字或冠上夫姓，而失去自己原來的姓名。

台灣原住民經過正名運動努力，1995年政府修正「姓名條例」，讓原住民得以申請回復傳統姓名。

changes for names in Taiwan recommended

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The romanization-related part is at the end.

慶祝婦女節 婦團嗆聲要求修法選擇姓氏權利
中廣新聞網 2005-03-05 12:00

慶祝婦女節的到來，婦女團體提出新觀點，要求政府及早修法，打破目前父權中心主義的迷思，讓單親媽媽、原住民母親、外籍配偶等的母親們及子女，可以選擇他們想要的姓氏，不再只是一味地從父姓，或是取一個根本毫無瓜葛的中文姓名。（張佳琪報導）

包括婦女新知、女性學學會等多個婦女團體，選在婦女節前夕，拋出了「還給人民選擇姓名的自由」的議題，婦女團體指出，包括單親、同居、跨國婚姻、原住民和漢族通的各種類型的家庭型態，在社會上已成常態，但我國法律對於姓名的規定還是很陳舊，而且充滿許多不合理的現象，例如單親家庭的孩子即使跟著母親生活，也必須從父姓，原住民或是外籍人士的姓名都必須被翻成奇怪的中文漢名，小孩也好依循這個沒有瓜葛的姓氏。

婦女新知基金會董事長黃長玲表示，以單親家庭為例，很多個案顯示，父親在小孩的生活中沒有扮演過太多的角色，但小孩會覺得一直在使用這個姓氏。

婦團呼籲政府修改民法，讓人民有選擇該從父姓還是母姓的權利，甚至讓原住民及外籍人士，可以使用羅馬拚音直接登記為本名，不再取些怪里怪氣的中文譯名。

romanization, not zhuyin

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您現在在畫面中看到的就是首度與國人見面原住民語教材，插圖以卡通為主，不過選用的是羅馬拼音，而不是注音，教育部表示，這些課本未來會統一成為國小母語教材，教育部甚至設計了電腦學習軟體，讓學生能夠更輕鬆學原住民語。

古采艷　涂堂鑾 2005-01-14 19:55

languages of Taiwan

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（中央社記者黃慧敏台北十四日電）「原住民族語言教材」第一階成果發表會今天在教育部舉行，十二族的四十種語言教材呈現在大眾面前。總編輯林修澈表示，少數民族的語言教材是文明的象徵；教育部長杜正勝也說，編製少數族群語言教材是先進國家才有的作為。

不過，編輯委員之一的朱清義憂心，少數學校利用聯課活動教授學生原住民語言，剝奪學生的課外活動時間，學生學習意願不高。杜正勝強調，母語教學是正式課程，對於執行偏差的學校，他會責成縣市主管單位要特別注意。

「原住民族語言教材」是依據教育部與行政院原住民族委員會共同組成的「原住民教育政策委員會」達成的決議，由委員會召集人、政治大學原住民族語言教育文化中心教授林修澈組成的「族語教材編審委員會」負責規劃。

教材分四十種語言，分九個階段進行，加上教師手冊，將出版七百二十冊；共出動兩百四十名各族精英編輯，其中，簡史郎是唯一的非原住民。

林修澈表示，過去的原住民族語言教材都是使用古代語言，這套教材則是走向現代化；第一階段的課本已印刷完成，並發送各縣市教學單位使用。由於課本採羅馬拼音，杜正勝表示，小學三年級以前的學生會聽會說就好，不見得要會看會讀，課本主要時給老師看的。

至於升學加分優惠必須取得母語能力認證，原民會強調，一定要表現出一定的母語能力，才能獲得加分優惠，若不堅持，等於是對原住民的傷害。

由於各級學校一星期只有一堂母語教學課，編審會也提供有聲課本，民眾可上網www.acld.nccu.edu.tw 學習，增加學習機會；而非原住民也可以利用這些教材自學自修。

Aborigines and personal names

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Twenty years ago a few young aboriginal men established Taiwan’s first organization dedicated to the rights of the aboriginal people….

Launched in the early 1980s, the movement aimed to empower aborigines and to heighten their awareness of self-identity. In the early stages, the movement urged indigenous people to use their aboriginal names in their original languages, instead of taking Chinese-language names.

Past rulers of the island tended to adopt an assimilation policy under which they tried to “refine” what they saw as the “savage” aborigines. Both the Japanese colonial government and the subsequent Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) government respectively required aborigines to adopt Japanese and Chinese names.

Over the years, numerous activists attempted to change their names from Chinese language to aboriginal, but were refused by the Household Registration Administration. It was not until 1995, after continuous lobbying by activists, that the government allowed the use of aboriginal names, but still insisted that Chinese characters must be used….

Voyu Yakumangana, chairman of Association for Taiwan Indigenous People’s Policies, who also has a Chinese name, Yang Chi-wei, said the rectification campaign now aims to have all aborigines proudly claim their names in their original languages….

Payen Talu (巴燕達魯), one of the initiators of the rights movement twenty years ago, is however not totally satisfied with the progress being made.

“So far, less than one percent of the total aboriginal population have changed their names from Chinese to their aboriginal languages,” Payen said, though he allowed that there have been some gains, such as acceptance for the “aborigine” identity.

“Most indigenous people now would proudly admit that they are aborigine, which is very different compared to 20 years ago when the term “aborigine” carried a stigma in the wider society,” Payen said.

“But when you see most aboriginal politicians today still using their Chinese names, then you know that the movement still has a long way to go,” he added.

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