Category Archives: Hokkien

Aborigine legislators should use original names: activist

Posted on by
4

Aborigine politicians should use their original names, not Han Chinese names, or explain to their constituents why they don’t, the head of an aboriginal group called the Vine Cultural Association stated on Tuesday.

All eight of Taiwan’s legislators holding the seats reserved for Aborigines — Chen Ying, Liao Kuo-tung, Lin Cheng-er, Yang Jen-fu, Kao Chin Su-mei, Kung Wen-chi, Lin Chung-te, Tseng Hua-te — currently officially use “Chinese” names rather than Aborigine ones.

The head of Taiwan’s Council of Indigenous Peoples, however, does use his original name: Walis Pelin.

I’m waiting for someone to get on TV and talk about how few legislators who are Hoklo use Taiwanese rather than Mandarin forms for the romanizations of their names. (I could probably count them all on one hand, even though Taiwan has some 225 legislators.) Same thing for legislators who are Hakka but who don’t use the Hakka forms of their names in romanization.

sources:

early ‘universal’ romanization system

Posted on by
3

No-Sword brings up Karl Richard Lepsius’s early, IPA-like system, with Matt linking to Google Print’s online edition of Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters.

The book groups Taiwanese, Hakka, and Mandarin — or Hok-lo, Hak-ka, and Mandarinic (my favorite), as it refers to them — under “monosyllabic languages” (grr). OTOH, Tibetan is given as an “isolated language.” Interestingly, Mandarin pronunciation is given following the practice of Nanjing, not Beijing; a similar choice made a couple of hundred years ealier is also part of what’s behind the “Peking” spelling for what is now referred to as Beijing (1 MB PDF).

Taiwanese and alphabetical abbreviations

Posted on by
Reply

I’d been working on a post about the cards and miniature magnets given away at Family Mart (Quánjiā / 全家) convenience stores with purchases of at least NT$75 (about US$2). But Jason at Wandering to Tamshui beat me to it yesterday with a post showing all of the cards, so I’ll keep this short.

These are particularly interesting because of the use of Taiwanese as well as several other languages, though everything here is labeled “Yingwen” (English). As Jason wrote, “That faint sound you hear is a thousand foreign English teachers slapping their foreheads in despair.”

The series, labeled Quánmín pīn Yīngwén (全民拼英文), is probably meant to counter rival 7-Eleven’s popular Hello Kitty button series. Although few take on Hello Kitty and live to tell the tale, I think the alphabet cards are doing fairly well.

Below is an example. On the left is the wrapper (pun not intended). Top right shows the front and back of the magnet that comes with this particular card. And at bottom right is the card itself. (I say card; but it’s really just glossy paper.)

Here MG is meant to stand for mai3 ke2 sian1 (as always, help with my spelling would be appreciated), which, despite the use of Chinese characters (嘜假仙), is Taiwanese, not Mandarin. Reading 嘜假仙 as Mandarin yields only nonsense. (So much for the “universality” and “ideographic” myths of Chinese characters.)

photo of promotional item from a convenience store; it uses the Roman alphabet to indicate abbreviations of phrases in Taiwanese

resources:

Taiwan gov’t to subsidize ‘mother-tongue’ education in kindergartens

Posted on by
11

“Mother-tongue language education” is a phrase used to mean the languages of Taiwan’s tribes and the Sinitic languages of Taiwan other than Mandarin.

The Ministry of Education is now offering subsidies for kindergartens to promote mother-tongue language education nationwide. The ministry is now accepting applications from up to 50 kindergartens for subsidies worth NT$70,000 (US$2,188) each. Ministry officials said they hoped that mother-tongue language learning would start at a younger age so that kids in kindergarten could learn to listen to and speak native languages through stories, songs and other activities. They would also learn to appreciate Taiwanese culture at a younger age, officials said. The ministry will offer subsidies for Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and Aboriginal languages, while Hakka subsidies will be given according to Council of Hakka Affairs rules. The plan is expected to be carried out starting in the fall semester of this year, officials said.

source: Language funds offered, Taipei Times, April 11, 2006

Taipei mayor calls for more Mandarin, less English and Taiwanese in primary schools

Posted on by
2

According to one of the stories on this, the Taipei City Government’s Department of Education did a study comparing the amount of time sixth-graders spent on Mandarin classes in several countries. In Taiwan the figure is between 80 and 133 hours. In China the figure is 172 hours. And in Singapore the number is between 80 and 200 hours. As a percentage of the population, however, I would expect Taiwan to have the highest number of fluent or native speakers of Mandarin. On the other hand, Chinese characters are difficult for everyone.

Ma’s call is probably aimed not just at boosting Mandarin but at edging out the teaching of Taiwanese and Hakka (which may not be able to be reduced without eliminating their teaching altogether). This also sounds like another move to increase the amount of Literary Sinitic (Classical Chinese) in the classroom, which would certainly be a move in the wrong direction.

I suspect, though, that calls from parents, who often place more value on English than on other courses, will put an end to this. And anyway, in Taiwan it’s the central government that sets educational policy.

sources:

Taiwanese-language programs overseas

Posted on by
4

A university in France has begun to offer courses in Taiwanese (a.k.a. Hoklo, Hokkien, Minnan, etc.). This is the first school in Europe to offer for-credit courses in the language. Some universities in the United States and Japan have already been teaching the language.

Li Chin-an, a professor of Taiwanese culture and language studies at Taipei Teachers College, says that the University of Hawaii’s East Asian Studies institute set up Minnan courses in 1990. It was not until six years ago that Chenli University set up the first Minnan language department in Taiwan, marking the first formal Minnan language courses at the university level. In just a few short years, there has been great development in Taiwan studies, and today Taiwan can point to more than 20 such programs….

(emphasis added) Can that be true? Universities didn’t offer courses in the mother tongue of most of Taiwan’s inhabitants until a mere six years ago? I’m certainly glad of the progress that has been made recently, though.

Li taught Minnan for four years at Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and says that he taught all levels of the language during that time. Each semester, the course attracted over 30 students. By the fourth year, Li had taught over 100 students, of which more than 90 percent were of Taiwanese descent. Only a small number of Ph.D. candidates in Linguistics or Chinese students chose to take the classes, but quite a few researchers chose to audit.

Harvard began offering Minnan classes in 2001. Li was the first scholar hired to teach there, but later, because of the establishment of a Department of Taiwanese at Taipei Teachers College, he returned to Taiwan. But Harvard’s Minnan classes are still going strong today. Li says that Harvard’s classes are primarily taken by students of Taiwanese descent, who request them. He believes that those of Americans of Taiwanese descent in the U.S. who only speak English and know no Minnan may experience an identity crises.

According to the Liberty Times/Taiwan Headlines article, most overseas classes in Taiwanese use Church romanization.

See the Taipei Times article (link below) for a list of the schools, provided by professors Li KhinhoaN (李勤岸, the same person identified above as Li Chin-an) and Liu Kuang-neng. Li KhinhoaN’s Web site offers a large selection of writings in and about Taiwanese, as well as useful links. (The site also has some technical problems that sometimes result in Chinese characters being scrambled. But it’s possible to navigate the site despite this.)

sources: