UNIVERSITÁ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO-BICOCCA Facoltà di Scienze Umane per la Formazione "Riccardo Massa"

Corso di laurea in Comunicazione Interculturale

TAIWAN’S LINGUISTIC IDENTITY

Relatore: Prof. Emanuele BANFI

Correlatore: Dr. Giorgio Francesco ARCODIA

Tesi di Laurea di:

Roberto Fracchia

Matr. N. 746302

Anno Accademico 2013/2014

INDEX

INDEX I

LIST OF TABLES III

LIST OF FIGURES III

ACKNOWLEDGMENT IV

0 INTRODUCTION 1

0.2 LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY AND INTER-LANGUAGES TRANSLATION 3 0.3 WHY LANGUAGES DIES AND WHY WE MUST SAVE THEM 4 0.4 WHY TAIWAN? 5

1 TAIWAN’S HISTORY 7

1.1 LANGUAGES IN TAIWAN 7 1.2 AUSTRONESIAN – THE TAIWAN ABORIGINES 8 1.3 DUTCH COLONIZATION – TURN THE INDIGENOUS INTO SLAVES 9 1.4 KINGDOM OF TUNNING – KOXINGA A TAIWANESE GOD. 11 1.5 TAIWAN UNDER QING – TRANSFORMING SAVAGES IN HAN 12 1.6 JAPANESE NATIONALISM – TURNS THE ABORIGINES INTO JAPANESE 13 1.7 R.O.C. NATIONALISM – TURNING TAIWANESE INTO CHINESE 15

2 LANGUAGES OF TAIWAN 19

2.0 TAIWAN – LANGUAGES OR DIALECTS 19 2.1 FORMOSAN LANGUAGES 20 2.1.0 CLASSIFICATION OF FORMOSAN LANGUAGES 20 2.1.1 EASTERN FORMOSAN LANGUAGES 21 2.1.2 CENTER FORMOSAN LANGUAGES 22 2.1.3 NORTHERN FORMOSAN LANGUAGES 22 2.1.4 SOUTHERN FORMOSAN LANGUAGES 23 2.1.5 YAMI: MP BRANCH 24 2.2 HAKKA 24 2.3 MINNAN 25 2.4 MANDARIN, HÀNYǓ OR GUÓYǓ 25

II

3 JAPANESE AND CHINESE ASSIMILATION POLICIES 28

3.0 NATIONALISM AND LANGUAGES 28 3.1 JAPANESE NATIONALISM 29 3.1.1 A VIEW ON JAPANESE POLICIES IN COLONIAL TAIWAN 29 3.1.2 JAPANESE IDENTITY FORMATION 31 3.1.3 GRADUALISM POLICY: 1895 – 1918 GOTŌ AND IZAWA 32 3.1.4 DŌKA SEISAKU: 1919 – 1936 ASSIMILATION POLICY 34 3.1.5 KŌMINKA: 1937 -1945 36 3.2 R.O.C. NATIONALISM 37 3.2.1 THE STANDARDIZATION OF CHINESE 37 3.2.2 1946 – 1959: CPPNL POLICIES FOR NATIONAL LANGUAGE. 39 3.2.3 1960 – 1987: OPPRESSION, TOLERATION AND THE END OF WHITE TERROR. 42 3.2.4 1987 – NOW: TAIWAN’S NEW CULTURAL IDENTITY 44

4 TAIWAN’S LANGUAGES THROUGH A SURVEY 47

4.0 SURVEY ORGANIZATION, TYPOLOGY OF THE DATA COLLECTED AND RESULTS 47 4.1 DEMOGRAPHIC DATA 48 4.2 LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY DATA 51 4.3 LANGUAGE USE DATA 53 4.4 THE MOST REPRESENTATIVE LANGUAGE: ANALYSIS ON PERSONAL BELIEFS. 56 4.5 INSTITUTIONAL LANGUAGE 59 4.6 LANGUAGE FOR TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, CULTURE AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 61 4.7 INTERVIEWEES’ POINT OF VIEW ON TAIWANESE LANGUAGE POLICIES 62 4.8 INQUIRING ABOUT LANGUAGES POLICIES 63 4.9 A BRIEF CONCLUSION ON THE SURVEY 66

5 CONCLUSION 69

5.1 AN IDENTITY FORGED BY HISTORY. 69 5.2 PROPOSAL FOR LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION 71

APPENDIX: GRAPHS OF QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS 75

TABLES: 75

REFERENCES 81

III

List of Tables

- Aboriginal Taiwanese, Li (1996) .................................................................................................. 9 - 1905 Demographic situation ..................................................................................................... 14 - Interviewee: Gender/Age.......................................................................................................... 50 - Ethnicity .................................................................................................................................... 75 - Guoyu Proficency ...................................................................................................................... 75 - MinNan proficency .................................................................................................................... 75 - Feeling on language .................................................................................................................. 76 - Favourite Language ................................................................................................................. 76 - father's language ....................................................................................................................... 76 - Language spoken with father .................................................................................................... 77 - Mother's language .................................................................................................................. 77 - Language spoken with mother .................................................................................................. 77 - Language spoken with Paternal Grandparents ......................................................................... 78 - Language spoken with maternal grandmother ......................................................................... 78 - Language used with siblings ...................................................................................................... 79 - Language used with children .................................................................................................... 79 - language most related with Taiwan .......................................................................................... 79 - Language of Institution ............................................................................................................. 80 - Language of development ........................................................................................................ 80 - Language of tradition ................................................................................................................ 80

List of Figures

- Austronesian Language Family (Shī & Lín, 2006) ....................................................................... 8

IV

Acknowledgment

-Chinese characters are in traditional script

-Beside where differently indicated, mandarin romanization use the standard hanyu pinyin -Japanese romanization follow the Hepburn romanization system -Chinese names are written following the Chinese rule family name + first name -Japanese names are written following the Japanese rule family name + first name -Name of other people follow the rule first name + family name.

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0 Introduction

2010, October 24th. In Puli City, Nantou Province in Taiwan, a 96-year old woman,

Miss Pān Jīn-Yù (潘金玉), known as Tata (達達, Dá dá), passed away. “Tata” was the last

native speaker of the Pazih language1. Born from a Kaxabu family in 1914 she was adopted by

a Pazih speaking family, that was living in Auran. Despite the fact that she was the only Pazih

speaker alive and that she used to speak Taiwanese Hokkien in daily conversation, she

maintained the ability to speak Pazih fluently enough to teach the language to 200 regular

students in Puli, with some classes held also in Miaoli and Taichung2. With her departure, also

a part of Taiwan history and culture, along with ancestral knowledge, irrimediably

disappeared.

This fact, sadly is not an isolated happening. As Mark Janse pointed out, <<Languages

are dying at an alarming rate all over the world>> (2003 p. ix). UNESCO has estimated that <<

if nothing is done, half of 6000 plus languages spoken today will disappear by the end of this

century>>. Languages are not just tools mankind use for communication, they are the medium

for knowledge transmission and the passage of cultural heritage from generation to

generation. <<It is only through knowledge of diverse languages with different structures and

belonging to different language families that we can truly begin to gain an understanding of

universal grammar, i.e., the nature of the human language capacity >> (Janse, 2003). This work

will be focused on Taiwanese Languages, but considering that this phenomenon is happening

world wide, it is important to find out the common steps and causes that bring a language to

be endangered and eventually to die.

0.1 Endangered Languages: Classification

Ethnologue website3 provides a classification for endangered languages, that works on

an eleven degree system where 0 is a language with “International” degree meaning <<the

1「跟我的伴（已往生）講（巴宰語）！如果我老伴有來（在夢中）。跟我一樣（同輩）四個

（人）都沒有了（已往生）。剩我一個（人）、剩我一個（人）！這樣子而已，要跟誰講（巴宰

語）！…」Video interview with miss Pan Jin-Yu and Professor Li Jen-Kuei, token from Television

Program ”知識的饗宴 遇見科學 “ series, Ep. 19 ”台灣南島語言的奧秘” broadcasted on 2006, August

9th on Taiwanese Television channel “公視 Channel 13”. http://www.youmaker.com/video/sv?id=cc0c9909af5e4c6d8758ef0def64ead0001 2 Loa, Iok-Sin. 2008. Pazeh Poets Honored at Ceremony. Taipei Times. June 26, 2008, p. 4. 3 www.ethnologue.com Access on Wednesday, April 16, 2014. There are different classification, but unless otherwise specification, here will be used Ethnologue work as reference.

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language is widely used between nations in trade, knowledge exchange, and international

policy>>, and 10 is the “extinct” degree, i.e. <<The language is no longer used and no one

retains a sense of ethnic identity associated with the language>>. Languages belonging to the

range that goes from 0 to 6, are not to be considered in an endangered situation. In fact, the

languages that place in the top of scale, such as Mandarin and English, are the languages that

are overtaking all the others. It is instead appropriate to reserve a special consideration for

languages from level 7 to level 10, that are the ones more likely to disappear or are already

extinct.

At level 7 there is the shifting situation that, in absence of a good language restoration

policy, could be considered as the first step to language death. In this phase, child-bearer adult

are usually bilingual speakers with a L1 that is not the national language or language of daily

communication outside familiar context, where a L2 it is considered the strong language.

Parents don’t transmit the L1 to children, or transmit it just partially, generating a situation

where children learn to use the L2, but are not able to speak the L1 (or even if they can speak,

they don’t possess the identity which should be brought by that L1, neither do they feel

related to it), even if in some cases they are able to understand it partially. This could be the

phase that include Taiwanese Hokkien in Taiwan, where many young people use to say often

“(台語),不會說, 但是我聽得懂”4 (“(Tái yǔ), bù huì shuō, dànshì wǒ tīng dé dǒng”, “(Tái yǔ) I

cannot speak, but I understand it”).

Level 8 is the level where the only speakers are found in the older generations, and

younger speakers are not able to use the older generation language as a L1 and in many cases,

even they cannot understand it. Level 8 can be considered as the natural consequence of

shifting phases, where the level 7 child-bearer speakers, become Grandparents, and their child

who do not possess the L1, are not able to transmit it to the next generation. The natural

consequence to phase 8, is level 10, i.e. extinction, where older generation speakers disappear

and with them all knowledge of the language and the identity, thought system and culture that

this language brings with it.

The level 9 is an interesting step in which the language could be considered as extinct,

because it is no longer used in communication, but it still brings an identity heritage, and have

just symbolic proficiency, e.g. in rituals or folklore.

In Taiwan, excluding Mandarin that is not in an endangered situation at all, all the

indigenous languages can be considered on the edge of extinction. As for Taiwanese Hokkien

(MinNan), as we will see, pressed by the continuous growth of Mandarin influence, without

the necessary precautions and language planning, it could disappear within this century, with

the next two or three generations.

4 Based on a personal experience of study and living in Taiwan for 2 years about, where author could often meet this kind of answer when inquire about the ability of speak Hokkien language.

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0.2 Linguistic Relativity and Inter-languages Translation

In line with linguistic relativity, known also as “Sapir & Whorf hypothesis”, language

influences the way people categorize the world, i.e. their cognitive process. We have different

visions of the World, based on the langue we speak.

<<In Korea, it is thought that a child owes a debt of gratitude to his or her parents, and

everyone knows that debt is never repayable. Certainly, one can’t repay it with words>> wrote

Kyung-Joo Yoon (2007) after seeing an Australian boy thank his mom for giving him a glass of

water, <<Korean child […] do not have to express gratitude in words but they are responsible

for bearing it always in mind.>> . In Korean culture, expressing gratitude with words is an

action that people do not need to do with their own families, but just toward “others”. This

case shows an example of the connection between the language and the culture and the

identity of the speaker. The cultural pattern can be explained and acquired, abandoning in

some cases, the former culture’s one. It is clear that an Australian child can learn to thank just

“others” as a Korean child can be taught to thank his parent for giving him a glass of water, but

it is impossible that the child in question will possess at the same time the features [-thanks]

and [+thanks], because as J.R.Taylor (2003) says << According to the law of the excluded

middle, a thing must either be or not be, it must either possess a feature or not possess it.

Features, therefore, are a matter of all or nothing>>.

It is easy to infer that the difference in the feature of the cultures could bring the child

to have a different view of his relationship with parents and the “other”. In the Japanese

language, for example, the use of a different register with an uchi person (an in-group person)

and a soto person (outsider) brings people to have a different intimacy with the listener, and

to act in an appropriate way with the chosen register. Violating the soto limit, with the

unappropriated language register, means at the same time to accept and to introduce

someone in speaker’s uchi space i.e. consider him part of family or close friends, with all the

linguistic, cultural and behavioral patterns than this brings along, including the possibility of

offending in some way the listener5. Japanese language also do not allow the speaker to

express the third person desire or thoughts directly in non-past sentences, but instead requires

the use of expressions as “for what I can see” or “it seems”. The use of third person even with

the listener is another frequent sign of the distance that the speaker wants to keep with the

listener. It is possible to find a related case in Italian, where the use of confidential “tu” takes

the place of the more formal “Lei”, to the most part in the upper class young people, while the

more conservative “Lei” is still strong in young people of lower class as a <<defense or security

against a powerful “you” >>6 (Berruto, 2012). The more common use of “Tu” corresponds to a

higher frequency in the violation of the personal space by the speaker of neo-standard Italian.

5 Japanese pronouns are not really pronouns in the strict sense, but nouns with pronoun functions. E.g.

お前’omae’ (the person in front of me), 君’kimi’(prince) , 貴方’anata’(precious part), it’s often translated with “you”. The use of Omae, between two male friends, same age and with close relation is allowed, but the same word used with a soto is considered as same as an insult. 6 << difesa o garanzia contro un tu di potere>>

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<<The network of cultural patterns of a civilization is indexed in the language which

expresses that civilization. >>7 (Sapir , 1916), so different languages must bring different

patterns. This pattern can be translated in other languages, but the resulting pattern will

probably have differences from the original one. In fact <<If one translates a text from one

language into another, they are necessarily different in form [...], but they are also expected to

be equivalent in some significant sense>> (Hasegawa , 2012. Some researchers such Toyama

(1987) believes that ideas that are expressed in a language can be translated in other

languages just through addiction or subtraction, because the target languages involve

“different conceptual universes” (Wierzbicka, 1992) with respect to the source language.

Using a comparison between English and Rukai language of Taiwan as an example,

“Tiatina” and “ina” can be both translated as English “mother”8, the former as reference, while

the latter as address. Even if the word Mother can translate both “Tiatina” and “Ina”, all the

meaning that those 2 words bring along cannot be translated by a single word in English.

Rukai also differentiates between an inclusive we “kuta” and an exclusive we “kunai”. In line

with linguistic Relativity theory, it is possible also to reason on the different mental structures

brought by the presence or the absence of the “inclusive/exclusive we”. It is possible to

translate in English “kuta” with “we including you”, but a concrete hypothesis is to think that

the way the Rukai speaker sees himself and the interlocutor (the 1st and 2nd person in “we”)

could be different from the one of an English speaker. In a language in which the “inclusive and

exclusive we” difference is present, the main focus of “we” seems to be on the listener, while

in language without this differentiation, the focus seems to be on the speaker himself. This

could mean the categorization of an individualistic world based on the self in the latter case,

versus a system less individualistic in the former one.

0.3 Why Languages Dies and Why We Must Save Them

The importance of the linguistic relativity in endangered language discussion and the

situation that Taiwan, as well as many other countries, is facing in the last century (-ies), is that

when a language disappears, the knowledge, identity and the world view that is related with

that language disappear. This fact is followed by the impossibility for any linguists or

technology, to recover the original form of that language or the world categorization that

comes along.

Unluckily, as Tsunoda expresses <<Language endangerment may be induced by various

kinds of factors>> [Tsunoda , 2006] which makes it hard for linguists to preserve them just

through linguistic studies. Tsunoda lists nine main factors that could induce languages to

disappear: natural, political and military, social, historical & ethno historical, economic,

environmental, cultural, religious, and sociolinguistic.

The strongest factors of danger for languages seem to be political, economic and/or

social. This could be the reason why a non-holistic approach to the preservation and

7 Cursive not in original text 8 The same difference between reference and address use it happened also with word father, tatama/amaa

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revitalization of the languages could just lead to failure. The effort made by Miss Pan Jin-Yu

and other aboriginal people and “last speakers” who, in collaboration with linguists, spend

energy and time in recording voices, writing dictionaries and grammars and trying to teach,

spread and revitalize their identity, often while strongly asking for a recognized national status

for their languages, is all in vain if there is no social and political support that go in that

direction. Not just government must support actively the movement for protecting languages,

but also people, the users of the languages and the first source of transmission, must be active

in this process.

Nationalist policies that push (often in an aggressive way) for national unity by means

of a single language, colonization periods, prohibition of speaking local languages, along with

the cross-cultural encounters that inevitabily bring a language to enter in contact with another,

also the willingness of people to use a language with a higher status, the willingness to belong

to a community, the feeling of speaking a less valuable language, can bring people to adopt the

It is hard not to talk about globalization faults in this process, with languages such as

Mandarin and English spoken by 1 billion people each, according to linguasphere, and not

related the problem to those languages, with the influence that the countries in which those

languages are spoken have on the entire world nowadays.

0.4 Why Taiwan?

Taiwan is the “living proof” of the extra-linguistic event that brought some languages

to reach the endangement status and to die, in favour of a stronger language.

The economical and political growth that China has, in the last decades, push Taiwan

to a weaker position on the worldwide political scene. As remarked by Nancy Bernkopf Tucker

(2008) <<Hong Kong and Taiwan are fundamental to the very legitimacy of the CCP and China’s

government>>. China had shown in many ways its opposition to Taiwan democracy and

independence. <<In 1996 China fired missiles in Taiwan’s direction after the democratically

elected president of Taiwan made an unofficial visit to his alma mater, Cornell University,

which the Chinese considered as potential American recognition of Taiwan as an independent

political body. >> ( Bernkopf Tucker, 2008), a recognition that, even if it never happened, could

have threatened the process of nationalistic unification started by China. Language became in

this way an arena for political and social debates. Chinese affirms that the Taiwanese speak

Chinese and so they are Chinese, adding a variety of socio-historical and ethnic issues as

support of this syllogism. Taiwanese emphasizes every difference between the variants of the

Chinese used in the two countries (use of traditional script instead of simplified, use of Zhùyīn

(注音) instead of Pīnyīn(拼音) as phonetic writing system, lexical and morphological items,

etc.), supporting these thesis with cultural and historical justifications.

The choice of Taiwan as the main theme of this paper is the great number of socio-

linguistic analyses that the country offers within the occasion to find the relation that bound

Taiwanese languages to the independence of the country and the Taiwanese identity creation

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processes.

In order to make an appropriate analysis of the situation, it is opportune to start with a

consideration about the great diversity of language spoken in the country, and the history that

bring Sinitic languages to take over the endangered aboriginal languages, which belong to the

Austonesian Family, with a special focus on the Japanese Imperialism period and the Chinese

rules. The linguistic policies in the country will be analyzed to find some relation with the

government ideology that leads to them and, with the support of the data collected through

an online survey along with other references, we will try to collect enough information to

analyze the actual feeling that Taiwanese people have toward their languages, thinking about

possible future scenarios and proposing policies that could avoid the complete extinction of

minority languages and the failure of the indipendence of Taiwan.

Considering the ideological fundaments that lie beyond this debate, the manipulation

of information attuated by all the parts who had a role in Taiwan history and the influence that

those can have on data, an objective point of view would not always be possible. Socio-

linguistic theories that are implied in Taiwan language discussion, and moreover, on

identitarian feeling, are filled by subjective ideologies, that unavoidably will influence the

analysis of data and the point of view of this work in many aspects. Liable to criticism, this

work wants to express the facts collected both through classic references, but also and mainly

by personal experience with a personal point of view, aspects that will influence (along with

the great love that I share for this country) in a stronger way the objectivity of the work.

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1 Taiwan’s history

1.1 Languages in Taiwan

When speaking of Taiwan endangered languages, the first thought goes to the

indigenous tribes. According to the Online Etymological dictionary the word indigenous come

from Late Latin indigenus and means “born in a country, native”. UN defines indigenous,

people that <<Practicing unique traditions, they retain social, cultural, economic and political

characteristics that are distinct from those of the dominant societies in which they live>>9 and

this role in Taiwan belongs to Austronesian descendants.

<< Austronesian languages family represent one of the most large, reaching the

number of 1.200 languages about >>10 (Banfi, 2008), covering an area that goes from Taiwan

(north) with Formosan languages to New Zealand (south) with Maori, and from Easter Island

(East) with Rapanui to Madagascar (West) with Malagasy. In addition, the Hawaiian language

(Ōlelo Hawai’i) belongs to this family. Among those languages, Malay spoken in Malaysia, in

Sumatra region of Indonesia and in Singapore, is the one with the most speakers

(Linguasphere: 160Million), while many others are considered endangered.

Austronesian languages have been known since 1708, when Dutch cartographer and

orientalist Hadrian Reland, identified a lexical correspondence between Malay and Polynesian

languages. A great record of Austronesian languages has been made by Dutch missionaries,

such Daniel Gravius on Siraya and Favorlang with his works “Patar ki tna-‘msing-an ki Christang

ofte.’t Formulier des Christendoms”( Formulary of Christianity in the Siraya language of

Formosa) (1661) and “Het heylige Euangelium Matthei en Johannis. Ofte Hagnau ka d’llig

matiktik ka na sasoulat ti Mattheus ti Johannes appa”( The Gospel of St. Matthew in Formosan

Sinkang Dialect and Dutch) (1661)11.

The term “austronesisch”, coined by Wilhelm Schmidt, is now commonly used instead

of “Malayo-Polynesian family” coined by W. Von Humboldt (Banfi, 2008), which is used instead

to describe one of the branches of Austronesian family (Blust (1999), Zeitoun (2005)). Malayo-

Polynesian branch is actually the one that counts more languages and which influences a

wider area, but represents just one of the 10 branches of the Family12. Other 9 branches are a

subgrouping in the so called “Formosan Languages” subgroup, which include 1- Western Plains

languages 2-Tsuic 3- Northwest Formosan 4-Atayalic 5-East Formosan 6- Bunun 7-Rukai 8-

Puyuma 9-Paiwan (Blust, 1999), are spoken in Taiwan only, and are not all mutually intelligible.

It is important to remember the presence of the Yami language (also known as Tao), the only

Austronesian language in the country which belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian subgroup, that

9 http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/5session_factsheet1.pdf 10 << La famiglia delle lingue austronesiane rappresensta una delle famiglie più numerose, raggiungendo il numero di circa 1.200 lingue>> 11 In (Campbell, 1903) there is an exhaustive report of missionaries who operate in Taiwan since XVII century 12 Based on Blust’s classification (1999) based on phonological evidence.. There are of course other classifications made by other scholars. However, in this work I will use mainly R. Blust and Paul Li data.

8

is spoken in Orchid Island (蘭嶼, Lán yǔ), in South-East Taiwan.

Edward Sapir (1968) defines the area with greatest diversity the “linguistic

center of gravity” of a linguistic family. Blust (1999) proposes a classification of Austronesian

Language that set Taiwan as Austronesian language Urheimat, considering the presence of all

10 branches of the Austronesian Family in the Country, i.e. the greatest diversity. Austronesian

Languages in Taiwan are spoken by so called “原住民” (Yuán zhùmín, aboriginal tribes) whose

members are divided in 14 民族 (Mínzú, ethnic groups)13. Tsuchida and Tsukida (2007)

explained that Aboriginal Language in Taiwan << are on the verge of extinction due to the

successive Japanization and Sinicization during the twentieth century. >>.

1.2 Austronesian – The Taiwan Aborigines

Austronesian People start to settle in Taiwan in prehistoric times. <<Taiwan’s

Paleolithic sites reveal human occupation of the Strait since the Pleistocene14>> (Chang, 1989), but

the Austronesian occupation seems to have started 5000 years BC, with the settlement of

people who moved to the island from the southeast of actual China15, most of which were

fishermen and farmers. From Taiwan, they started to spread quickly throughout the south east

Pacific Area, up to the eastern coast of Africa. Some linguists and archeologist, such as

Kishimoto, Kawamoto or Benedict, promote the idea that some Austronesian people could

have immigrated to Japan as well, at least in the Ryūkyū archipelago, creating an Austronesian

substrate in the Japanese language.

13 From 原住民族委院會 web site, access on 2014, June 9th, http://www.apc.gov.tw/portal/index.html 14 About 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago. For Taiwan settlements it is probably earlier than 15.000 years ago. 15 China didn’t exist at the time, and people live in what is now south China, were different.

Figure 0:1 - Austronesian Language Family (Shī & Lín, 2006)

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Taiwanese Aboriginal people are usually separated in Plains Tribes (平埔族) and

Mountain Tribes or Gaoshan tribes (高山族). As mentioned above, the Taiwan government

officially recognizes 14 tribes, but it is important to register the presence of at least a dozen unrecognized tribes, some of which are asking for rightful recognition. Based on the Li (1996) classification16, it is possible to count ten Plain groups and nine Mountain groups (which include Yami) (see table above). All the GaoShan tribes are officially recognized by Taiwan government. However, the term GaoShan ethnicity may be ambiguos, because if for Taiwan it indicated part of the 14 aboriginal tribes, more specifically the ones who originally lived in the eastern mountains of the Island, for the Chinese government (PRC) it is a collective name for one of the 56 ethnicities present on what they consider to be a part of Chinese territory.

1.3 Dutch Colonization – Turn the Indigenous into Slaves

The first settlement by Han people in Taiwan was an angler community in PengHu

Archipelago (澎湖諸島), in Taiwan Strait. Copper (1993), report of 1000 Hakka settlements in

south Taiwan in 1111 ca. , while in 1135 a mission by Mongol Dynasty was sent to PengHu

where the base was established. The island was surely a hideout for Wakō (倭寇) pirates,

because of its strategic geographical position. The contact with the local tribes was not

frequent, both for the lack of desirable resources on the islands, and the hostility of the

indigenous population. It is not sure when Wakō pirates and peasants from Fujian Province

who violated the Ming ban on the overseas travel, start to settle in the western plains of the

island, to intermarry with local aboriginal and to start to lose the Chinese Culture. It sure that

16 Classification don’t report nowadays government recognized Turku and Seediq tribes（formerly

incorporated in Atayal, recognized in 2004 and 2008）and Sazikaya tribe (formerly incorporated in Ami, recognized in 2007)

Table 1 - Aboriginal Taiwanese, Li (1996)

GaoShan Tribes高山族

(∆ - Tribes recognized by Taiwan Government)

a - Atayal ∆b - Saisiyat ∆c - Bunun ∆d - Tsou ∆e - Rukai ∆f - Paiwan ∆g - Puyuma ∆h - Ami ∆i - Yami ∆

Plain Tribes平埔族

A- KetagalanB - Kavalan ∆C- TaokasD- PazehE- PaporaF - BabuzaG- HoanyaH - Thao ∆I - SirayaJ - Quaquat

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the greatest migration of Hokkien17 people to Taiwan happened with the Dutch take over of

the PengHu Archipelago, when people emigrating from Fujian start to clean the land and be

involved in agriculture for the Dutch East India Company.

Contrary to the Kuomintang (國民堂, from now KMT) myth that wants Ming Loyalists

first migrating to Taiwan after the defeat of Ming against Qing, Hoklo were already settled

during the Ming dynasty period. Taiwan, known with the Portuguese name “Ilha Formosa”

(beautiful island), << was the first large, integrated territorial possession over which the VOC18

claimed sovereignty in Asia during the seventeenth Century>> (Chiu, 2008). In July 1622, Dutch

settled in Penghu and set up a commercial link between Makong (Penghu), Batavia

(Indonesia), China and Japan, and started to control traffic in the Taiwan Strait, helped by

Chinese pirate’s chef Cheng Zhi-long, who collaborated with them. In January 1624, the Ming

government, which was not interested in ruling over Taiwan not yet seen as its own territory,

but neither did it want the Dutch to control the Taiwan strait or to represent a menace for

south Chinese coast, attack and win over Dutch forces in Penghu. Ming forces impose the

Dutch to sign a treaty where the Dutch were forced to withdraw and to leave Penghu, but

allowing them to have some posts on Taiwan Island.

The Dutch moved to the southern part of Taiwan, reaching the suburbs of what now is

Tainan and constructing Fort Zeelandia (now An-Ping district of Tainan City) and fort

Providentia. Taiwan aboriginals didn’t understand that those fortresses would have meant the

start of their oppression, and they didn’t fight against the Dutch, who were eventually

prepared to fight with cannons pointed not just on the Sea, for defense from the Chinese,

Japanese and other European powers attacks, but also inland to fight eventual aboriginal

insurrections. In 10 years, the Dutch took control over the aboriginals who started an

insurrection, both by brutal force and with the introduction of Christianity.

It was in order to propagate the Bible with the Aboriginal people that the VOC

missionaries started the Romanization of the local languages. We have records of nowadays-

extinct Favorlang thanks to works such 1650’s “Woordenboek der Favorlangsche Taal”

(dictionary of Favorlang language) by Dutch pastor Gilbertus Happart. Similar works arrive also

from Spanish missionaries after Spanish troops in 1626, settled in North Taiwan (Tamsui and

Keelung). Spanish settlement on the Island last just until 1642, but the “Tamsui Dictionary” as

well as the introduction of western ideologies and sciences with the inhabitants, lead to a

change in Taiwan aboriginal culture, as did the Dutch in South. In many cases, those new

cultural features bring a negative change in Taiwanese Aboriginal culture, such as the

consumption of alcohol and tobacco, and gambling, along with massive deer hunting for the

trading of deerskins that brings Taiwan deer to the edge of extinction.

After the Spanish leave Taiwan, also the Dutch faced several problems caused by the

introduction of slavery and the cruel management of the locals and immigrants from Fujian,

the high taxation and tributes, as well as the inhumane conditions in which those people

where forced to live. These hard conditions lead to various insurrections that found their apex

in 1652 with the Kuo Huai-yi rebellion, led by sugarcane farmer Kuo Huai-yi (郭懷一,1603 –

17 This group is commonly called also Hō-ló or Hoklo 18 Vereenigde Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company)

11

1652) from QuanZhou, who attacked Fort Providentia with 15.000 ca. peasant armed with

bamboo spears. The Dutch, managed to resist the attack with the help of allied aboriginal

tribes and superior weaponry technology. In the next few days 4000ca Chinese (about 1/10 of

Chinese living at that time in Taiwan) rebels were slaughtered, with Kuo Huai-Hi been killed

and decapitated.

1.4 Kingdom of Tunning – Koxinga a Taiwanese God.

Fort Providentia cannot stand the 1661 attack led by Koxinga (國姓爺, Guóxìngye,

birth name 鄭森, Zhèng Sēn ,1624 – 1662) that leads to the Dutch surrender and the start of

the Kingdom of Tungning. Koxinga’s figure plays an important role in Taiwan history, also for

the resemblance of his action with the one of R.O.C. government.

Son of the Hokkien pirate/merchant and Ming Admiral Zheng Zhi-Long (鄭芝龍, 1604-

1661) and of the Nagasaki Japanese woman Tagawa Matsu (田川松, 1601 – 1646), Koxinga

was born in Hirado (Japan), where he lived till the age of 7, until Zheng Zhi-Long joined Ming

navy and settled in Nan’An County, in Fujian province, with his wife. His father operated a

pirate fleet of over 800 ships able to defeat VOC fleet in 1633 Battle of LiaoLiu Bay, making him

wealthy and able to buy land all over Fujian province, becoming a powerful property owner.

Koxinga in 1638 became Linshansheng19 of Nan’an and in 1644 studied at the Imperial

Nanjing University, under Ming official and historian Qian QianYi. In the same year, hunger and

taxation bring Chinese farmers to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng, (李自成, 1606–1645), that

overthrew the Ming Dynasty, which ended with last Emperor ChongZhen (崇禎, 1611-1644)

who hanged himself to a tree in Imperial Garden. Li ZiCheng, became Emperor of the short-

lived Shun Dynasty, which was quickly overtaken by Manchus, know with the dynastic name of

Qing. China unification under Qing was completed just in 1683 under XianXi emperor.

Qing designated China as a multi-ethnic country including all the lands under their

control. People of all ethnicity who lived under them were regarded as Chinese, rejecting the

idea that China was just Han. According to Zhao (2006) << […] by 1680s, China no longer

referred to the Han alone: there was not a single Chinese language but three>>, Chinese,

Manchu, and Mongul. Ming loyalists resisted in Nanjing where prince Fu ascended to the

throne as Hongguang Emperor, but just one year later Qing forces captured Nanjing and

executed him. In 1645, Prince Tang ascended as the LongWu Emperor establishing his court in

Fuzhou, with the support of Zheng Zhi-Long and his family. LongWu Emperor gave Zheng Zhi-

Long’s son the name “GuoXingYa” (Lord of the Imperial Surname).

When Qing forces approached Fujian, Zheng Zhi-Long retreated to his coastal fortress

and in November 1646, ignoring his family protests, he decided to surrender himself to the

Qing forces and accepted to be appointed governor of Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

Koxinga and his uncle became the successor in leading Zheng Zhi-Long military forces,

19Stipend Student. Students who recive a scolarship during Ming and Qing period. Just few students was award with this title, which enable to recive an allowance from government.

12

operating outside Xiamen to recruit more to join his cause in fighting Qing armies. Even if with

naval raids he managed to fight back Qing and take Tong’An in QuanZhou province, his army

was not strong enough to defend the newly occupied territories. Koxinga continued naval

battles with Qing and managed to defeat them on the sea, but he was never able to conquer

territory on Land. Koxinga used the island of Jinmen as territory for training his troops, and in

1656, he managed to conquer ZhouShan Island, that he intended to use as a base to capture

Nanjing. In 1661, he led his troops in Taiwan, landing in Lu’ermen and he defeated the Dutch in

fort Zeelandia, ending 38 years of Dutch rule on the island.

Koxinga’s idea was to transform Taiwan into a military base for Ming loyalists who

wanted to defeat Qing and to restore the Ming Dynasty in China. His idea was eventually

copied later in 1949 from KMT when Republic of China government escaped to Taiwan after

the PRC victory in China.

1.5 Taiwan under Qing – Transforming savages in Han

The kingdom of Tunning lasts until Qing defeats the rebels. However they were not

able to control the Island from Beijing, so they were not eager to develop the possession that

was declared to be in the same category as the “south Seas”, i.e. it was not claimed to be part

of China, in that the Qing government’s hold on Taiwan was just to not let it fall to the hostile

power of rebels, Japanese or wakō pirates. Beside the fact that they tried to restrict migration

to Taiwan with bans on overseas travels and development of new areas of Taiwan, the

greatest migration of population from Fujian and Guandong happened in the middle of Qing

era.

Another ban imposed by Qing was the prohibition for Han to settle in the mountainous

area in Taiwan, restricted for indigenous people, to avoid any conflict (and prevent rebellion)

between the two sides. In addition, a taxation system on farming was imposed, but this did not

stop the emigration of poor or emarginated people from Fujian province that brought the Han

population in Taiwan to grow fast, while population of aboriginal Taiwanese started to shrink.

The reason for the fast decrease of indigenous people could be likely resumed in the saying <<

有唐山公無唐山媽 >> (Yǒu tángshān gōng wú tángshān mā , there were Tangshan men, but

there were not Tangshan women>>20. The prohibition of bringing family along during the

migration to Taiwan, meant that the migration was, for the most part, not married men or

men whose wives were still living in Fujian and many of their offspring would be through

marriage with Taiwanese aborigine women. Not just a way to claim over land property rights,

but the Chinese man was intrigued by the “savage woman” which customs was consider

barbarian and not acceptable for the Chinese society. As an example, as in many other

Austronesian cultures, Taiwan aborigines adopt a matrilineal inheritance with an Uxorilocal

marriage, which brings the Han man in close contact with his ‘savage’ wife’s family. This fact

emerges clearly from classical Chinese literature, where Taiwanese women were described as

hyper-sexualized and dehumanized.

20 In Taiwanese Hokkien “Tangshan” indicate China mainland

13

According to Dr. Sim Kiantek (2000),

<<When Ching occupied Taiwan in 1683, it adopted a policy called “To Convert the Wild

Barbarians into The Civilized Barbarians” and then “To Convert the Civilized Barbarians into

The Han (the Chinese).” The contents of the policy included discriminative practices such as

higher taxes, longer free community services, unfair judicial judgements, for those resisting the

conversion. No Taiwanese could live without being converted into Chinese. In 1683, the Ching

still documented most Taiwanese as Wild Barbarians; in 1756, the status of the Taiwanese was

changed to Civilized Barbarians; in 1777, all became Chinese. These historical records also

evidenced the process of the compulsory conversion of Taiwanese into Chinese.>>

This fact caused also the “savages” languages gradually start to disappear in favor of

the new emerging Hokkien language and culture. With the advance of the colonization of

Taiwan, promoters of aggressive process hoped for the creation of those institutions that

sustain Chinese culture in China, such as a strong male-dominant ideology, several generations

under one roof and the development of a scholar-burocrats class able to teach Confucianism

and Buddhist principles, along with Chinese law, in order to civilize the Taiwanese population.

In late 17th and 18th century, there was also a significant migration of Hakka people with their

language and culture, thus becoming the second-largest ethnic group in the island. Taiwan was

considered as a part of Fujian province, and the distance from the center of power, that made

Taiwan a land passively ruled by Qing, bring to many rebellions, until Taiwan became a

separate province in 1885.

It was just during the 1884-1885 Sino-French war, that the Qing government

understood the strategic importance of Taiwan and started a process of fast development of

the land. Liu MingChuan (劉銘傳,1836-1896) was appointed as Provincial Governor (巡撫

xúnfǔ ) of Taiwan and started a massive modernization process that included defense,

transportation, commercial enterprises, farming, taxation, public security and education that

included a western school and an aboriginal school. He also actively started a process called 開

山撫番 (Kāishān fǔ fān, open the mountains and pacify the Aborigines) that was used to fully

integrate the aborigines in Han system, sending punitive expeditions against the groups that

decided not to submit, making the aborigines become even weaker compared to Han.

1.6 Japanese Nationalism – Turns the Aborigines into Japanese

When in 1985, Qing ceded the Taiwan province to Japan as agreed in the Treaty of

Shimonoseki, after Qing was defeated in the Sino-Japanese war, the situation concerning the

aborigines was harsh, because << The attitude of the natives towards strangers underwent a

complete change, as well it might, and every foreigner, whatever his nationality, was regarded

as an enemy. >> [Rutter, 1923]. The Japanese army also had to face several problems with the

new inhabitants of the island, whose population had already become larger in number and

14

power, changing drastically the Taiwan cultural and social traits. The year 1905 census21,

shows a stronger presence of MinNan population and Hakka that outperforms aborigines,

Japanese and other foreigner populations, representing in fact 95% (82% MinNan and 13%

Hakka) of the total population that was counted at that time as 3,039,751 people (see graph

below). This data could possibly count the descendants of Han who carry aboriginal blood as

MinNan or Hakka people. Even in case of this eventuality, the number, with the language and

the culture of aborigines were surely on a decline, because of the Qing assimilation policies. As

an example, it is possible to cite the Siraya language that became extinct at the end of the 19th

century (Adelaar, 2011). Even if some Han living in Taiwan were afraid of the new troubles

that Japanese rule could bring to the island, Copper (1993) reported that the Chinese

government signals << to the population of Taiwan that China had no interest in it and would

not help in any resistance to Japanese rule>>. Even without Qing support, the resistance that

Japanese found was strong, with several rebellions in the first two decades.

Before the Japanese entry in Taiwan, in May 1895, a group of Chinese based in Taiwan

that was against the passage of the island from Qing to the Japanese Empire, proclaimed an

independent nation under the name of 臺灣民主國 (Táiwān mínzhǔ guó, Democratic Republic

of Formosa), and they appointed the former vice-governor T’ang Ching-sung (唐景崧, 1841-

1903) as president. To instigate the population against the known Japanese invasion, T’ang

issued proclamations where he described the Japanese as horrible yellow dwarfs who would

rape the women, kill the children and reduce everyone into slavery (Takekoshi, 1907). In

preparing the defense against the Japanese invasion, T’ang Ching-sung claimed that he was

leading an army composed of 140,000 soldiers, while Takekoshi (1907) reported a maximum of

70.000 or 80.000 soldiers22. Not recognized by any foreign country, in which they sought

support, this shortly lived Taiwan Nation was suppressed by the Japanese army in September

21 http://www.yungkang-house.gov.tw/getfile.php?ms=ZmlsZT0yJmZkX0lEPTgx. 22 In addition, Davidson (1903) reports 150.000 men in president report, as exaggeration, but in fact 75.000 man about. This data include volunteer as well as regular soldiers from mainland.

2490000

400000

50000

40000

57000

10000

82%

13%

1,50%

1,20%

1,89%

0,30%

閩南人minnan

客家人 hakka

平埔 Plains Ab.

高低原民族Mountains Ab.

日本人 Japanese

外國人 other foreigners

1905 Demographic situation -total poulation: 3039751

Table 2 - 1905 Demographic situation

15

of the same year. Already in June, Japanese troops took over Taipei (renamed in Japanese

Taihoku) and the passage of sovereignty was celebrated as the passage of the island from

China, which had torn it from Koxinga’s descendants by bribery and brute force, to the

Japanese people in whose veins flowed the same blood as Koxinga, whose mother was in fact

Japanese. Even after the taking of Taipei, rebellions continued. By 1903, Taiwan was electrified

and the railroad extended, making the island the second place in Asia to make this step into

modernity. Some social reforms ware taken, such education improvement and commerce

strengthened with commercial and technical knowledge. The use of Japanese was encouraged

and the politics adopted by the Japanese was not cruel towards Taiwanese inhabitants, but

even not democratic, as the Taiwanese were not considered as equal as the Japanese was.

In 1919, Japanese started a campaign called “dōka” (同化, assimilation) where

Taiwanese subjects were educated to their responsibilities as Japanese subjects. In 1931, the

Consulate-General of the Republic of China was opened in Taihoku, as a diplomatic mission.

The choice to open the mission was caused by the continuous immigration of Mainlanders

Chinese who were still attracted by the work opportunities that Taiwan offered. In fact, after

the end of the World War I, the Japanese prohibited foreign companies to establish business in

Taiwan, and started to industrialize the land with new industries and technologies. These

heavy industries would have eventually helped the Japanese expansion in South East Pacific

Area and during World War II, would serve as a strategic base.

Beside the major invasion suffered from the near Okinawa archipelago, Taiwan did not

suffer many damages during the war. The U.S. Army, which thought about occupying Taiwan,

decided to skip it because of the lack of a good map of Taiwan and the calculated risk of the

aid that the population would have probably given to the Japanese Army. This could be

considered as a good sign of the progress in the dōka campaign.

In 1943’s Cairo conference, U.S. government promised to Republic of China’s leader

Chiang Kai-Shek to “return” Taiwan and other land “stolen”23 by Japanese, at the end of the

War. The promise that was reiterated in the 1945 Potsdam Agreement has not set nor defined

the political and legal status that Republic of China should had given to Taiwan.

1.7 R.O.C. Nationalism – Turning Taiwanese into Chinese

After Japan surrendered to the U.S. in 1945, Taiwan passed formally under the military

control of KMT led by the Republic of China, and Chen Yi (陳儀 1883 – 1950) proclaimed

October 25h to be the "Taiwan Retrocession Day” (臺灣光復節, Táiwān guāngfù jié).

23 The terms return and stole (Copper, 1993 p. introduction / 13) are, by my personal point of view, not adapt to the situation. The reasons are that Republic of China was born in 1912, when Japanese already ruled over Taiwan, so they never own the Island before. Moreover Taiwan was not stolen, nor was an annexation, but a cession “in perpetuity”, as same as the cession of Hong Kong to U.K. in 1842. In Copper the word stole is also written between quotation marks

16

Appointed as Chief Executive by Chiang Kai-Shek, after the establishment of the "Office of the

Chief Executive of Taiwan Province" (台灣省行政長官公署, Táiwān shěng xíngzhèng

zhǎngguān gōngshǔ), Chen Yi started a wretched administration marred by corruption and a

severe lack of discipline of the military police. This administration that monopolized power in

Chen Yi hands, along with the economical falling caused by the vacuum left by the Japanese,

led to several disorders between the Taiwanese and the newcomers. Soldiers and

administrative officials sent to Taiwan were not able to speak any of the languages spoken at

the time on the island and considered the locals as “Japanized” traitors who served the hated

Japanese army. Health standards declined, as well as public works and the educational system.

The “mainlanders” started to claim property of the lands, while others looted factories in order

to help the war against the communist party in China. From Kerr’s (1965) description of the

event, what was happening in Taiwan was nothing but a looting against a well-disciplined

people, which presents no danger to the nationalism of China.

Hostility between Taiwanese and Chinese reach their apex in 1947, February 28,24

when police killed a woman for selling black market cigarettes on the street. Chen Yi was

blamed for the incident, seen as the result of his incompetence and lack of knowledge in local

problems. He tried to give fault of the rebellion to the communist trigger and sent troops,

which used brutal force on unarmed civilians to restore order. Aware of the situation, Chiang

Kai-Shek removed and executed Chen Yi, made Taiwan a province and appointed some

Taiwanese to political position.

In 1949, after the defeat of Nationalist Chinese against Mao and Communist Party,

Chiang Kai-Shek government and military fled to Taiwan, making the island a stronghold to

regroup and counterattack Mao’s forces. This fact represented a similitude with Koxinga’s idea

of making Taiwan a base to fight against the new Chinese government.

Chiang decided to defeat Communism by developing Taiwan and making it a model

and, as result of his policies, the Taiwan economic growth became one of the fastest in the

World and with equity, nearly all the population had benefited from this. On the other side,

the diplomatic failures caused mainly by foreigner countries, created problems to the process

of democratization started by Chiang.

Moreover, to maintain the legitimate control over the Mainland, that KMT was hoping

to obtain, they had to make the status of Mandarin as the official language survive to the

assimilation of the minority Mandarin speakers, into the local MinNan majority. For this

purpose Nationalist Party started to set Mandarin as the only language of public setting and

the schooling were conducted solely in Mandarin. From 1950 and for the following 30 years

approximately, some laws and decrees were made to punish the use of any other language,

and to forbid the use of dialects in school. In 1976, the “Broadcast and Television law” limited

the use of other languages in radio and television broadcasts.

In 1971, United Nations admitted Mao’s PRC and expelled Chiang ROC, because the

needs of U.S.A. to have good relation with Chinese communists in order to limit the Soviet

Union growth in Asia. Mao pushed for the recognition of “one China” which meant to accept

24 The event is now known as 二二八 (2-2-8) as February 28.

17

PRC, as the only China and so do not recognize ROC as a possible representative government

for the Country. Chiang dies in 1975, without realizing his dream to unseat Mao and the

communists.

Chiang Ching-Kuo, called CCK, son of Chiang Kei-Shek, succeeded his father in the

leadership of Taiwan25, building his image as the “man of the people” (Copper, 1993) by going

out in the countryside and bringing more Taiwanese into the government and nationalist

party. He announced anti-corruption policies and made an effort to improve Taiwan human

rights records.

In 1978, Chiang was elected president, since there were no other real choices, and

with Yen earlier declared, he would not be a candidate. Shieh Tung Min, a Taiwanese, was

elected vice president while premier became Sun, a mainlander. In May, Chiang raised the

number of Taiwanese in the government and scheduled a new election for December, hoping

that it could be more open and competitive. Before the election, in 1978 December 15th , U.S

president J. Carter announced that from the start of the new year, the U.S would have given

full recognition to PRC and the American embassy in Taipei would been closed. On the lead of

the U.S decision, many other nations derecognized Taiwan as a nation in favor of PRC.

Democratization became the key for the preservation of Taiwan’s sovereignty and nationhood.

In 1979, December 10, demonstrators in Kaohsiung organized a parade that turned

violent. The violence was attributed to anti-government forces. This fact switched Taiwanese

people to start to support the government, and caused the fear of the possible benefits that

PRC could have from the episode. The Kaohsiung incident and the decision of the U.S and

other countries to de-recognize Taiwan as a nation officially, lead the Taiwanese to straighten

their “Taiwanese identity”, which makes them different from China. In 1980 the first

democratic election in Taiwan or in a Chinese nation was held, that brought a collective of

independent candidates known as 堂外 (Táng wài, “outside party”) to criticize the Nationalist

party. In 1984, Chiang was elected again and Lee Teng-Hui, a Taiwanese of Hakka origin,

elected as vice-president. In 1986, after the creation of Democratic Progressive Party, the first

two party election in Chinese history was held, bringing more confidence that the Nationalist

Party would win. Western media perceived that Taiwan had made an important step on the

way to democracy. In 1987 in fact, the prohibition of the use of other languages was lightened

and some television channels, started to broadcast in MinNan language.

In 1988, Chiang died and Vice-president Lee became the first Taiwanese president in

Taiwan history, while some members of the Nationalist Party tried to set limits to his power.

Even though they formally opposed some of his policies, they probably were more afraid that a

Taiwanese had become president. Under Lee, KMT became more democratic, promising to

deal with social problems and to adopt a coherent policy toward China. In 1989, Taiwan

supported officially the Democracy movement in China. In June, after the Tian-nan-men

massacre, Lee reformed the elected bodies of government so that they no longer represented

China, creating by consequence a “two China policy”. In 1989 Election, even if technically KMT

won, DDP got considerable support from more people that was unexpected, also thanks to the

25 Along with the constitution, former vice-president Ye Chia-Kan became president, but de facto CCK wielded considerable power from his position as premier and head of ruling Nationalist party

18

separation of China, which was more desirable after the Tian-nan-men incident.

In May 1990, Lee announced an end to the state of war with the communists giving

recognition to the Beijing government. Chinese reporters and scholars were allowed to go to

Taiwan bringing considerable changes to the Taiwan demographic situation. In 1991, DDP

created a controversy for a Taiwan independence policy, while in December 1992’s election,

the new KMT alliance started to stress the necessity of the “one China” policy. In 1996 PRC,

who started to claim Taiwan since long before, conducted some missile tests in the Taiwan

Strait, to intimidate the Taiwanese electorate so that electorates would not vote for the

candidate who supported independency. It was in 2000, with the election of Chen Shui-Bian

that the independence movement reach its top, with the victory of DPP and the end of KMT as

the ruling party. The victory was repeated in 2004, even if the day before the election, an

assassination attempt on Chen occurred. In response to Chen’s re-election, PRC emanated the

反分裂國家法; Fǎn-Fēnliè Guójiā Fǎ (anti secession law) which was meant to avoid the

independence of Taiwan. In fact, the law can be resumed in the willing of China to use the

army in case of Taiwan’s declaration of independency or a winning of the “Taiwan

independency movement”. After Chen, KMT retook power and nowadays the unification vs.

independency problem, is still one of the major issues of Taiwan political life, with always more

people pushing for Taiwanese independency and for the rise of the Taiwanese identity.

19

2 Languages of Taiwan

2.0 Taiwan – Languages or dialects

To introduce the variety of languages spoken in the Island, it is important to focus on

two topics, the difference between language and dialect and the importance of the feeling that

speakers have towards their languages. Iannàccaro and Dell ’Aquila (2008) remark that even if

in common language dialects are seen as a local linguistic variety without a good written

tradition and in some cases, even without grammar, from a linguistic point of view they are

purely languages. The differences between language and dialect are not of linguistic kind, but

rather, are of social and pragmatic aspects. The definition of language as a collection of

mutually intelligible dialects26 is not fully acceptable and it is possible to show this through

some counterexamples. With reference to the languages of China27 in fact, China can register

at least four language families, which include a dozen sub-families and hundreds of languages.

In the China regions, it is possible to find Sino-Tibetan languages, Altaic Languages,

Austroasiatic Languages and Indo-European languages. << Genetically, Chinese is an

independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages>> (Li & Thompson, 2009).

This branch presents sub-groups composed by not mutually intelligible languages, which can be classified as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Yue and Hakka. Those variations are considered as “dialects” of Chinese but, if this is true, the statement that see languages as a collection of mutual intelligible dialects is wrong. There are cases of languages that have the recognized status of languages (Danish, Norwegian) but which are to some extent mutually intelligible. Classifying a code under the label of “language” or “dialect”, cannot be done under the condition of mutually intelligibility. However, this also does not mean that it is wrong to consider Mandarin, Min, Wu, Yue and Hakka as languages of the Chinese branch (Sinitic languages) instead of as dialects of Chinese. In fact, the choice of labeling one system as language or dialect is right, if the categorization happened on a social or personal basis. In this case the sentence “language and dialect are the same thing, seen by different points of view and with different functions”28 can be possibly the best one. Dialects exist and are different from languages in the social environment, in their relation with the concept of nation and in the point of view of a group. If, for a Chinese person, the MinNan spoken in Taiwan is a Chinese dialect, for many Taiwanese elderly MinNan is the first language while Chinese is a foreign language, which can be second language (L2) or be not part of their linguistic repertory at all. Before speaking about socio-linguistic features, it is important to analyze the language variety in the Taiwan area from a linguistic point of view, spending some words on the languages features. The languages spoken in Taiwan belong to two distinct linguistic families, Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan families. Japanese is also widely spoken and its presence is important in socio-linguistic aspects that will be discussed.

26 In Kayambazinthu (2004), but seems to appear also in other sources, which I couldn’t personally read. 27 Not including Taiwan indigenous languages, but just languages spoken in China 28 Note from Prof. Iannàccaro lesson in Università Statale di Milano Bicocca.

20

2.1 Formosan Languages

2.1.0 Classification of Formosan languages

Austronesian languages are the indigenous languages of Taiwan, which to a different

extent, can be all considered all in an endangered situation. In Taiwan, Formosan language

represents a great variation of linguistic family; it is possible count about twenty-five languages

(officially recognized, but some of whom are nowadays extinct) against the presence of three

Sinitic languages and their variations: min, Mandarin and Hakka. However, if analyzed by the

number of speaker point of view, aboriginal languages represent the minority. Taiwan

population is 23,359,928 people of which Aboriginal 2% Taiwanese (including Hakka) is 84%

and mainland Chinese 14%29. Blust (2009) remarks that <<their extinction (or cultural

absorption) can be attributed directly to competition for land between their speakers and the

incoming Taiwanese, with most of the destructive consequences of contact taking place during

the period 1660-1870>>. These languages, that could have been more when the Dutch arrived

in Taiwan, was all spoken in the western plains, the agricultural land of Taiwan.

Among the aboriginal tribes, the Amis (阿美) has the highest number with 199.278

people while on the other side Sarooa (拉阿魯哇) counts 7 people, out of a total of 536.509

indigenous people30, and possibly not all of them are able to speak or transmit the aboriginal

language of the group to the next generation. In Blust (2009), the comparison between

population by ethnicity and number of speakers is made by different years data31, making it

difficult to give a precise rate of today’s number of speakers/population.

Another possible factor for the lack of precise data is the difficulty in defining which

languages are and which are the dialects, and their classification. In fact, Paul Li (2006) feels

that << No satisfactory classification of Formosan language is available today. A lot more

careful work on the comparative study of Formosan language is required to get a more

satisfactory solution>>. He propose a classification32 that regroups 21 languages in four groups:

29 June 2014 demographic data from CIA website (access on: 2014, 07 27) 30原住民族委員會 data (2013/6) 31 I could not find any source or census or survey that shows a clear rapport between population per ethnicity and speaker ‘per language. A survey on this side would present many problems, in my opinion, in choosing between letting the interviewee choose without any discretion his own language and ethnicity (so an open question where he could possibly write everything he feels) or a multiple choice in which the interviewee could choose between n choices, with the possibility that no one of the choices will match his feeling toward his ethnicity and language (with bad result for the survey result) 32 Paul Li classification is a suggestion, as he remarked, his <<paper is more of a progress report than a completed research project. >>.

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Northern (with Northwest subgroup), Central, Southern and Eastern groups.

2.1.1 Eastern Formosan Languages

Blust (1999) and Paul Li (2006) thinks four languages, Amis, Kavalan, Basay and Siraya,

compose the Eastern Formosan (EF) group. The label of EF must not be taken as a geographical

reference to the position in which the speaker of these languages resides. Amis live along the

eastern coast of Taiwan, and their language is spoken in an area that goes from north of

Taitung to Hua-Lian, Kavalan language is spoken in the area around I-Lan, also on the eastern

coast. Basay was spoken in the northern part of Taiwan, while Siraya was spoken in the south-

west area. The former two language still living language, Amis in particular seems to be in

better status than other aboriginal languages. Basay and Siraya are death languages. The

southwestern and northern position of Siraya and Basay suggests wrongly to think about the

categorization of the eastern group as a geographical feature. There is instead phonological

evidence (i.e. linguistic) that support this kind of classification. Blust separates these four

languages into other three branches, considering Basay and Kavalan (northern branch) the

closest for <<phonological and lexical evidence>> (Li P. , 2006), such as the merger of *N>n in both

Basay and Kavalan, while in Amis33 is *N> d and in Siraya *N>l. Common features between the

languages are instead the merger of *C>t, or *j,*n>n. Li used this evidence to assume that

Blust is right in regrouping Basay and Kavalan, but also that Amis and Siraya may be closer to

each other than either is to Basay or Kavalan.

Li (2006) cited also that Mabuchi (1953-4) found a common homeland motif in Amis,

Basay and Kavalan’s oral tradition that has all of them coming originally from an island called

“Sinasay” or “Sanasay”. This common origin could be the influence of one of the group

tradition on the other; however, it shows a cultural proximity among these groups. It is

possible to find some variations in these languages.

Amis intellectuals such as former Council of Indigenous Peoples’ Chairman Icyang

Parod were among leading figures for aboriginal tribe’s rights that lead, for example, to the

restoration of aboriginal names to mountain and rivers, or to townships, as in the case of

“Namasiya Township” (Hsu, 2008).

33 Paul Li refers to Sakizaya as a dialect of Amis incorporated in Amis tribe until 2007, since the Qing period. <<In January of 2007, Sakizaya was officially recognized as Taiwan’s 13th Indigenous Group in Taiwan and one of the most important claims used by the Sakizaya elites in the process of ethnic reconstruction was the language>> (Lin, 2010). Lin shows differences in lexical items between sakizaya language and Nansi Amis dialect, that seem to prove that Sazikaya should not be considered as an Amis dialect. This could be also a reason why in Li’s analysis, the merge of *q,*H and *ʔ become ø in Basay, Kavalan and Siraya, while in Amis *H>h, ʔ and *ʔ>ʔ *q > Q (a pharyngealized glottal stop).

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2.1.2 Center Formosan Languages

Center Formosan Group is composed of three languages, Tsou, Saaroa and

Kanakanavu. According to Li (2001), the three groups’ oral tradition says that they belong to

the same group whose origin was in Yushan (玉山) and they split 2000 years ago in Northern

Tsou and southern Tsou. This second group 800 years ago split in Kanakanavu and Saaroa

groups, which have not had official recognition. The place occupied by those groups is in the

southwest part of central Taiwan. In 2000 census,34 it is possible to see how 81.1% of Tsou

population lived in the southern region, with the highest concentration (54, 7%) in Chayi

County, with just 6.1% in Chayi city and with 12.6% in Kaohsiung County35.

Blust indicated Tsou, with Saaroa and Kanakanavu, to be part of a Tsuic branch of Formosan languages, proposed by Ferrel (1969) and defended by Tsuchida (1976) (cit. Blust 2009). However, Ross (2012) suggests that Tsou is not a subgroup with two other languages in favor of the <<Nuclear Austronesian hypothesis, whereby all Austronesian languages other than Puyuma, Tsou and Rukai belong to a single subgroup, Nuclear Austronesian. >>. In Tsukida and Tsuchida [2007] Saaroa and Kanakanavu are labeled as moribund languages, while Tsou is endangered. However, Tsou is recently following the trend of revitalizing their language and tradition thanks to the new policies that seem to respect more aboriginal cultures.

2.1.3 Northern Formosan Languages

The northern Formosan Branch proposed by Li is separated into two main branches, Atayalic and North-West branch (which include another sub-groups labeled as western); in the Atayalic branch, the Atayal Language with Squliq and Ts’ole’ variations and the Seediq language with Takedaya, Teruku and Te’uda variations. The two groups seems to have split 1600 years ago, with Atayal going to North and Seediq to east. The distribution of Atayal covers a large area in the northern part of Taiwan, from Taipei Count to Nantou province including the eastern part of Taichung province, Miaoli province and Hsinchu County. Seediq, often referred as Taroko, is concentrated in the area of the Taroko national park in Hualien province, and is officially recognized as a tribe since Japanese scholars, during the Japanese colonization, found linguistic and cultural differences between Seediq and Atayal. The two languages are not mutually intelligible; even if Raleigh Ferrell (cit. from Digital Museum of Taiwan Indigenous Peoples website)36 found some similarities in them, making them presumably belong to the same sub-group. The North- western branch instead contains various languages, separated by sub-groups. On one side the Kulon and Pazeh languages with Saisiyat, and on the other side another division in western languages, which are separated in Thao, and Central western

34 Preliminary statistical analysis report of 2000 Population and Housing Census (2000, Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, R.O.C.)

35 Became a 直轄市 (Zhíxiáshì ,special municipality) in 2010 36 www.dmtip.gov.tw/Eng/Index.htm

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plains language, I.e. Babuza and Papora. Pazeh and Kulon are extinct languages, and the tribes are not subject for official

recognition. Saisiyat concentrate in Wufeng Township (五峰鄉) in Xinzhu County and

Nanzhuang Township (南庄鄉) with Shitan Township (獅潭鄉) in Miaoli County. Saisiyat are

recognized as an official tribe and their language is seriously endangered (Tsukida & Tsuchida, 2007). The western branch is split as well in two sub-groups, the Thao one, a seriously endangered language, and the central western plains one that is formed by Babuza and Papora languages that are extinct. Thao is the only tribe recognized among those, and they live mainly in the area around Sun Moon Lake in Nantou Province. The tourism development in the area made the Thao and the Han live side-by-side, becoming assimilated and living peacefully with other groups.

2.1.4 Southern Formosan Languages

The Southern Formosan branch is composed of four languages and their variations,

spoken for the most in the southwestern part of Taiwan, Bunun, Rukai, Puyuma and Paywan.

Bunun, famous among Taiwanese aboriginals for their hunting skills, was among the last tribes

that the Japanese could successfully pacify. Their most famous feature however, is the unique

eight-part harmonic singing, earlier recorded by Takatomo Kurosawa.37The Bunun language

has five main variants, Isbukun, Takbunuaz, Takivatan, Takibaka and Takituduh, Isbukun is the

main variant, spoken in the south of Taiwan. The Bunun population count about 55,600

people38, which spread out in an area that extends from Kaohsiung to Taidong County and

crosses Nantou County, where the majority of Bunan lives.

Puyuma are considered the sixth largest indigenous group in Taiwan, counting about

13,00039 people, with just a couple thousand speakers, divided in two groups related by

language, but hostile, the Katipul and Puyuma, the first group ‘born of a stone’, the second

‘born of the bamboo’ (Coquelin, 2004). They located mainly in the area around Taidong, which

represents a sort of border with the Amis tribe.

Paiwan is the second largest aboriginal group in Taiwan with about 95.700 people who

live in the southern part of Taiwan, between Taidong and Pingtung counties. During the 1946-

1949 civil war, many Paiwan men were forced to join the KMT army; after the end of the war,

some of them remained in China founding Paiwan communities. The Paiwan language has a

high number of variants, also considering the high number of speakers in comparison to other

aboriginal languages.

Rukai represents the most interesting Formosa language from a linguistic point of view, being the only Formosan language which makes a difference between animate and inanimate, instead of personal not personal, and without a focus system(Li P. , 2006). The

37 www.culture.tw 38 (原住民族委員會, 2014) 39 (原住民族委員會, 2014)

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Rukai language is divided into six dialects: Tanan, Budai, Labuan, Tona, Maga, and Mantauran (Chen, 2006). Rukai counts about 12.000 people living in the mountains near Kaohsiung, and the language is among the most endangered in Taiwan.

2.1.5 Yami: MP branch

Yami, known also as Tao “people” as they call themselves, is the only Austronesian

language in Taiwan, which does not belong to the Formosan branch. It is spoken in Orchid

Island, in Southeast Taiwan and the Tao tribe, officially recognized by the government, is

classified as a Mountain Tribe. This tribe belongs to the MP branch and this fact can be

attributed to their origins. Ancestors of these people moved to Orchid Island from the Batanes

Islands (Philippines) about 800 years ago. Along with the language, also, some cultural tracts

diverge from Formosan tribes, such as the lack of tattooing and recruiting practices. Also the

lenition from PAN *b>v and *d>r, is a feature that Yami share with Kejaman, Malagasy and

Bimanese, MP languages(Sagart, 2002)40. In 1895, Japanese government declared Orchid Island

a research area, not allowing entering or cultivating the land. This decision helped Yami to

keep their tradition and language. The peripheral position of Yami tribe with respect to the

center of power, along with the R.O.C. policies that endangered the Yami territory (which

makes Orchid Island a dump for nuclear waste), seems to make them not have much

confidence towards foreigners, which of course does not include Yami Taiwanese.

2.2 Hakka

Hakka is a Sinitic language, not mutually intelligible with MinNan or Mandarin, and

some scholars such as Sagart (2002), believe that "a special relationship exists between

southern Gan and Hakka”. The word 客家 (Kejia in Mandarin, Hak-ka in Hakka) is formed by

the word ke ‘guest, stranger ‘and jia ‘man (an agent suffix)’ (Hashimoto, 1973). Hakka people

seem to have their origins in the central plains of China, emigrating during war and civil unrest,

to North China, South China, and Taiwan and in other countries, where Hakka communities are

nowadays present (Malaysia, Jamaica). In Taiwan, there are four variants of the Hakka

language, divided by the accent of the original place of the ancestors: the Sixian, Hailu, Dapu,

and Shao-an accents.41 In Taiwan, the major concentration of Hakka people is in the area of

MiaoLi County and Hsinchu County, with 6.6 percent people all over the nation42. These data,

compared with the data about Mandarin speakers, show that the number of Taiwan Hakka

40 However also Saisiyat share lenition of PAN *b>b *d>r with Tagalog, Palauan and Numfor, and Amis share *b>f and *d>r with Simalur, Taje, Ujir; Elat, even if those languages belong to different branches. This phonological feature cannot be considered as proof for classification of Yami as MP language, classification that is not anyway under discussion. 41 (Overseas Chinese Affiar Commission Taiwan R.O.C., 2001) 42 (行政院主計總處版權所有, 2014)

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speakers is decreasing, following other local language trends, in favor of Mandarin speakers

who are increasing. To cite Masahiro Endo <<It has been suggested that this language [Hakka]

could disappear from Taiwan within another two decades>>43. However, Hakka are considered

a group who worship the traditions and since Taiwan democratization, Hakka preservation and

language policy programs started in various Taiwan regions, and the establishment of the

Hakka Affairs Council and Hakka language proficiency test that from 2005 to 2012 passed and

certified 45,273 examinees44. This represents, in my opinion, a good trend toward the

protection of the language and culture in Taiwan.

2.3 MinNan

In Taiwan, the term “台語” (Taiyu) indicates the MinNan language and all its

variations. MinNan is a Sinitic Language originated from the south area of Fujian, reason why it

has been called Hok-kien (MinNan word for “Fujian”). In Klöter (2005), the Taiwanese located

variants of MinNan are five, spreading from north to South and all over the western coast. The

variations are Hǎikǒu (海口), Piān hǎi (偏海), Nèi bù (內埔), Piān nèi (偏內) and Tōngxíng (通

行). The strong migration of people from Fujian to Taiwan resulted in MinNan becoming the

most widespead language on the island, with 81.9% of population using it at home45. The area

on the western coast that extends from Changhua County to Tainan city municipality number

more than 95% of its people speaking MinNan.

Like many other sinitic language, <<[MinNan] is a tone language in which features of

pitch, duration and contour directly correlate with lexical meaning>> (Klöter, 2005, p. 7).

Differently from Mandarin, MinNan have eight different tones.

MinNan is mainly an oral transmitted language. Various kinds of script have been

attempted such the Pėh-oē-jī Romanization introduced by missionaries, the use of kana by the

Japanese during the first half of the 20th century or the use of Chinese characters. However,

when inquiring about the use of a written form, many Taiwanese seem not to really

apppreciate nor fully understand the use of the script in their language. Also the use of

MinNan is not an official language of Taiwan, but de-facto it is used widely on the island, such

as in trasportation for announcing bus or subway stations.

2.4 Mandarin, Hànyǔ or Guóyǔ

Chinese, Mandarin, 漢語 (Hànyǔ, Han language), 國語 (Guóyǔ, National language) are

labels used to call the Chinese language. After listing more than 20 <<synonyms and near-

43 http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/adv/chuo/dy/opinion/20120528.html 44 (Hakka Affair Council, 2014) 45 2010 Population and housing census, (行政院主計總處版權所有, 2014)

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synonyms for "(Standard) Mandarin">>46, V. Mair (1991) point out that << Suffice it to say that

there must be some good reason(s) for this wild proliferation of names for what is ostensibly

the same phenomenon.>>. So, for example in Taiwan, there is a Mandarin Training Center

whose name is 國語教育中心 (Guóyǔ jiàoyù zhōngxīn, center for national language

education), where one can prepare for ‘Chinese proficiency test’ that take the name of

“Hànyǔ-Test of Proficiency”( Hànyǔ - T.O.P.). In his description of Idealized Mandarin, Sanders

(1987) says that it is <<What is called Pǔtōnghuà on the Chinese Mainland, Guóyǔ in Taiwan,

and Hànyǔ in Singapore. Outside of China this (so-called) standard, official Mandarin

correspond to the language found in textbooks. >>. In addition Sanders points out that <<

What characterizes this language is grammatical under specification, a lack of any native

speakers and very few truly fluent speakers. >>.

Differences between Mandarin of Taiwan (Guóyǔ) and Mandarin of china (Pǔtōnghuà)

are easily definable. Tseng (2004) points out that <<One general impression of the two

varieties of Mandarin Chinese is that people from Taiwan speak with a lower voice, and they

sound soft and gentle; while Mainlanders have more ups and downs in their intonation, and

their voices are high.>>. Among the reasons are the slower tempo of Guóyǔ confronted with

Pǔtōnghuà and the high register of the latter. From a phonological point of view, one of the

clearest aspects is that in Guóyǔ the post-alveolar [tȿ], [tȿh] and [ȿ] of Pǔtōnghuà are not

distinguished from dental [ts], [tsh] and [s], while the post-alveolar approximant [ɹ] is

pronounced as [z].

Guóyǔ is the official language in Taiwan, spoken by 83.5% of population of the island47.

However, over 65 years old Mandarin speaker are a minority with 43, 5 on 100 people who can

speak the language48. In fact, Guóyǔ became Taiwan language just in 1945 after the arrival of

the R.O.C. government who set it as the official language. The phonetic system used in Taiwan,

still on a larger scale than 注音符號 Zhùyīn fúhào 49that works as an educational tool and

electronic input system. Along with Zhùyīn, Taiwan used 通用拼音 Tōngyòng pīnyīn since

2009, when Hànyǔ Pinyin was made official by the government. However, younger Taiwanese

seems to prefer using Zhùyīn both as educational tools and electronic input method (laptop

keyboard in Taiwan have Zhùyīn fúhào).

The choice of maintaining the use of traditional script in Taiwan, against the choice of simplified in China, is important for the Taiwanese population, as a vector of their difference with the mainland. Taiwanese generally seem to be proud and satisfied with the use of traditional script, and tend to dislike simplified one50. When Taiwan opens the doors to Chinese tourist, some institutions, hotels or tourist attractions started using both simplified and traditional script, but the choice of using just traditional script was taken and site in simplified Chinese was deleted. Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou <<has argued that the

46 from Zhang Gonggui and Wang Weizhou work “Putong hua, haishi Guóyǔ” "普通話還是國語” 47 2010 Population and housing census, (行政院主計總處版權所有, 2014) 482010 Population and housing census, (行政院主計總處版權所有, 2014) 49 Usually known as Bopomofo from the first row of phonetic chart, consists in 32 symbols and 4 tone marks 50 This is information I gathered around Taiwan speaking with people of different ages. The younger however, seem to be more emphatic about the difference between the usages of the two scripts.

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traditional script is one of Taiwan's cultural assets>> and <<Chinese tourists would benefit from experiencing this part of the island's culture. >> (Sui, 2011).

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3 Japanese and Chinese assimilation policies

3.0 Nationalism and Languages Language function is communication. To cite Colman (2008) <<Speech is what creates community and mediates between individuals and member of various subgroups >>. It is the way people share cultures, thoughts and experience and the way individuals can enter in contact with each other. Along with this unification function, on the other hand, language brings its own identity and can be one of the strongest markers of distinction of a group. Although giving a precise definition of culture is hard, it is possible say that culture is an interface between an individual and the environment in which he lives, including other people. Culture, must be shared inside a group and each individual can have multiple different cultures based on the environment he is in. Languages share those feature with culture, as one can be multilingual. The communicative function of language is valid as long as there are other people who understand that language, and people who do not understand that language are not part of the group. Another feature shared by language and culture is that they are not part of one’s genetic traits, but must be apprehended. The way we apprehend languages and cultures51 makes us individuals, i.e. creating our identity. With 6000 languages spread in 200 nations52, one can suppose that there are at least two languages in each country, a fact that would suppose the presence of at least two different linguistic identities. With the rise of nationalistic ideology, the necessity of setting clear and strong boundaries between the group and the outsider becomes stronger, and language has been seen as the strongest connector between the people and the nation. To unify the in-group the first necessity was the standardization of a language that could represent the unity of the nation and the diversity from the others. These concepts result often in an abstract version of spoken language, that has written norms as a regulated grammar and possibly a unified written form, but when spoken, presents diatopic or diastratic marks making it diverge from the standard variant, sometimes just on a phonological level. These divergences can be set however, also as marks for a linguistic differentiation as often happened in Taiwan. Taiwanese in general seem to perceive their “Chinese” as a different language from the “Chinese” spoken in China. From a survey conducted on Taiwanese people, at the question “According to your feelings, Taiwanese Guóyǔ and mainland Pǔtōnghuà, is the same language or is it a different language?”53 out of 346 answers, 224 people said that they perceive the two languages as different entities, and at the next (not obligatory in the test) question “if you choose not same, please point out where different”54, most of the results presented answers such as“Different words tone”55, “A different way of learning pronunciation”56, “Different usage”57or “Tones”58.

51 The choice of plural as marker is derived from the belief that it is useless to speak about a single language or culture in today’s world, where almost everyone is at least bilingual. 52 The concept of nation vs. state also needs a deeper analysis which shows the ideology that lies behind those terms. 53“按照您的感覺, 臺灣國語跟大陸的普通話, 算是一樣的語言或者算是不一樣的語言? “ 54“如果您選不一樣, 請您指定哪裡不一樣“ 55“話語氣不同” 56“學習發音的方式不一樣” 57“用法不同” 58“音調”

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Some of those interviewed said that they perceive the language as the same entity, pointing out the same differences, possibly not considering them relevant to distinguish the two languages. The answers collected still denote that the difference that can be found in local variation of the languages, such the different use of a word, or the different pronunciation of some phonemes, can be took as distinctive marks for the group language. However, from the survey it results also that people who do not have Guóyǔ as their mother tongue59, in many cases, perceive the Chinese spoken in Taiwan to be different from the one spoken in China. This can be a factor of the relation that Taiwanese set between their languages and their feeling to be a different nation from China60. The nationalistic language policies are generally used to contrast this trend. Again, if we consider the linguistic relativity and the influence of the language on the thoughts and on identity formation, speaking Chinese in Taiwan (or Japanese), means to assimilate the Taiwanese by making them part of the Chinese (or Japanese) group. In this sense, also the label of MinNan as a Chinese dialect had a social and political function: one can speak MinNan, but since MinNan is a dialect of Chinese, that person speaks Chinese as well61. So on one side the language unity is important to create the sense of national unification and the feeling of the ‘foreigner’, and the other varieties spoken in the group inland are put on the side of the nation or represent a low social class. On the other side, to make all citizens able to participate in the political life and so, be an active part of the civilized nation, the variants of the language that differentiate from the standard, representing an obstruction (Iannàccaro & Dell'Aquila, 2008, pp. 31-32). The standardization policies are often conducted in a violent way, considering that the aim is to force a group to give up the language in favor of the new rising standard idiom. In Taiwan history62, Taiwan has always been ruled by outsiders, which imposed their rules as well as linguistic policies. However, it is possible to find at least three different patterns in these policies. If for the Dutch Taiwan was no more than a commercial route port, with savages to acculturate and to enslave, for the Japanese and for the R.O.C. government it was important to assimilate the land and the inhabitants. Today Japanese and R.O.C. policies play a heavy role in Taiwan’s identity, and it must be taken into consideration in every further analysis or language policy.

3.1 Japanese nationalism

3.1.1 A view on Japanese policies in colonial Taiwan

With the Meiji period (1868–1912), the Japanese slogan Sonnō Jōi (Revere the

emperor, expel the barbarians) which represents the fight against western power in Japan,

59 Interviewee had to choose his competence in language from 5 choices, from mother tongue to basic. 60 Political ideology such as “straight relation” was not taken in exam during the survey, even if from the answers and some comment the relation between language and the political beliefs are clear. 61 From a personal experience with some people from China (almost all 20/30 years old), this is the kind of syllogism that, people who believe that Taiwan is a Chinese region used for replying to the statement “before 1950 in Taiwan almost no one speak Mandarin, they almost all spoke MinNan”, with a classic comparison between Chinese and English and the statement “English spoken in USA and UK or Australia is different, but you don’t say that they are different languages”. 62 It is hard to set a precise point in time when History takes the place of proto-history for Taiwan. Here it is meant from the Dutch colony period, I.e. 1600 A.D.

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changed into the more constructive slogan Wakon Yōsai (Japanese Spirit, Western Knowledge)

which expresses the will of the Meiji government to learn from the western countries and

compete with them. The expansionism, along with a nationalistic policy, was considered

fundamental by the Japanese to be considered as equals to Western countries, and to take

revenge on feelings left by the imposition of unequal treaties. The willing of Japan to be equal

to western countries was not purely on political and economic aspects, but also on linguistic

ones. The Meiji government wanted to show western powers that also Japanese could be a

national language equal to any other Indo-European language, considered by western linguistic

the top in hierarchy63. On this wave, the birth of 国語 Kokugo64 (language of country) became

the national language that designated something that had not existed before, an ideological

construction (Heinrich, 2012) as a response to the process of modernization, which Japan was

undergoing. The development of the Kokugo requires (as any other standard language) a

diffusion of its knowledge and a codification and normalization supported by textbooks and

educational reforms that often collide with the local variants and idioms, which inevitably

would become languages with a lower status. If Japanese inner variations were considered as

an obstacle, more problematic would have been the local language of the colonized countries.

To make a big Japanese Empire, it was fundamental that the colonized countries would have to

feel Japanese, and in order to do so the imposition of the culture and language would have to

play a key role in the Japanese identity making process. Local languages were not made to

understand Japanese behaviors and society rules, that << contained untranslatable concepts

that formed the foundation of a unique Japanese identity, one that could only be obtained

through the mastery of the Japanese language>> (Fang, 2011). With this belief, Japanese people

were advantaged in learning the imperial moral (shuushin) that, along with the study of

Kokugo, was the most important subject in the educational curriculum. However, even if

instructing the Taiwanese on the imperial moral, making them loyal to the emperor through

the precepts of loyalty to nation and the importance of family (family-nation) ,would have

made them become Japanese, the initial gap between the Japanese located in Taiwan, who

already know the language, and the locals (Holo, Hakka, Aborigines) who spoke different

idioms and need to start their education from a backward point, could have been regulated

just through the different education of Japanese children and the Taiwanese, i.e. segregation

of the Taiwanese. Differently from Korea where the initial idea was that Korean, through the

shared origin with Japanese, would eventually be assimilated and naturally the stronger

Japanese culture would be chosen, in an already Sinicized Taiwan where also savages were to

be assimilated, the ethnic difference could be reduced just through a linguistic and cultural

policy that “artificially” makes Taiwanese accept and assimilate the Japanese identity.

According to Wang (2011)<< Following the establishment of October 1st , 1898 Taiwan

Public school regulation, most of the former language school’s affiliated school, language

training school as well as detached classrooms, turn simultaneously in public schools. The

establishment of public schools purpose was to make Taiwanese people to have a good

63 Heinrich (2012) cited Munzinger who describes the Japanese as equal to a child’s idiom, more in conformation to the child’s capacity than it is with matured and developed European languages. 64 The term Kokugo exists already before the Meiji period, but with another meaning.

31

knowledge of Japanese language to train them to be Japanese citizens. >>. The rise of

Taiwanese intellectual in anti-imperialist movements did not succeed in nourishing the

revolutionary feeling in the Taiwanese population, due to the fact that <<the Mandarin that

formed the foundation of the continental vernacular movement was clearly differentiated

from the Taiwan regional language in terms of both pronunciation and vocabulary.>> (Fujii,

2006). For the lack of knowledge in Mandarin and the distance from Chinese culture, the

assimilation of vernacular Chinese culture was impossible for the Taiwanese. The Japanese

assimilation process, on the other hand, was reaching its purpose thanks to the economic

boom that the Japanese management gave to Taiwan, and the assimilation policies. In 1933,

37 percent (Fujii, 2006)of children were enrolled in elementary school and one-quarter of

population understood Japanese.

3.1.2 Japanese Identity formation

Lee (1996) points out that <<the concept of Kokugo can exist only if all those who live

in this political and social space called Japan believe that they are speaking the same Japanese

language. >>. In reality, the language variants in the Japanese territory is wide, so that the

variants spoke in Kagoshima is not mutually intelligible with the one spoken in Sendai

(Gottlieb, 2005). In order to institutionalize Kokugo, these variants have to be extinguished

politically through a standardization of the language, even if language itself does not allow

complete homogeneity. Along with the diatopic difference between the variants of the

languages, Japan presented a diastratic component that for Fukuzawa Yukichi, in his work 旧藩

情 （kyūhanjou）65, was immediately percepible from the difference of accent in spoken

language. From a linguistic standpoint, the making of Kokugo represents the answer to the

need of establishing a form of expression whose style and vocabulary would have been

comprehensible to everyone.

Next to the diatopic and the diastratic dimensions, Mozume Takami with his 言文一致

（genbun icchi, lit: speaking and writing match) points out the necessity to reduce the gap on

the diamesic dimension, trying to write as much as possible as one speaks, i.e. a spontaneous

and natural language. For Mozume Takami, avoiding the use of the many difficult styles of the

past (e.g. 漢文 Kanbun style) in favor of a simple one was a necessary step toward education

improvement in Japan. In 1884, Miyake Yonekichi, following genbun icchi, postulated three

methods for linguistic unification, by classical language, by the current variation of one major

city (Kyoto or Tokyo) or selecting common elements of all dialects. However, the best method

was in his opinion, to let the reform occur naturally, promoting communication among people,

instead of an artificial unification. There were also scholars, such Inoue Tstujirou, who thought

that Japanese, as well as Chinese, were the most incompatible spoken and written. In the

specific, for Inoue written Chinese was so difficult that it could be considered as an obstacle for

the development of Chinese thinking, and (in an exaggeration) the Japanese victory in war was

65 http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000296/files/45664_24680.html

32

also due to the advanced Japanese written style (which include Kana) with respect to Chinese.

In this statement, it is possible to feel the European influence of scholars who believed that an

advanced country that can rule over another uncivilized nation has by no means to be

supported by a “superior” language. The relation between the language and the national

power was accounted also by Shiratori Kurakichi, in his comparison between Korea and Japan:

<<Every language shares its destiny, its rise and fall, with his nation, […] Korea was heavenly influenced, politically and culturally, by the Chinese race, and therefore was never able to gain its firm independence… The country [Korea] did not have independent spirit and thus its language lost its own vitality and fell to subordination>>66.

Japan on the other hand never lost its kokutai (国体,national polity), which led to the birth of a Kokugo that reduced the tenacity of Kanbun on Japanese identity. As Lee (1996) points out <<The ideology of Kokugo is a product of the ethos of Japan during third decade of Meiji, peaking with the Sino-Japanese war>>. In the ideology of Kokugo, Ueda Kazutoshi played a leading role. In the family nation that was japan, with a vertical parent-child relationship, the role of the “muttersprache” that Ueda publicized had the purpose of educating and teaching

the way one thinks and feels as a member of the nation67. Ueda connected Kokugo and 国家Kokka (nation) in an unbreakable way, as a preparation to lead people to cherish the Kokugo68.

From German ‘Gemeinsprache’ Ueda took also the concept of 標準語(Hyōjun-go, standard language), which should have been a model used and understood by most of the people in the country, differently from dialects. Ueda, who was conscious that Japan did not have a similar language, suggests using the current language of Tokyo, the one spoken by educated people, for that purpose. In Ueda’s view, genbun icchi was fundamental for the institution of Hyōjun-go. The Kokugo ideology could make the standardization of the Kokugo itself and the language policy for the colonies coexist, which was an important issue, which emerged from the colonial policy. For Hoshina Kōichi, who <<aimed to expand the domination of Japanese language by assimilating different ethnic groups in the colonies>> (Lee, 1996), the language policies in the colonies were inseparable and complementary to the reform of Kokugo.

3.1.3 Gradualism policy: 1895 – 1918 Gotō and Izawa

After the second Sino-Japanese war, Japan which already had practiced an assimilation

policy in its “homeland extensions”, sought to annihilate the ethnic identity of the population

of the colonies and to make them “imperial subjects”. This policy, that has its focal point in

Korea, had a strong influence on the Taiwan 69population identity as well. The education in the

Japanese language was the way to reach the unification of the colonized people with the

66 (cit. from Lee, 1996) 67 This was reflected in the “mother” stories in school textbooks of the period where the moral was to teach girls to become mothers whose duty was to raise sons devoted to the Emperor and the country. 68 Ueda took as example German and the purism which eliminated all foreign elements. 69 As Japan’s first colony, Taiwan can be considered as a sort of benchmark for Japanese colonial policies, including language planning and the assimilation of different ethnic groups.

33

Japanese. The Policies started in 1985 continued to be developed throughout the entire period

of Japanese rule of the island.

The first phase of the colonial policy of Taiwan was administrated by Gotō Shinpei

(1857, July 24 – 1929, April 13) who, influenced by Darwinism, saw the differences among the

Japanese and the Taiwanese culture and the long adaption of the Taiwanese to the indigenous

culture and practice, a fact that brought him to think that a hasty conversion of Taiwanese in

Japanese would be anything, but foolish. As Fewings (2004) pointed out << Through a

gradualist policy he aimed to govern Taiwan without attempting to introduce sudden changes

into Taiwanese life and society. The sudden changes, he meant, were ways and rules applied in

Japan. >>. Japan started immediately to acquire knowledge about the land they had just

colonized, and in 1896 a Taiwanese language course was already established at the Kokugo

Gakkou by Izawa Shūji, followed by the establishment of the 臨時台湾旧慣調査会(Rinji

Taiwan Kyuukanshuu Chousakai, Extraordinary Taiwanese's old customs comitee) in 1901, led

by Gotō Shinpei, with the purpose of investigating various aspects of the Taiwanese society,

from the Qing administration to aboriginal affairs, in order to better understand the Taiwanese

life style and find the most suitable colonial administration to the locals. The study of the

Taiwanese language became a fundamental step in the training of Japanese teachers who

would eventually teach Kokugo in Taiwan. At the establishment of 台湾協会学校(Taiwan

Kyoukai Gakkou, Taiwan association of schools) in 1900, with 100 students enrolled, the class

schedule included seven hours per week of Taiwanese language70, six hours of English and five

of Mandarin Chinese. The purpose was clearly to train the staff that would have served in the

colony administration and make it easier to “acculturate” the Taiwanese.

However, if it was true that Japanese policy towards the colonies was based on the 同

文同種(dōbun dōshu, same script, same race) (Fewings, 2004), on which Japanese, Taiwanese

and later Korean (annexed in 1910) share the same Chinese cultural heritage, and the

assimilation aim to reach the harmony with the colony by enhancing their culture, the ethnic

and linguistic diversity of Taiwan was in fact a big challenge for Japanese colony administrators

from the beginning. Izawa Shūji, appointed to lead from the start the educational affair in

Taiwan, realized that language had to be the principal issue in an educational system to

achieve mutual understanding. In order to do so, Izawa suggested the training of both

Japanese and Taiwanese at school, the compilation of bilingual textbooks and the training of

bilingual or multilingual staff (Higuchi, 2012). Not agreeing with Thomas Barclay’s suggestion

to use Taiwanese and Peh-ōe-jī romanization to instruct the natives, Izawa thought that

Japanese would be more effective since Kanji, the Chinese script, were used also in Taiwan.

After a brief re-entry to Japan, Izawa returned to Taiwan with new staff and established

fourteen 国語 伝習所(Kokugo Denshūjo, Kokugo Teaching Institute). As Fewing (2004) pointed

out, the program called for groups of students from fifteen to thirty years old, with only the

teaching of Japanese (8 hrs. general language learning, 16 hrs. composition and reading per

70 The term Taiwanese for Japanese was indicative of the language spoken by Holo (southern min). Even if linguists nowadays tend not to use “Taiwanese” to refer to a single entity, in general, Taiwanese

people recognize southern min as “台語”, probably, as a heritage of the period of Japanese colony

34

week). It was explicitly designed for training bilingual staff that could be used afterwards as

interpreters or in assisting the colonial administration.

Active already before Japan annexed Taiwan, 書房(Shūfáng, study), with its own one

school one teacher education and the teaching in Holo and Hakka of Chinese classics, fitted the

colonial educational program when Izawa incorporated the teaching of Japanese in the

curriculum and banned late Qing history. The teaching of classical Chinese was extended also

to 公学校(Kōgakkō, public schools) in order to attract new students. Moreover, Kōgakkō

graduate students often found employment within the colonial government, which motivated

many Taiwanese parents to have a better consideration of the Japanese style education.

The Kokugo implementation in Taiwanese education was the reflection of the

dominance of Japanese on Taiwanese. In order to cultivate the Japanese spirit, Taiwanese

needed to acquire the Japanese language and the ideology that lies behind Ueda’s view of

Kokugo. The gradualist policy adopted in Taiwan during the first phase of assimilation was

indeed a language planning not based on a violent introduction of the colonizer language, but

instead a “mental trick” where Taiwanese were led to choose to study Kokugo, for the benefits

that this would bring in their life. A policy that for sure had its goal in making the Taiwanese

people sympathize with the Japanese nationalistic sentiment71. However, it was strongly

influenced by the difference that the language brought in the education process. The race

between Japanese and Taiwanese was not equal, considering the starting gap caused by the

knowledge of the language and the acquisition of the Japanese spirit that Japanese students

could use in advance. Different education programs, 小学校 (Shōgakkō, primary school) for

Japanese and Kōgakkō for Taiwanese, brought inevitably to a greater chance of success for the

Japanese and the necessity to work harder without the guarantee of succeeding for the

Taiwanese. With more Taiwanese going overseas to Japan to enroll in Japanese schools, the

colonial authorities institute feared that the Taiwanese could discover the inequity, which they

were suffering in the island educational policy. This fact led the Japanese government to

reconsider the education and language policy for the colonies.

3.1.4 Dōka Seisaku: 1919 – 1936 Assimilation policy

In 1919, Den Genjirou (1855-1930) was appointed Governor-General of Taiwan, and

started to adopt the Naitai yūgō policy (內台融合 harmonious relation between Japan and

Taiwan) and the Naichi enchō policy (内地延長, extension to the inner land). During this

period, the Japanese rule in Taiwan undertook some reforms: the abolition of Taiwanese and

71 I suggest the reading of Fewing (2004) Ch. 7 which includes some interviews with Taiwanese people who had submitted to Japanese education. From the interviews it emerged that, even with the knowledge of the discrimination of Japanese toward Taiwanese, many recall the Japanese education as a positive experience and the Japanese spirit as a good characteristic. The grudge Taiwanese can hold against Japanese, seems to be more toward the “political elite” than the education and language policies.

35

Japanese segregation, Taiwanese political participation and marriage between Japanese and

Taiwanese were legally approved. However, these reforms did not really eliminate the

inequality between the Taiwanese and the Japanese. With more Taiwanese obtaining a higher

education in Japan, the understanding of the unequal and dissatisfying situation in Taiwan

became more visible, and a new kind of rebellion arose. Instead of the bloody confrontation

that took part in the first part of the Japanese rule, a new group of intellectuals started a non-

violent resistance. In this atmosphere, a group of Taiwanese intellectuals published a bilingual

Japanese and Chinese book called Taiwan Seinen (台湾青年) whose topics were discussed by

both Japanese and Taiwanese contributors, going from assimilation to colonial administration.

The gap between the Taiwanese and the Japanese did not reduce at all, but the better the

Taiwanese could define the Japanese culture, the more a Taiwanese identity as a reaction to

the assimilation started to grow.

The development of the educational system was slow but steady. In contrast, the

traditional way of learning, the Shūfáng, start to decrease in number, with always fewer

students enrolling.72 Kōgakkō curriculum was centered on learning the Japanese language, in

fact for first four years student spent half of the schedule time on Kokugo study, and all

subjects such agriculture and commerce for male and sewing and Home Economics for girls

were all taught in Japanese. The foundation of Kōgakkō was not only the introduction of

compulsory education in Taiwan, but also the channel through which the Kokugo was

introduced to promote the colonizer interests, instead of the Taiwanese language. The ratio of

spread of Japanese speakers and learners grew with the growing enrollment in Kōgakkō. In

1922, Taiwanese students who had reached a proficient level in Japanese language could start

to enroll in Shōgakkō and Japanese students could enroll in Kōgakkō if they wished to do so.

The curriculum still focused on language learning with more than half of the hours focused on

the study of Japanese, classical Chinese, and English or French. Taiwanese was introduced as

an elective subject for Japanese students.

It was suggested to promote the use of Japanese also among different ethnic groups,

but Yanaihara argued that the differences between those ethnic group who migrated from

the same place was not big enough as to justify the introduction of a language that functioned

as lingua franca.73 Moreover, Taiwanese people had a psychological attachment to their native

language and culture, which Japanese authorities did not fully understand. A violent

introduction of Japanese, by forcing Taiwanese to abandon their native idioms, would have

brought them to turn their feelings against the Japanese and would have probably brought

them to grow a stronger need for a Taiwanese identity.74 It is important to consider also that

making the Taiwanese learn Japanese, did not necessarily mean make them acquire the

Japanese spirit. Taiwanese was still widely spoken in daily life, and Japanese served more as a

socio-political tool to the advantage of the ruling elite. It is in this period in fact, that so called

72 Shufang was officially abolished in 1940 73 [Yaniahara, 1988 reprint] A special thanks to Nemoto Mayu for helping me providing this information and for the help in translation. 74 It is what actually happened during R.O.C. language policies, with the ban on Taiwanese language which bring Taiwanese to grow their identity and fight for their right of use their idiom.

36

台灣新文學運動 (Táiwān xīn wénxué yùndòng, Taiwan new literature movement) starts its

production. This kind of literary production used both Japanese and a form of written MinNan

as languages, and it represented a phase of sociopolitical resistance to Japanese colonization.

(Chang, 2007). Authors of the ‘Taiwan new literature movement’ were conscious of the not

equal treatment that Japanese and Taiwanese had, also thanks to the Japanese education. The

more the people became educated, the more they could developed their ideas on what was

the real situation under Japanese rules.

3.1.5 Kōminka: 1937 -1945

The outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese war, led Japan to intensify the assimilation

process of Taiwan with the introduction of the Kōminka movement. This policy can be

considered as a military strategical assimilation, whose aim would have been to turn the

Taiwanese into becoming Japanese subjects, ready to serve in the Japanese army, in

preparation to the expansion in South East Asia and the Pacific. The weakening of the

Taiwanese way of life and of every relation that the Taiwanese could have with their traditions,

was a fundamental step for the success of Kōminka policy. In 1937, Chinese columns were

abolished from newspapers75 and the teaching of classical Chinese was abandoned. The

promotion of Japanese clothes and the ban on Taiwanese style clothes, the aim to build a

Shintō shrine in every village and the religious reform that brought about the destruction of

many Chinese deities statues and the conversion of temples in centers for Kokugo Education76

as well as the abolition of many indigenous practices, were among the reforms that the new

policy adopted to turn the Taiwanese into Japanese. Another big step to wipe out Taiwanese

ethnic consciousness was the Kaiseimei Undou that promoted the adoption of a Japanese

name and surname, instead of the old name. The Kōminka policy’s aim was to turn Taiwan into

a stronghold for Japanese wartime needs, with citizens capable of speaking Japanese language

and adopting Japanese culture in order to devote fully their spirit to the nation. In this phase,

the promotion of Japanese language, in addition to keeping the ideal of racial assimilation,

started to have a stronger economic and political purpose.

If the acquisition of the Japanese language was the way to reach the Japanese spirit

and mentality, the best way to measure the success of colonial policies would have been the

educational results. In 1944, the school attendance rate reached 71.7 percent77, making the

Taiwan educational system the best in Asia after Japan itself. The educational success that

Japanese reached in Taiwan surely had an influence on the Taiwanese people’s lifestyle and in

their identities; if not making them become Japanese, it helped them to grow a Taiwanese

identity. In this period in fact, language textbooks reflected the Japanese assimilation policy,

75 “国語常用徹底に新生面をひらく “in 台湾日日新報、1937.4.1 76 This policy called Jimyou Sairi, was eventually abolished in 1941 by Hasegawa. It was evident that many Taiwanese who had practice local religions for centuries, could have grown an anti-Japanese feeling, because of the religious reform. 77 (Taiwan Soutokufu (1945), Taiwan Touchi gaiyou, p.39 ) cit. Fewings (2004)

37

promoting Japanese spirit and loyalty to the Emperor, with the purpose of indoctrination,

more than education (Fewings, 2004). Students who attended Kōgakkō were suggested to do

public service in teaching Japanese language for spreading the knowledge among other

Taiwanese, helping conscription, and maintaining their Japanese proficiency level. Many

Taiwanese who could join the Japanese army had not reached proficiency in Japanese that

allowed them to understand orders or the complex military language. In fact, many of the

words that formed the military jargon was written in Chinese character, which was not used in

daily life or in schools. In 1940, a campaign to simplify military jargon was used to reduce those

kind of language problems. The Japanese did not accept all volunteers. Language proficiency

and a minimum of six-years elementary education was required to be accepted.

The major problem in the popularization of the Japanese language in Taiwan was the

distance from the local language, used in daily life among the majority of inhabitants. Japanese

people were concentrated in bigger cities, while the countryside was still in a peripheral

position with respect to the Japanese language and influence. In addition, beside the school

usage, Japanese had no reason to be used in daily life, since pupils used to speak their native

language in the familiar sphere or during daily working activity. The major source of mass

communication was the newspaper that could not be a good way to obtain Japanese language

proficiency for illiterate people. Radio broadcast that were transmitted directly from Japan and

promoted the use of the Japanese language and education would have been a good mass

communication tool but, as a luxury item, it was not popular among the masses.

The failure in make the Japanese language popular in Taiwan can be resumed in the

lack of the immersion in a Japanese-speaking environment. Japanese served as an educational

language, that made Taiwan grow in economic terms and cultural aspects, but it never fully

entered the Taiwanese daily life. Japanese was for the most was seen as a second language,

useful for improving one’s knowledge, but not necessary in daily life. Instead, the success in

economics and education that Japanese brought to Taiwan, led many literate Taiwanese to

develop the base for Taiwanese identity thanks to the studies in philosophy or other science

that was allowed in Japan. This could be among the reasons why the Taiwanese seem not to

nourish strong hatred toward the Japanese, and the Japanese language is still one of the

principal study major and an important language in Taiwanese daily life78.

3.2 R.O.C. Nationalism

3.2.1 The standardization of Chinese

While in Taiwan the Japanese assimilation was reaching its second phase, in China, the

Nationalist Party overthrew successfully the Qing government and established, under Dr. Sun

78 People who visit Taipei can easily understand the impact that Japanese have on Taiwanese people daily life moreover in younger generations, comparable to some extent to the use of English in many European countries.

38

Yat-Sen leadership, the new asset for a modern China. Among the paths suggested for the

creation of a new modern China was getting rid of all ancient characteristics and opening it to

the western influence and modernization79. In addition as Ramsey (1989) pointed out

<<…There was also the more enviable […] model provided by Japan. Far more Chinese students

had studied there than in Europe or America, and the seeming speed and ease with which the

Japanese have established their national language had made a deep impression among these

students>>. China had already unified standards for language use, but these applied just to the

written form, not to the modern vernacular that was the language upon which new leaders

believed the new state had to be founded (Ramsey, 1989). Another big difference with the

Japanese was the presence of multiethnic groups with language belonging to different

linguistic families, on a wider territory. At the start of 20th century, the standard language was

still the classic Chinese, so there were people all over China who could write characters and

correct sentences, but the pronunciation of those sentence had a strong diatopic difference,

since a common tradition of recitation was established in the Tang period, but over a thousand

years, the pronunciation in different geographic locations changed (Ramsey, 1989). Already in

1912, the Ministry of Education of the new born Chinese Republic, proposed to create national

standards that must work for both spoken and written language. The first conference held in

1913 with the purpose of setting the base for the standardization of the language, didn’t bring

the results that the Ministry of Education had hoped for, because the invitations for

Conference were sent based more on political considerations than on linguistic expertise, with

the only result to reach a deadlock because people from south couldn’t accept northern

pronunciation for the lack of some phonemes that southern speech needed. Considering the

linguistic situation of China which has many “dialects” that for Ramsey (1989) could be

compared to the difference that runs between languages of different European countries more

than to the dialectal variation, the choice of a national idiom which could suite the entire

population’s needs, was surely a big challenge for linguists.

As happened for Japan, also China saw in the National Language the common features

of the powerful western countries, however the new Republic didn’t choose a linguistic

approach for selecting which language would be used as the standard for phonemes, but, on

proposal of the northern faction candidate, each province chose one and just one language.

The north provinces, where Mandarin was used, were superior in number to the southern

ones and as logical consequence, the phonemes of Mandarin became the national standard.

For the compilation of the dictionary, where the phonemes needed a phonetic system that

would allow them to be read , the zhuyin zimu (注音字母, phonetic alfphabet, later known as

Zhùyīn fúhào) was choose, with the purpose of teaching in elementary schools, the new Guóyǔ

(national language), term that had been borrowed from Japanese. However, the pronunciation

system adopted was far from representing the language spoken in Beijing, as showing the

presence of the mark for the “fifth tone” that Mandarin-speaking area had lost long before.

The failure of the system can be represented by the Guó yīn system taught by Chao Yuan Ren,

79 Some of the proposals can be considered really radical, such as the movement for the abolition of Confucianism or the abolition of Chinese language in favor of an artificial language, like Esperanto for example.

39

an American trained linguist, well known for his skill as a phonetician, who recorded a set of

pronunciation that accompanied the textbook for teaching that no one could understand nor

teach, beside Chao himself (Ramsey, 1989). It was just in 1932 that the Guoyin Changyong

Zihui (國音常用字彙, Vocabulary of National Pronunciation for Everyday Use) was published,

normalizing the pronunciation for all characters into the pronunciation of the Beijing spoken

language. The problem that the role of the new Guóyǔ adoption could have in the southern

area arose as well. In a country which promoted the democratic principle such as minquan

(people rights and power), it set a linguistic handicap to people from south. It was clear also to

the most integralists’ party that unifying China under just one language would have been a

long and hard process, which could take at least 100 years. For this reason, the use of dialects

was not abolished. As for Japan, Chinese Kuomintang believed that a single language would

be the only way to unify the country and it opposed any proposal coming from the “left”

(communist party) that thought that dialects were morally unavoidable, and the only thing

that could be done was to give each of the many mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese,

an equal status.

In 1945, when Taiwan was put under the administrative control of the Republic of

China by the UN, after the 50 years of Japanese rule, Chen Yi could brought the Nationalism

and the will to establish the Guóyǔ on the Island, emulating Japanese. In fact, one of his first

announcements showed clearly his idea of a national language:

<<Now that I have arrived on Taiwan, I intend to first bring [from the mainland]

teachers of the national language [Mandarin] and national character [Chinese characters, not

Japanese Kanji]. [To] prepare them for the purpose of coming and enabling our Taiwanese

comrades to comprehend and understand [their] ancestor’s culture. >>80

As was done for the Japanese Kokugo, also Chinese nationalism tried to bind the

belonging to a nation and the culture with the “national language”. Again, in Taiwan there was

a language that most of Taiwanese could not speak, but that was used on them to give them

an identity.

3.2.2 1946 – 1959: CPPNL policies for National Language.

One of the first reforms to be adopted in Taiwan was the abolition of Japanese as the

national language and the instauration of Mandarin instead. Japanese was banned from

schools, government and from local media; this fact, along with the arrival of teachers of

Guóyǔ from the mainland and the classification of local language (Holo, Hakka and

Austronesian) as Fāngyán –dialects-, set the base for the Taiwanese new identity. Among

Taiwanese intellectuals, there were those who had longed for the day Japanese rule would

finish to start up a Taiwanese governed country. However, as Kerr (1965) points out,

80 Cit. from Sandel (2003)

40

<<Formosan enthusiasm for "liberation" lasted about six weeks>> because, with great

disappointment, they had to face the truth of another colonization. In December 1945, a

course where Chinese literature, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen doctrine and Chang Kai-Shek deeds were

taught to form the Taiwanese to replace Japanese clerks and technicians.81 In the first years of

the R.O.C. government, the guideline of every policy seems to have been to “replace

Japanese”.

The massive influx of “mainlanders”82 that reached its apex in 1949, with the victory of

the PRC over the Nationalist party, which retreated to Taiwan, was the turning point of the

cultural and linguistic change that the island was about to face. As Tsao (2000) pointed out

<<…in the Taiwanese society, there existed a ruling class of Mainlanders, most of whom could

speak some form of Mandarin and a lower class of people comprising Southern Min, Hakka

and Austro-Polynesian speakers, and there was no way for these groups to communicate with

each other except through translation>>. Differently from the Japanese approach, which

started with a period of cautious and well-thought-out language policy, Chen Yi policy was

strict. The Ban of Japanese enter in act already in 1946, with the purpose to extirpate the roots

planted by Japanese and their Kokugo/ Japanese spirit policy. The ban caused the literate and

the elite who used Japanese as high language in the public domain to protest. Aboriginal

people who had no good proficiency in Mandarin were also demoted. The tension between

Chinese and Taiwanese reached its apex in the February 28th incident.83

The CPPNL (Committee for the Promotion and Propagation of the National Language),

led by the grammarian He Rong and the philologist, Wei Jiangong, started already in 1945 the

setup for the promotion of Guóyǔ in Taiwan, bringing some primary education teachers with

high Mandarin proficiency, form Fujian area (so that they most likely had proficiency in

MinNan language), followed by advanced university student in Mandarin training classes from

various universities. It is important to remember that many of those people were at least

bilingual, and the Mandarin had in many cases had the role of lingua-franca. The enthusiasm

for learning Mandarin was dumped by the bad policies of Chen Yi and the lack of qualified

teachers, many of whom, because of the lack of exposure in a Mandarin environment, had a

heavy accent (Tsao, 2000). In Tsao (2000), the NLM guidelines designed by CPPNL, set as

principles:

81 Fact that in Kerr (1965) has been proved as a window-dress, since just few of the Taiwanese who completed the course were after employed. 82 “Mainlanders” or “大陸人” (Dàlù rén )is the word used by KMT to call the Chinese who emigrated to Taiwan after nationalist defeat in 1949. The term, is widely used in Taiwan nowadays to refer to the Chinese. However, the use of this word must not be put aside in a sociolinguistic discussion. The term mainlanders was used originally in the belief that Taiwanese were Chinese as well, in fact the existence of a “Mainland China” got sense just under the condition of the existence of an “insular China”, i.e. Taiwan as part of China. The use of the word indicates, in my opinion, the KMT willingness to make the inhabitants of Taiwan consider the mainlanders as “Chinese who come from the mainland of the same country”. As we speak of continental Italy in the knowledge of the insular part (Sicilia and Sardegna) or European mainland, in the knowledge of GB as part of Europe. In this optic, I opted for adoption of term Taiwan and China to refer to the two countries. 83 See 1.7

41

To recover the Taiwanese dialect so as to enable the public to learn the national language by comparison between the dialect and the national language;

to emphasise the standard pronunciation;

to eradicate the influence of Japanese as reflected in the daily speech of the people;

to promote the contrastive study of morphology so as to enrich the national language;

to adapt the Guóyīn fúhào (national pronunciation phonetic symbols) so as to promote communication among people of different races and origins; and

to encourage the intention of learning the national language so as to facilitate the teaching of it

The principles allow us to make some considerations. The will to recover local languages can be thought of as the necessity to use languages, which are understandable by the locals, as well as the risks that a violent elimination of these languages could bring. As did the Japanese before, the CPPNL seems to have understood the necessity of the local idiom in communication and in assimilation of the local. In this the adoption of New phonetic Symbols (NPS), the encouragement and the promotion of learning the national language and promoting multiethnic communication, which should be made in Mandarin, played a big role. In this it is possible to make a comparison with the birth of the Italian popular language which De Mauro (1970) defines as << [the] way used by a uncultured person, who under the necessity to communicate and without training, use what optimistically is called the 'national' language, Italian.»84. The necessity to find a common language to communicate brings the speaker of a language that he or she think can be understood by speakers of a different language. During my stay in Taiwan, I encountered many people who approached me using English , until they became aware that I could understand and express myself in Chinese, and actually that I would rather speak Chinese than English. However, outside the education system, most of the young people with whom I entered in contact tended to use English in conversation, until my request of using Chinese did not prevail. Promoting the communication among different ethnicity was possibly intended to reach this situation, but with the use of Mandarin instead of English. It can be defined as the artificial creation of the Mandarin environment necessary for the promotion of national language that the Japanese lacked. “To promote the contrastive study of morphology” was a utopian purpose, << there were no experts on Taiwan at that time who were able to conduct a contrastive study of Mandarin and Southern Min, not to mention Hakka and the aboriginal AustroPolynesian languages>> (Tsao, 2000). After 1949, when KMT members lost against PRC in the Chinese civil war, they retreated to Taiwan bringing with them part of the Chinese culture treasures and antique objects (which fill the National Palace Museum in Taipei), along with the ideology and beliefs on which nationalism was founded. The aim of the Nationalist Army was to emulate Koxinga in using Taiwan as a stronghold to re-conquer China and restore the legitimacy of their power and, in this optic, the adoption of the National Language was considered as a must. KMT had to make the status of Mandarin as the official language survives to the natural assimilation of

84 <<[il] modo di esprimersi di un incolto che, sotto la spinta di comunicare e senza addestramento, maneggia quella che ottimisticamente si chiama la lingua ‘nazionale’, l’italiano>>

42

the minority Mandarin speakers into the Holo majority (Cheng, 1979). The ideology of Guóyǔ could, in fact, be used against the Nationalist party if they did not succeed in promulgating Mandarin in Taiwan. If the Taiwanese did not start to speak Mandarin, they could not fulfill the aim of KMT of Guóyǔ as the “language of the nation” and they would not have the right to claim sovereignty on China and Taiwan, because Taiwanese would have not been considered Chinese. National languages are in fact tools to distinguish the people who belong to the nation and the outsider and foreigner. However, also considering the local idioms as fangyan could be considered as an assimilation move. In case the language policy did not succeed, KMT could always have included Taiwanese in Chinese Nation, claiming that they speak a variant of the same language that is Chinese. After the retreat, however the necessity to substitute the local idioms with the Mandarin language became impelling, and the result was a series of restrictive laws that started in 1950 and lasted for about 30 years. Among those laws, the ban on speaking “dialects” that was adopted also by the Japanese, and the punishment for people who violated this rule. The policy adopted by KMT, created a generation of multilingual people where Mandarin took the role of high language (Klöter, 2004).

3.2.3 1960 – 1987: oppression, toleration and the end of white terror.

CPPNL was disbanded in 1959, after the achievement of the aim to propagate and

standardize the language, with the support of the mass-media and the school system, and so a

lower level committee, the Provincial Department of Education, was considered sufficient to

guide the development of the National language. A step-by-step program was adopted to

promote the use of Mandarin language. The first step was the formation of the personnel who

should promote the training in Mandarin language. Then, the teachers for primary and

secondary educational level had to be trained in the teaching of Mandarin. The CPPNL

formulated a policy in which the first 12 weeks of elementary school was dedicated solely to

the teaching of the spoken language through the Guóyīn fúhào. 85 The last step was to train

students who were still in school and who already worked in society, to use Mandarin. Aside

from this strategy, there was a conscientious and effective use of the mass-media that was

spread throughout the Island. Differently from the Japanese colony period, the diffusion of

radio and the introduction of television, boost the diffusion of the Mandarin in Taiwanese

houses. In Tsao’s words, <<the effective Pronunciation Demonstrating Broadcasting Program

was regarded by many as an excellent example of how the mass media could be used as an aid

in language planning efforts>>. In those years, also a plan to institute a Mandarin proficiency

test with taped interviews was taken into consideration.

In the late ’60s, The Chinese Cultural Restoration Movement, picked up some of the

policies that the CPPNL, whose abolition was considered as a mistake by the movement. In

regard to the slow rate with which Mandarin was promoted on the island, they presented a

resolution to the M.O.E., which was accepted and announced on 1970, September. Among

85 About this strategy’s efficiency, it reminds me of the words of one of my Japanese language teachers in Italy, who complained about the lack of good written material for teaching the spoken language, which results in the greater difficulty in training students to speak the language as Japanese people do.

43

these resolutions was the immediate restauration of the CPPNL (that will be restored just in

1980) in the M.O.E. to make unified plans with an increment of funds for the personnel in

provincial capitals and every county. Moreover, they considered as fundamental the use of

Mandarin among the people’s representatives to increase its influence, organize social

institutions and public areas to use Mandarin and increase activities and contests to increase

the number of people aware of the importance of speaking National language. Other

important points were the implementation of Mandarin training among people who did not

attend classes, workers and aboriginal tribes, the promotion of Mandarin with overseas

Chinese through textbooks, records, films, etc. and the decrease of radio and television

broadcasting in foreign language or dialects and increase instead of the programs in Mandarin,

which became effective in 1976. During white terror period, all the action and policies taken by

KMT, was justified as necessary for recovering the mainland from the communist bandits

(Sandel, 2003).

However, following the gradual isolation that Taiwan was undergoing, after the UN

accepted China as a member, making many countries withdraw their recognition of Taiwan‘s

sovereignty, calls for Taiwan separation from China rose and the Taiwan identity started to

spread also in non-political fields such as literature, linguistics and history, starting to promote

the “bentuhua” in culture. In the 1970s some Taiwanese authors, started to use the local

vernacular to produce poetry, which, even if originally not driven by any political reason, soon

started to be linked to the movement against “Great China” policy of KMT (Klöter, 2005).

Along with the Taiwanese Literature Movement, also some magazines created by the Tangwai

(opposition to KMT) started to link themselves with an anti-government ideology that would

eventually lead to the Kaohsiung incident in 1979. As Wang,F. (2005) pointed out <<Under the

banner of promoting bentuhua, Taiwan underwent a process of transformation that

completely changed its basic political structure as well as the underlying national ideology>>,

and that brought Chiang Ching-kuo to begin a process of plitical liberalization, after a life of

oppression, that saw the legalization of DPP in 1986 and the lift of martial law in 1987.

MinNan became the language of the fight for democracy, <<Hoklo slang, music, folk songs,

and the like, were typically used to heighten participants’ Taiwanese consciousness>> (Hsiau,

2000).

In 1984, M.O.E. announced a new romanization system for chinese characters, which

employs diactrictics for the 4 tones86, with the spelling rules made to reflect the phonemic

system. This review was made mainly for the teaching of Chinese as language for foreigners

and for overseas Chinese who cannot read and write characthers, and of course, with a view

on international relations, to transcribe names in letter (for example in passports). However,

as Tsao (2000) points out, the creation of the new romanization <<was more to satisfy the

needs of the policy than to meet any actual demand at that time>> also because scholars and

linguists, along with most of the people, were not familiar with it. Other two major problems

86 Differently from Zhuyin system where the 5th tone (neutral tone) is represented by a “・” placed over the symbols (in up-down writing) or before the symbols (in less used left-right writing) which represent the character pronunciation, while the 1st tone (high level) is not represented, the romanization system do not represent the 5th tone, while use a “―” for 1st tone.

44

related to linguistics emerged with the use of language in various domains, such as mass-

media, sciences and computer processing, all fundamental parts of the “Taiwan economical

miracle”. In writing, the issue concerned the reading direction in horizontal printing.

Traditionally Chinese was written vertically, with right-left direction. The horizontal right-left

direction, didn’t bring any particular problem since the start of use of chinese in scientific or

technics subject related printing, which often include foreigner or romanization words and

quantitative data which require numbers that were written in left-right direction, causing not

a few problems in reader comprehension. The M.O.E. direction was to use right-left direction

when printing vertically, and allow the left-right direction when printing horizontally, to

accommodate the scientific exposition. However the left-right direction system, beside

different impagination and printing techniques, requires also the readers to adopt different

reading strategies. To facilitate the use of computer technology the standardization of

personal name and place names was also required, because some charatcers used in personal

name or place name, are rarely used items or idiosynractic invention of the individuals (Tsao,

2000).

3.2.4 1987 – Now: Taiwan’s new cultural identity

As previously said, 1987 can be chosen as one of the fundamental turning points in the

Taiwan socio-linguistic, and of course political, situation. Among the most important revisions

on the language policy, the prohibition for schools to punish student who use fangyan, and

the lift of the rule for radio and television broadcasting solely in Mandarin, which results in the

broadcasting of news in Taiwanese on three government-controlled television (Klöter, 2004).

Another out-of-policy event, that in its simplicity can be considered as a great turning point in

the socio-linguistic situation of the island, happened in March 1987, when Zhu Gao Zheng used

MinNan language during a parliamentary debate, creating a scandal. Mandarin was in fact

accepted as the language to use in parliament, without any regulation. In the meanwhile,

MinNan became a fully accepted language in the legislature, but also the main language in

electoral campaign. According to Giles and Smith’s (1979) Speech Accommodation Theory, a

speaker can adapt his speaking behavior to the behavior of the other part to acquire social

approval. In case of convergence, people who communicate are feeling more related to each

other. In a Taiwan with a majority of MinNan speaker, where a Taiwanese identity and the calls

of separation from China became more and more important, the use of the local idiom in

political debate can be thought as a strategy to acquire the favor of the population.

Accommodate the locals through their idiom could make them feel Taiwanese; they could

have a Taiwanese lead them instead of “mainlanders”. This fact improved the status of

MinNan that for first time acquired a political level status. In 1988, Chiang Ching-Kuo died, and

his successor Lee Teng-Hui, ended the battle of government against the local “dialects”. On the

other side, the DDP, in 1990, pushed for a MinNan revival policy and the introduction of the

bilingual education at local level. Once elected, they instructed educators to develop curricula

offering education in each region’s 本土語言(Běntǔ yǔyán, vernacular language) for a few

45

hours a week, based on the majority of residents in a school district. In addition, the term

fangyan was replaced by terms Mǔyǔ (mother tongue) and Běntǔ yǔyán (Tsao, 2000). The

Běntǔ yǔyán curricula started to be offered by elementary schools all over Taiwan in 2001.

After the lift of the ban on non-Mandarin broadcasting, the radio and television started to use

MinNan or Hakka and the continued use of this language made Taiwanese aware of the new

public status of the languages. However, with the 1991 DDP and Taiwan opponent treaty to its

power, KMT start to “Taiwanized” itself. In the free political climate, people who started to

identify themselves as Taiwanese increased dramatically (Hsiau, 2000). The 2003 “language

equality law” draft by M.O.E., proposed to include all the four four ethnic groups languages

(Holo, Hakka, Austronesian, Mandarin) as national languages. In the draft, Mandarin’s name

was changed from Guóyǔ to Hànyǔ, and Minan started to been called Taiwanese (Wu, 2009).

However, since DPP was a minority and, in addition, the draft attracted criticism of de-

chainaization and language chauvinism from KMT, but also from Hakka and Aborigines, for

have “chosen” MinNan as the “Taiwanese language”, the draft was not passed. The main

accuse was to <<creating fake inequality though the rhetoric of language equality. >>87

With the growth of Taiwanese identity, ironically, the language policy that KMT

perpetrated since the arrival in Taiwan showed their efficiency. The educational boost that

followed the economic miracle, with more students enrolling in school and taking a higher

degree of education, made Mandarin the principal language among students. In Beaser’s

(2006) words

<<The part of society in which language plays the most important role in shaping a

person’s identity is that of the academic realm. As children learn the tools they need to explore

our world, the language of instruction used to present the material subconsciously influences

how children determine their identity. Frequently, children will communicate with each other

in the common tongue of their educational instruction. Since Mandarin is the sole language for

instruction, the majority of school-aged children become accustomed to speaking Mandarin

and feel more comfortable using it in daily life. >>

The new educational policy curriculum, where elementary school students are

required to complete at least one session of study in one of the local idioms, and for fifth and

sixth graders one of English, presented some problems. Beside the lack of governmental

support compared to English, issues of standardization and the necessity of a writing system

were a hard challenge for the policy. Chinese characters cannot represent all the sounds of the

languages, and the romanization system developed in years by western missionaries and local

linguists was too many. Government was called to choose one system, also because of the

necessity of making the teaching and the publishing of the educational material easier. DPP

pushed for Tōngyòng pīnyīn, considered more intuitive, where KMT pressed for Hànyǔ pīnyīn,

which already has gained international recognition. The discussion was clearly more ideological

than based on linguistic purpose, since the adoption of the Chinese developed Hànyǔ pīnyīn

87 (National Policy Foundation, 2003, cit. in Wu,2009)

46

would have marked once again the connection between Taiwan and China, while Tōngyòng

pīnyīn would have increased the Taiwanese identity of the languages.

Among other problems, there was the one of choosing the variety of MinNan and

Hakka to use as educational language. Both languages have internal variants which differ from

region to region and the government did not attempt any trial of standardization, instead it

emphasized that the teaching should be sensitive to regional usage.88

However, even if the Language Planning Policy adopted by DPP toward local idioms

had many problems, some of which caused by the lack of support and planning that these

languages had before, it was the greatest official and educational attention they received in

Taiwanese history (Wu, 2009).

88 (M.O.E., 2000, cit. Wu, 2009)

47

4 Taiwan’s Languages through a survey

4.0 Survey organization, typology of the data collected and results

This section of the thesis will use primary sources to try to analyze, in a more personal

way, the actual socio-linguistic situation in Taiwan. In January 2014, after a discussion on what

my thesis topic would be and how to collect data, I decided to launch an online survey in order

to ask the Taiwanese people about their languages. The survey was held online, since the

physical distance and the impossibility of going to Taiwan in person in that period. After I had

asked five Taiwanese friends89 to fill in the survey to check if all the questions were

understandable, I asked them, to invite friends and relatives to compile and submit it in order

to start collecting the data. The link was shared also on internet with Taiwanese communities,

which included a Taiwanese aboriginal page on Facebook and a community of Taiwanese

students who were studying in Europe at the time. The internet communities where the link to

the survey was shared were all “closed communities” which required administrator acceptance

or an invitation to be joined. This was done to avoid (as much as an internet open survey

allows) that people who had no interest in it from randomly filling in the survey, thus making

the result not good.90Of the 352 surveys filled out, 63% (218) was from people whose age was

from 20 to 30 years old, with 69% of total answers given by women. The age range is probably

due to the choice (and necessity) of using internet as the media for collecting the survey

answers. Taiwan results to be one of the countries with the best internet access, with 80% of

the total population being users.91However, it is clear that internet is still a media of difficult

access for some of the elderly, especially if they had no interest in joining the community

where the link was shared. Furthermore, the choice of the computer, even if the survey was

presented mainly with checkboxes, could be considered as an obstacle for older people who

are not able to use this device. Another factor that could have been selective for the

demography of the survey is the choice (and necessity) of the Mandarin language for the

entire test.

In fact, people who had no proficiency in Mandarin could not be able to fill in all the

89A 25 year old university student and her younger 17 year old sister, a 35 year old worker and other two

Taiwanese students (23 and 29 years old) who at the time attended university in Italy. These people’s

answers are not included in the final result, because during the “trial” I had to rewrite some questions

that seemed not fully understandable to them,, and in explaining to them what kind of information I

was inquiring about, I was afraid that I had influenced their answers in the final result. I decided so to

“use” them just as testers. 90 I decided arbitrarily not to count an answer in the survey results, because in all the questions where

an open answer was allowed, the answer was “TAIWAN IS PART OF CHINA” in capital letters. Moreover,

the interviewee said that he/she was able to speak the allowed language as “mother tongue”,

something that can hardly be considered as true. 91 http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/tw.htm

48

answers.92 Regarding the high number of female subjects, the only explanation I could give,

besides being by chance, could be due to a greater interest by women in the subject, even if

there is no data to prove it.

The survey did not require the interviewee to insert name or any identification such

email address, to avoid that he might feel that he was sharing personal information on

internet and that he might not be safe as well as to make the interviewee uncomfortable

about answering some questions which required expressing a personal point of view.

However, this choice made it possible for any interviewee to fill out the survey more than once

and did not allow me to have a good control of the nationality of interviewee or their relation

with Taiwan. Even in consideration of these risks, the choice of an impersonal survey was

considered as the best one. I did receive several emails asking me about the results of the

survey during the month which the survey was opened (January 2014 – February 2014),

however. It was decided that no one could have seen the answers collected,93 beside the

“number of answer submitted”. This was done to avoid any possible influence on people who

had not yet taken the test. The responses of the people, who had filled out the survey, seem to

have been quite positive and I received some emails and comments, which expressed their

happiness of seeing a foreigner student caring about Taiwan. This makes me feel that further

inquiries, possibly through more accessible media, could have a higher answer rate and allow

collecting better data, in terms of both quantity and quality.

Even if the quantity of answers received does not well represent the entire

population of Taiwan (being less than 0.0015% of the total population), it allows me to make

some considerations and hypotheses. I will briefly describe the kind of data acquired, some of

the results, and why those data were considered important. The graphs of the results

presented here may be found in the appendix.

4.1 Demographic data

The first two questions of the survey were basic demographical information, age and

gender. In Taiwan, age and gender have profound influence both on the languages and on the

“way” that one can speak a language. For the relation between age and language, it is not hard

to set some parameters. Through data offered by the 2010 population and housing census94

about the language spoken at home95, a relation between the language choice and age is

92 In Iannàccaro & Dell'Aquila (2006), where the survey papers allow the interviewee to choose whether to fill out the survey in Italian, Ladin or German, the choice of language represented already an important linguistic data. In this case, it was not possible for me to prepare the same survey including the choice of MinNan, Hakka or Aboriginal languages for obvious reasons. 93 The answers were visible on line about two weeks after the survey closure. 94 http://eng.stat.gov.tw/public/data/dgbas04/bc6/census022e%28final%29.html 95 The chart in the above website reports that one may use more than one language at home.

49

immediately visible. In the age range that goes from 6 to 14 years old, it is possible see that

96% of population of that age use Mandarin at home, while among the over 65, less than half

of population (45.3%) use this language. On the other hand, the use of MinNan passes from

81.7% of the over 65 to 69.7% of the range from 6-14 years old. In this, it is also possible to see

the effect that the language policies and the historical events have had on the linguistic

landscape of Taiwan. Considering that ‘over 65’ refers to people born under Japanese rule, i.e.

1945 or before, from the chart it is possible see that 3.0% of these people speak another

language at home (it can possibly be Japanese, even if not there is not a specification). In any

case, apart from “other” and Hakka language, in the passage from over 65 to the range 44-65,

the use of indigenous languages, MinNan and moreover Mandarin, increased. This could

indicate that after Japanese rule, speakers of Mandarin were not many, and with the ban of

Japanese, the only languages they could speak were local idioms. It is possible to think that

people of ages between 44 and 65 used one of the Taiwanese languages in their childhood,

increasing the number of speakers, while they started to use Mandarin toward the younger

generation (25-44 years old), pushed by the educational and the linguistic policies. This brings

a further and always stronger reduction of Taiwanese languages speakers among the people

born in 1966 or after, while Mandarin became the most used language with a rapid increment

in the gap between 44-65 years old people (78.9% of speakers) and the 25-44 years old people

(91.2%). In the survey, it was chosen to set some ranges of age as a possible selection for the

answer. The pattern included ranges of 10 years (31-40, 41-50) until 70 years old, then an

option for over 70. For under 30 it was possible to choose among the following ranges: 0-15,

16-19, 20-25, 26-3096.

Regarding the relation between gender and language, in addition to educational

opportunities, which often were not equal for girls and for boys (Fang, 2011), the society

stereotypes require that girls should speak in a different way from boys. Because of the

influence of Confucianism, Taiwanese girls are required to have a certain manner when

expressing themselves, which in language is translated into using particular lexicon,

expressions and tone of voice, etc. Su (2008), through a fieldwork in which 44 students were

interviewed about “language use, sociolinguistic stereotypes, gender, and regional

differences”, could collect some examples which << […] illustrate some of the ways in which a

discussion of refinement and vulgarity intersect with social meanings of Taiwanese,

Taiwanese-accented Mandarin, and profanity and how these linguistic practices are socially

and discursively constructed as intrinsically related to qizhi. >>. Some of the examples express

how the language choice is socially driven by the gender of the speaker and the way that she

(in this case) feels the society “asks” her to behave. In fact <<While it is observed that swearing

is a habitual practice for some men, profanity produced by women is often described as

shocking by the interviewees of either gender>> (Fang, 2011). The analysis of the gender/age

relation in the Taiwan sociolinguistic panorama was for these reasons considered important.

The answer’s selection was through a simple checkbox. The age and gender of the interviewee

is displayed in the following chart (table 4.1.1a).

96 There were no answers of people in the range 0-15 and over 70 years old.

50

Another fundamental demographic data is represented by ethnicity. In a multicultural

country such as Taiwan, the relation between one’s language and ethnicity plays a key role in

the growth of a national identity. However, inquiries about one’s ethnicity could present some

problems. In the survey, it was chosen to allow the interviewee to choose a checkbox from

some ethnic groups: Han, MinNan, Hakka, Fuzhou people and all the aboriginal tribes

recognized by the Taiwan government97. Along with these options, there was a checkbox with

an option for “other” and “mix-blood” which would lead to a textbox where the interviewee

could write his ethnicity. In the case of “mix-blood” the ethnicity of father and mother98was to

be indicated. The aim of this question, besides allowing for a cross analysis between the

relation between ethnicity and spoken languages that will be discussed later, was to inquire

about self-knowledge of belonging to one specific ethnicity. The result of the survey99 shows

that the majority of interviewees are or feel to belong to Han ethnicity (135), followed by

MinNan (130). Kejia people were 33 and aboriginal people were five (two belong to Puyuma,

one Amis and one Atayal) and Fuzhou people 2. Among the eight people who chose “other”,

97 According to shih (2002) <<Nowadays, it is generally agreed that there are four major ethnic groups in

Taiwan: Indigenous Peoples (原住民族, 2%), Mainlanders (外省人, 13%), Hakkas (客家人, 15%), and

Holos (鶴佬人, 70%). Ethnic competitions would be found mainly along three configurations: Indigenous

Peoples vs. Hans (Mainlanders＋Hakkas＋Holos), Hakkas vs. Holos, and Mainlanders vs. Natives

(Indigenous Peoples＋Hakkas＋Holos)>>. Holo is another name for MinNan people or hokkiens. However, as we see in Shih, in the configuration ‘indigenous people vs. Hans’, Hans include MinNan people. The question’s aim was also to inquire about the feeling to belong to a different ethnicity than Han. Fuzhou people was added for the high rate of presence of Fuzhou people in Matsu archipelago. 98 In the survey it was clearly indicated to write father and mother ethnicity by the rule:

(father+mother) (父親+母親) (例子: 閩南族(父)+日本(母)

99 Table 4 - Ethnicity

20

89

64

48

158

15

29

37

21

7 71

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

16-19 20-25 26-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70

Interviewee: Gender/Age

女

男

Table 3 - Interviewee: Gender/Age

51

there were some problems in data collecting. Of these people, 2 have clearly indicated their

ethnicity (Malaysian and Manchu), while the others make the classification impossible since

the answers count one person who wrote 大陸(Dalu, mainland)100, three people who wrote

Taiwan, one person who wrote 平埔族(Píng pǔ zú, Plains tribes) while the last one wrote

“other” without specifying which one. The “mix-blood” choice, which produced 39 answers,

are interesting and represent quite well the historical facts of the island. In the majority of

cases it represented a foreign father and a Taiwanese, of one of the many ethnicities, mother.

Other questions include the city of birth and the city where actually one resides. The

following three questions inquired about education, starting from the highest degree of

education, and then inquiring about the location of the high school and university attended

(these last two questions were of course optional, because it was considered possible that one

could have not attended high school or even more likely, university). In collecting the data,

the idea was to find a relation between the birth location and the use of one language, for

example, the use of Hakka in MiaoLi County, or the higher rate of MinNan speakers in south

Taiwan. Moreover, it would have made it possible to analyze the relation across the change of

the residence and the change in the language habits. As, for example, if a higher percent of

Tainan born people who still live in the city speaks MinNan habitually, while a high rate of

Tainan born people who live in Taipei speaks normally Mandarin, this would mean that the city

environments got strong influence on one’s language. The low number of answers submitted

however, do not allowed this kind of analysis. Most of the interviewed was born in Taiwan, just

6 people were born in other countries (2 in the U.S.A., 1 in Saudi Arabia, 1 in Japan, 1 in Italy, 1

in China), however a considerable number of people actually reside or had attended university

in foreign countries (54 people with 30 living in Italy, where the survey was submitted first).

4.2 Language proficiency data

Regarding the language proficiency part, it was based on a self-evaluation of language

skills. For each language the opportunities to choose between six levels of proficiency were

given : 母語 (Mǔyǔ, Mother tongue) 流暢的（Liúchàng de, Fluent）高等的 (Gāoděng de,

advanced) 中級的 (Zhōngjí de, intermediate) 基本的 (Jīběn de, basic) 初學者 (Chūxué zhě,

beginner), and not answering the question was allowed if the level was considered zero101. The

first question inquired about Mandarin, named Guóyǔ in the survey102, which 275 people

considered their mother tongue. Mandarin resulted to be the most spoken and understood

language, with another 63 who speaks it at least at a fluent or advanced level and with

100This word was used (mistakenly) in another question at the end of the survey, but at moment of fill

the question about the ethnicity, the interviewed was not subject at influence of this word. The choice

of categorize ethnicity as 大陸 so it was completely due to the interviewed feeling. 101 This was done also for set the answer in the aboriginal language section, which presented 23

languages, included extinct languages. This choice was based on the interest of seeing if any of the

interviewees had studied or had interest in one of these languages.

102 Table 5 - Guoyu Proficency

52

another 13 people resulting as intermediate speakers. The most interesting answer, however,

was the submission of a girl aged 20-25 who was born in MiaoLi from a Chinese father and a

Taiwanese mother (her answer on ethnicity was 大陸+台灣, Mainland+Taiwan). She set ‘basic’

as level of proficiency in Mandarin, chose Kejia as her mother tongue, and in further question

she said she spoke Kejia with both parents, brothers and mother’s parents, and used Guóyǔ

just with her father’s parents. The truth of this data103 could be used as an example on the

influence that the familiar environment (and local use, considering that MiaoLi is one of the

provinces with a high number of Hakka speakers) can have on one’s language, even in a social

environment in which this language is attributed a lower status. The inquiry about MinNan

(which was labeled as 台語 ‘Taiyu’ in the survey to follow Taiwanese people trend in using this

name) shows104 that 27.8 % of the people interviewed (98 people) feels MinNan to be their

mother tongue. The number of people who feel that they speak MinNan fluently is 50, while

the advanced speakers are 47. This means that 55% of those interviewed is supposed to be

able to use MinNan in almost any aspect of daily life. Just 27 people were not able to speak

MinNan at all (6) or use it as beginner (21), while the other people use it at an intermediate

level (66) or at a basic level (64).

The situation of the Hakka language which emerged from the survey conforms to the

situation expressed by other sources, with 275 people who do not speak Hakka at all, and just

6% of the people who speak it at an intermediate or better level. There were six people who

use the Hakka language as their mother tongue. The other two languages, which were part of

the inquiry, were Japanese and Cantonese, with the latter presenting an interesting result

almost comparable with Hakka. In fact, there are 48 people who speak Cantonese at a basic

level, against the 49 speakers of Hakka. The basic level can be associated to the level of a

person who has studied the language in a school for a short period, without much practice, a

level in line with Cantonese and with the data collected from the inquiry about Japanese. In

fact, Japanese beginner speakers were 37% of the interviewed (128) while the intermediate or

above level was selected by 21 people. The importance of Japanese in Taiwan emerges even

more, when compared to the number of people who cannot speak at all Japanese (197) and

the number of people who cannot speak at all Hakka (275). Different instead is the situation of

English. Just four people said that they could not speak English at all. These people’s age is in

the range of 25-30 and 41-50 years old. 122 of those interviewed said that their proficiency

level is intermediate, with another 60 people who speak it fluently and 60 people who speak it

at an advanced level. This confirms the great attention that the Taiwanese government is

putting on the teaching of English in the school system. In fact, from this data, it is possible to

say that English, more than MinNan, is likely to become the second language for the

Taiwanese younger generations.

The part dedicated to the aboriginal languages shows the general trend of Taiwan

languages. Even with the link posted in a couple of Taiwan aboriginal forums and some

103 As previously said it is possible that some answers submitted were not realistic considering the

media through which the survey was proposed

104 Table 6 - MinNan proficency

53

aboriginal people who submitted the test, the results show that there are just some beginner

speakers of Atayal language (9 people), Rukai, Paiwan and Bunun (4 people), 1 person fluent

and one intermediate speaker of Amis, and a person fluent in Puyuma language. This data

could be used just to express the lack of speakers in those languages; however, considering the

submitting media and the low number of people interviewed, the data about the number of

aboriginal language’s speakers will not be taken into further consideration.

The last question about the proficiency of the language presented a textbox where the

submitter could eventually write other languages he/she speaks and his/her level of

proficiency. The data shows a tendency to study foreign languages or learn the languages of

the country where people actually reside or where they attended university. For the most part,

other spoken languages resulted to be Spanish, French, German, Italian and Korean with a

level that rarely reached the intermediate level and in just a couple of cases which arrives at a

fluent level.

4.3 Language use data

The survey continued with some questions related to the use of the languages. The

first question of this series was “What do you feel is your language (the one you use to express

better your feelings and thoughts, without thinking about other parts of proficiency)”105 It

showed106 that most of the people interviewed (295) feels that Guóyǔ is the language easier to

use for those functions, a result that is preferred to the other choices. MinNan has this

function just for 44 people, while interesting and positive was the answer of the Atayal and

one of the two Puyuma persons, who chose the languages of their tribes as the language for

expressing feelings and thoughts, even if it represented just 0.5% of the total number

interviewed. Other results show two people using English and two people using Japanese (one

of these persons, a son of a Taiwanese mother and a Japanese father, was born and resides

presently in Japan). Hakka was chosen by 7 people, confirming the low number of speakers in

the island. The question that followed asked for the language, which one prefers to speak,

without care about the degree of proficiency (the language considered as more “pretty”)107.

This question was made in order to inquire about the look that Taiwanese people have on their

languages. Here the answer showed108 a different trend. There were just 179 people who

chose Guóyǔ to fulfill this role, showing that a large part of the people (61%) who expressed

their feelings in Mandarin, do not consider this idiom as their favorite one. In contrast, 79

people think that MinNan is their favorite language, representing 92% of the people who use it

as the language for expressing their feelings. Among these speakers are many who have a high

105您覺得”您”的語言是哪一個? (您覺得最簡單有用來表現您的感覺和想法, 不管對方的語言!)

106 Table 7 - Feeling on language 107您最喜歡講的語言是哪一個? (不管您的能力, 是您覺得最"漂亮"的語言

108 Table 8 – Favourite Language

54

fluency in MinNan, but who use Guóyǔ in daily life. Even if this consideration is risky, it is

possible to suppose that for 61% of the people, Mandarin is a language used for utilitarian

purposes, useful for expressing themselves, but not the language they like to speak, while for

people who choose this status for MinNan, the same idiom represents the language they like

to speak. The same happened for the person who chose Atayal and Puyuma as the language

with this function, showing in my opinion, the relation that links language to their tribes.109

Three people chose instead Hakka language as their favorite to speak, even if they actually

cannot use it to express themselves perfectly. Other interesting data show a high percentage

of people who like foreign languages, including Japanese (29), English (32) and French (10).

The next two questions inquired about the language used at home and in other

contexts.110 The question allowed, through a textbox, the submission of more languages. As

regards languages used at home, 153 answers reported the use of two or more idioms. In

100% of those cases, one of the languages is Guóyǔ, while 83% of cases report the use of

MinNan. 138 people chose Guóyǔ as the only language spoken in the family while 43 people

chose MinNan. Hakka is spoken as the only language in 5 cases and in 13 cases in

concomitance with another language. Of these, four cases showed the concomitance of the

use of Guóyǔ, MinNan and Hakka. Is it is important to note that there are no cases of the use

of Hakka and MinNan without Guóyǔ. The people interviewed do not use Taiwanese languages

at home in six cases. In the specific, the case of a Japanese male with Taiwanese mother who

uses Japanese, and two cases of women (31-40 and 41-50 years old) who are currently living in

Italy and speak Italian in a family context. The same happened for a girl 25-30 who lives in

Sweden. In the case of a woman 41-50 living in the USA, the language used in familiar context

is Cantonese. An interesting case is the one of a 20-25 years old girl living in Taoyuan County

who said that English is spoken in a familiar context, even if the language used with her

mother and father is respectively Hakka and MinNan. In this case, the most logical inference is

the presence of a foreigner husband or partner who lives with her, and the adoption of the

language of the partner or English, considered simpler than the local languages, a fact that is

not uncommon in Taiwan. Outside the family, the answers collected reflect the current

situation of Taiwan. Just in 2 cases do people communicate only using MinNan, in both cases

the speaker are Male aged 31-40 and 51 -61 living in Taichung the former and in Tianwei,

Chunghwa county, the latter. In other case, people who reside in Taiwan use only Guóyǔ in

202 cases; while in 73 cases, people who reside in Taiwan speak daily a foreigner language. The

number of speakers who speak Mandarin and MinNan (36) is really close to the number of

people who speak just Mandarin and English (25). I could not register the use of only Hakka

outside the familiar environment, but in concomitance with Hakka, Mandarin and one

between MinNan and English, while the use of an aboriginal language, present in the familiar

situation, was not present at all among these results, indicating the impossibility of using those

languages in the Taiwan social context.

109 Of course, this is merely a supposition, considering that two results are not enough for a good

analysis. 110 As Prof. Arcodia points out, the latter question could be misunderstood in that it is not explained well

in which context (egg: work, school, neighbors, etc.)

55

In the following questions, the use of language in a familiar context was investigated

more deeply, with emphasis on the language of the father(F),the mother(M),and the

language used to communicate with F, M, father’s grandparents(FP), mother’s

grandparents(MP), siblings(S) and children(C). A serious omission was the absence of inquiries

about the language used with husband/wife or partner. I deeply regret the lack of this data. In

fact, as Jones (2012) pointed out, the number of international marriages with people coming

from outside of Southeast Asia or China111 from 2001 to 2010 has grown by 414%. This

situation surely has a great influence on language use by the Taiwanese people. The data

collected from other questions show112 a simple situation. The language used with the father is

in most of the cases Guóyǔ (236) or MinNan (102) with just a minority of eight people speaking

Kejia and only two people speaking Japanese. In 90 cases when F language is MinNan, the

language for communication with the father is Guóyǔ. In these cases, most of the people

interviewed were from 16 to 30 years old, a result that is in line with the Taiwan socio-

linguistic situation. It was possible to register just five cases in which MinNan is used with F

who speaks Guóyǔ and five cases with a father who speaks Hakka. When the father’s language

is an aboriginal language or, in a few cases, Chinese dialects (潮州話, ,Cháozhōu huà, 江西方

言 jiāngxī fāngyán, 寧波話 níngbō huà) the language spoken is in every case Guóyǔ. In just one

case, a person whose father speaks Japanese uses Taiyu to communicate with him. Toward the

mother113, in 255 cases, the people interviewed said that they speak Mandarin, 113 of these

cases with M language being MinNan. In three cases, where the mother’s language is Guóyǔ

and the father’s language is Taiyu, the language spoken toward the mother became Taiyu,

showing again the tendency to adopt the father’s language in a familiar context. Again, data

on the language spoken with the husband/wife would be invaluable in this kind of analysis. As

for the father’s situation, when the mother’s language is aboriginal or Chinese dialect, the

language used is Guóyǔ, while in two cases in which there is a Korean mother, the language

used is Korean in one case and English in the other case. These data show the tendency of the

parents to use Guóyǔ toward their children; moreover, in period of the last 30 years, it should

be considered that most of the people, who said that they speak Guóyǔ with their parents

even if their parent’s idiom is different, fit a range of age that goes from 16 to 30 years old.

The data recorded for the speaking habits with FP114 and MP115 presented some

problems. In fact, just 99 of the people interviewed could answer the question about FP and

101 on the question about MP, while in some other cases (even if for ethical reasons this was

not required in survey) people indicated their deceased grandparents. In this case, another

111 Include Hong Kong and Macau

112 Table 9 - father's language Table 10 - Language spoken with father

113 Table 11 – Mother’s Language Table 12 – Language spoken with Mother

114 Table 13 - Language spoken with Paternal Grandparents

115 Table 14 - Language spoken with maternal grandmother

56

omission was not to have inquired about the origin of the grandparents. It could be interesting

to see in fact the difference of subjects having grandparents in China and subjects whose

grandparent was born in Taiwan. From data collected from this question, the results indicate

the main use of MinNan toward grandparents, with a minority using Guóyǔ and no more than

one or two people using other idioms, included Hakka. One answer was particularly interesting

because the interviewee wrote specifically “They speak Taiyu, I speak Guóyǔ”116 which is a

common phenomenon.117

The questions about language spoken with children and siblings also had answers

limited to people who effectively have children (83)118 or siblings (118)119. In talking with

siblings, 89 people said that they use Mandarin, while 23 people used MinNan. The age of

these people usually is over 30 years old. There was no data on subjects who use an aboriginal

language with siblings, but it were present 3 people who use hakka, 1 person that speak

Japanese and 2 people who speak English. Among the people who answered the question

related to language used with children, six interviewed said that they use MinNan, 1 person

use Hakka and 3 people English. All the other (73) use Guoyu. The most interesting answer was

the one given by a 15-19 year old boy, who lives in Chunghwa and uses MinNan with all

members of his family, including children, besides MP and S.

4.4 The most representative language: analysis on personal beliefs.

In the last part of the survey, the questions try to discover what kind of relations

Taiwanese people have with their language or languages, which in a direct or indirect way,

influence their identities. This part is composed of 11 questions, some of which include a

textbox for explaining the reason of the choice. This option was anyway optional so as not to

stress excessively the interviewee. The most interesting data useful in an attempt to analyze

116“他們說台語，我說國語” 117When I was living in Taipei, I remember that I once went with a Taiwanese 22 year’s old person, who

spoke Mandarin and just some basic Minnan, to meet her grandma. On that occasion, Grandma, seeing

that I was a foreigner, started to speak with me in Japanese, a language that I did not speak at all at the

time. When my friend’s older brother, who was more fluent in Taiyu, told her that I could not speak

Japanese, she used Taiyu toward me with my friend and her brother who had to translate to make me

understand. When I wanted to answer the grandma’s questions, I spoke in Chinese toward my friend’s

brother, who immediately told me that I could speak directly with grandma in Chinese, because she

understood it perfectly. Then he explained to me that grandma’s favorite language is Japanese, so

whenever she saw a foreigner, she thought (for reasons that I still do not understand) she could use that

language. Instead, Chinese was her least favorite language, so she preferred to speak in MinNan and let

my friend’s brother translate for her. I was told that this kind of phenomenon is not uncommon among

the elderly in Taiwan.

118 Table 16 - Language used with children

119 Table 15 - Language used with siblings

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the way that the Taiwanese perceive their languages comes from these questions, and

especially from the people who explained the reasons of their choice. This part of the survey

started with one of the most difficult questions: “Which language do you think is more related

to Taiwan?”120 The question was written in this way, because asking directly “which one is the

language of Taiwan” or “what you think should be the language of Taiwan” could lead to

choose Guóyǔ (the official language) or to exclude it. Among the answers121 224 people

indicated MinNan122, while 87 said Guóyǔ, 18 people indicated aboriginal languages, 8 people

Hakka and 1 person Japanese. The previously mentioned Amis speaker indicated Amis as the

language that was most related to Taiwan, indicating a strong connection between his identity

of Aboriginal Taiwanese and the language of the tribe. An interviewed person replied referring

to the possible choices "they are all Taiyu, why only Hokkien is called Taiyu [...?]"123, while

other people said that or it was hard to choose one language or that all languages have the

same relation, with three people including Japanese, with all the Taiwanese languages, in the

answer. Another interesting answer was “North [Taiwan speak] Guóyǔ, South [Taiwan speak]

MinNan”124 which reflects the local difference between the use of the languages. In fact, the

area with the most speakers of MinNan result to be south Taiwan. Interesting was also the

justification of those choices125, which is important in understanding better the feelings of the

Taiwanese people. Some of the justifications of the choice of MinNan and Guóyǔ was the high

number of speakers, as seen in the answers “Everyone speaks Guóyǔ”126 or “The majority of

people speaks MinNan”127. There is a correspondence between these answers and the favorite

language or the language use at home.

In general, the answers that involve Guóyǔ, based the answer on the number of

speakers (“High rate of usage”128), the use of the language (<<Because everyone at school

studied this language>>129, <<Nowadays, the majority of Taiwanese speaks Guóyǔ mainly,

further, books, textbook, newspapers, magazine, etc. are mostly in Guóyǔ>>130,<< Relation

with school education>>131), or the relation with China (<<[…] many cultural aspects, customs

120您覺得哪一個語言跟台灣最有關係?

121 Table 17 - language most related with Taiwan 122 I remind it was named 台語 Taiyu in the survey 123 “全部都是台語，為何只僅閩南語為獨叫台語”, 124<<北部國語, 南部台語>> 125I can report these just partially because, even if was not necessary question to proceed with the

survey, many people wanted to share their point of view and their explanation, even if with just few

words. I personally believe this was a sign of the commitment and interest toward the topic of the

survey.

126<<大家都說國語>>

127<<大部份人都說台語>>

128<<使用比率高>> 129<<因為大家都在學校學了這個語言>> 130<<現在大部分的台灣人還是以講國語為主，而且書本、教科書、報章雜誌等等都是以國語居多

>> 131 <<學校教育的關係>>

58

and habits in Taiwan are derived from China Mainland […].>>132). However, some answers

show that, even among people who choose Mandarin, some justification shows partially the

great distance from China. Some Taiwanese see Guóyǔ as the ‘keeper’ of the ‘real Chinese’

culture that China has lost already (“Taiwan's Chinese is [traditional Chinese] which retains five

thousand years of Chinese culture. […]”133). In addition, other people who marked this

language’s difference between Taiwan and China, including Hong Kong, feel that Taiwan

Mandarin is “different from the one spoken in other Chinese regions”.134 This does not

represent just a feeling, but a linguistic fact. However, among the answers there was also a

woman (50-60 years old) who explained her choice of Guóyǔ with the statement <<I am

Chinese>>135. This woman, born in Taipei declared that her father is a Cantonese speaker and

that the language used in the familiar context is Cantonese, possibly means that she is

Taiwanese born from a Chinese family. This kind of answer however, does not justify

completely the choice of Guóyǔ as the language that have more relations with Taiwan. In fact,

the only possible implication of this answer could be that a Chinese, because he is Chinese,

should think that Guóyǔ is the language, which has more relation with Taiwan. Surely, this

answer puts more emphasis on the relation between language and identity.

Among people who believe that, MinNan is the most related to Taiwan, for the most

part, as for Guóyǔ, said that the reason is for the high number of speakers. Same as for the

Chinese, also here a person answered, “Because I am Taiwanese”136, an answer that has the

previous case’s same implications. Many of the answers in this case, link the language to some

cultural and historical factors (<<Most representative of Taiwanese culture>>137). An important

annotation about the word “cultural” is necessary. From the answers it is possible to

understand that the word culture, which <<…has been defined in many ways>>, to cite

Hofstede (1980/1981) among many scholars, in this case is referred to the history of the island.

In fact, just a few people in the answers had linked MinNan to the usage of the language at

work or the food aspect, to the familiar relation or religious event or tradition138. This even

though presently, MinNan language is still used in these aspects daily.139 The links, in majority

of cases, are made with the root of Taiwan and chronological facts (<<Taiyu always had its

132 << […] 台灣的許多文化與風俗習慣都源自中國大陸 […]! >> 133 <<台灣的中文是「正體中文」保留了中國五千年文化 […]>> 134 << […] 台灣的國語跟其他漢語區的漢語不一樣 […]>> 135<<我是中國人>> 136 <<因為我是台灣人>> 137<<最能代表臺灣文化>> 138 In the question it was not specified which “cultural” aspect, so that it would have been possible to

link the language to any aspect that the interviewee might feel as belonging to Taiwan culture. 139 A good example of this fact is represented by the code mixing that, in my opinion, often happened

with younger generations, with the unconscious ‘insertion’ of Minnan lexical material describing kinship

relation of the older generation. In fact , many young people even speaking Mandarin sentences for

kinship relation more closer to the speaker, use terms such “Mom, Dad, Brother” (媽[媽],爸[爸],哥[哥])

which are Mandarin lexical items. Instead kinship relation with elderly generations such “Grandma,

Grandpa, paternal grandmother, paternal grandfather, uncle” (Ghua mà, Ghua gong, Ā Mà, Ā gong, Ā

Gu), are spoken usually in Minnan.

59

roots in Taiwan>>140, << Taiyu is really better able to profoundly convey the earlier culture of

Taiwan >>141), even if a minority of people still emphasize the importance of MinNan in

everyday life, and in some “cultural” aspects such as economy, (<<[…] In vegetable Markets or

in entertainment business, more people use Taiyu.”142), tradition and eating habits (<<When

playing drinking games, we must use Taiyu otherwise there is no grandeur, nor the charm that

there should be. >>143, << […] many Traditional snacks’ names are in Taiyu>>144). Other reasons

for the choice of the MinNan instead was to emphasize the relation between the island and

the language, underlining the lack of connections between “Beijing language” and Taiwan (<<

[…] after all [MinNan] is the native language, the one with the strongest connection. Guóyǔ

that we use presently is the Beijing language, Pǔtōnghuà, not the language that has more

connections with Taiwan>>145). In the answers, a word that appears often was “親切” Qīnqiè

(kindness). Many Taiwanese people feel that MinNan is a more friendly and kinder language,

compared to Mandarin, a phenomenon that could have historical origin in the use of MinNan

in familiar environment and informal speeches, against the more formal and institutional use

of Guóyǔ.

Those interviewed who chose Aboriginal languages as the most related with Taiwan, in

majority of cases, linked their choices to the historical and chronological facts, justifying the

answers with the earliest arrival of Austronesian people on the island, and their right to be

defined as the original Taiwanese people. A positive fact is that among the eighteen people

who chose these languages, seventeen had justified their choice with this similar assertion.

4.5 Institutional Language

The part of the survey that inquires about the use of the language in institutional

purposes was structured in two main questions that allowed an answer through checkboxes

and the usual textboxes for justifying the answers. The first question was “Which language do

you think is suitable for use in formal occasions, schools and other public institutions?”146and

the second one, “Do you wish there could be other languages used in formal occasions,

schools and other public institutions?”147 with the possibility to point out which language and

justify the choices. The aim of this question was to understand in which degree Guóyǔ is

bound to the formal use and the use in public institutions for Taiwanese people, and

140<<台語始終與台灣最有淵源>> 141 << […] 台語文化的確比較能深刻傳達台灣早期的文化 […]>> 142<< […] 在菜市場或是在很多商務應酬.的時候，都還是用日語比較多>>

143<< […] 喝酒時會玩的划酒拳，一定要用台語說，不然就沒有氣勢，也沒有該有的韻味>> note: 划

酒拳 huà jiǔ quán is an alcohol drinking game in which two people guess the number of fingers of the

other, each one putting up one hand and guessing the total of two parties (0-10). 144<<[…] 很多傳統小吃的名字都是台語>> 145 << […] 畢竟是原生地的語言，還是最有關係的，我們所用的國語其實就是北京話，普通話，並

不是跟"台灣"最有關係的，個人見解>> 146“您覺得哪種語言適合在正式場合, 學校以及其他公家機關上使用?” 147“您會希望有另外一種語言在正式場合，學校以及其他公家機關上使用嗎?”

60

consequently, to verify the success of one part of the KMT language policies. The two

questions were structured to try to find the symbolic function and the communicative function

in the correlation between identity and language. The communicative function is the one

which allows the language to be used as a media for communication, and it has, as such, an

eminent practical function. The symbolic function is instead the one that assigns to languages

symbols of identity, even when this language is not used for communication (Iannàccaro &

Dell'Aquila, 2008). Both functions are personal for the individual. In case those two functions

coincide in the same language, a speaker uses the language that he feels bound to. In the

survey, the first question represented the practical use. The language that suits more the

formal and institutional use is clearly the language with a communicative function. The only

reason to want another language, which does have not this capacity, is that it must have the

same function; it must be driven, in my opinion, by an ideological purpose, the symbolical

function that the individual sees in the language. It is, in fact, not the language that

Government should use, but the one that the person wishes could be spoken in institutional

use.

From data collected148, it is immediately clear that Taiwanese people recognize Guóyǔ

as the language of the institutions. 324 answers out of 352 in fact chose Guóyǔ, while just 17

people gave this function to MinNan. Two people chose English, while other people say all

Taiwanese languages have this function or that they cannot choose one. The results are far

from surprising. The reasons could possibly be the efficiency of KMT language policies, but also

the lack of a standardization for written MinNan. In fact, in order to be fully efficient in

institutional use, a language “must have its own written form”, because written form is for the

speaker a fundamental vehicle of linguistic identification (Iannàccaro & Dell'Aquila, 2008). This

is however not necessary for the symbolical function, because even someone who does not

actually use the code for daily communication can still feel related to that language from an

ideological standpoint. In fact, 209 people said that they would like to see another idiom in

institutional functions, and in many cases, this idiom is MinNan, often together with another

Taiwanese language or English. This shows, in my opinion, that many Taiwanese people see in

MinNan or other languages other than Guóyǔ, the symbolic function that bound their identity

to the idiom. The reason why those interviewed chose MinNan, Hakka or an aboriginal

language as the other language that should be used in formal occasions or public institutions,

is usually bound to the culture than to government. In fact, no one answered that these

languages could fulfill the role that now belongs to Guóyǔ in a better way, but many said that

other Taiwanese idioms could express better than Guóyǔ, the Taiwanese culture, so

government should adopt it.

One of the people interviewed expressed his wishes to see sign language used in

institutions or formal purposes. According to Smith (2005) <<Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) is the

language used by approximately 30,000 deaf persons residing on the island of Taiwan>>. The

social importance of sign language is comparable to one of any other minority language, and

requires the same commitment in language planning as any other idiom.

148 Table 18 - Language of Institution

61

4.6 Language for technological development, culture and international relations

The link of local idioms with cultural heritage was retaken in another question. The

survey proceeded by asking, “Which language do you think is more suitable for use in

industrial technology and the development of Taiwan?”149, “Which language do you think has

more traditional and cultural particularity?”150 and, “Internationally, which language should be

used to represent Taiwan?”151 In this case, none the answers were to be submitted through a

checkbox, and none of the three questions provided textboxes for justifying the answers.

These questions aimed understanding how Taiwanese people see their future, strongly

connected with an incredible technology development that has given Taiwan a GDP of 929.495

Billion US Dollar in 2013152 making it one of the four Asian Tigers with South Korea, Hong Kong

and Singapore. This economic growth was boosted around 1960 by the education policies (Liu

& Armer, 1993), but started with a handicap caused by the code shifting that the end of the

Japanese colonization and the start of the KMT regime brought along. If education represents

the key for economic and technological boost, a policy that provides solely Guóyǔ education,

naturally brings Guóyǔ to be considered as the language more suitable for use in industrial

technology and in the development of the Island. 196 people in fact, believe that Guóyǔ is the

language most suitable for representing the development of Taiwan. However, Guóyǔ is

competing with the global power of English that 102 people feel to be the language that better

represents the technological development153. This feeling toward English, it is not surprisingly,

if considered the influence that English has all over the world, and it is confirmed by the many

English 補習班 Bǔxí bān (cram schools) that are present in the Country. Other 38 people chose

MinNan, even if technically it is hard that this idiom be able to fulfill this role, without planning

that promotes the language in this direction. It was indeed an interesting question that would

have deserved an explanation. Other 16 people chose the Japanese language. 8 of those

people were aged 50-60 years old, in this range of age no one chose English, which instead was

chosen with a higher frequency by 20-25 years old interviewed, with many of them being

enrolled or having studied in foreign universities.

For 216 of those interviewed, MinNan is the most traditional language of the island.154

Already in previous questions, this idea emerged from the justification to the answers given.

149您覺得哪一個語言較適合使用於台灣的工業技術及發展? 150 您覺得哪一個語言最具有文化和傳統特色? 151國際上，應該使用哪種語言代表台灣? 152 International Monetary Fund, Report for Selected Countries and Subjects, 2013

http://www.imf.org/external/data.htm access on 2014, September, 21th

153 Table 19 - Language of development

154 Table 20 - Language of tradition

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Just 52 interviewed felt that Guóyǔ can be related to Taiwan traditions. Hakka and the various

aboriginal languages in this case have been chosen by a high number of people, 47 for the

former and 27 for the latter. In addition, in this case some people did not choose one

language or did not feel all languages as having the same importance. The results, in my

opinion, show a tendency to tie cultural aspects to the past and in this connection, the

indigenous languages and the languages that have been present in Taiwan for a longer time

are seen as the more representative. However, the majority of people seem not to believe

very much in the future of these languages. In fact, as previously shown, most of the answers

link these languages to history, thus to the past. The question that asked about a more

practical use of the language (government, technological development) showed that Guóyǔ is

still seen as the most valuable language in this aspect. It emerged also in the last question of

this series, in which what language should be used to represent Taiwan in international arena

was asked, 202 people answered that this role belonged to Guóyǔ, while just 102 people gave

this role to MinNan.

Considering present conditions, MinNan, Hakka or one of the aboriginal languages

could hardly effectively represent Taiwan in an international panorama. However, the answers

showed that there are some people who would like to see Taiwan linked to MinNan,

internationally. Also in this case, a conflict between the symbolic function of the MinNan

language with its ties to the Taiwanese culture and history, and the communicative function of

Guóyǔ with its ties to the progress and the development of the Island emerged. It is possible

that some people think that Taiwan should be recognized internationally for the island’s

traditions and history, and maybe for its independence from China that would be reflected in

the use of another idiom. It is possible that other people may push for a more practical kind of

recognition that emphasizes the progress that Taiwan faced in the last decades, the

independent free economy supported by the educational policies and as well as the growth of

the Mandarin language internationally. My opinion is that on one side many Taiwanese would

like to give more power to MinNan in order to distinguish themselves from China. However, on

the other side, they are conscious of the necessity of a language with a more advanced level of

standardization. In Taiwan history, MinNan never had the status of national language or an

institutional role; nor has it been used in the education. This is why many Taiwanese people

seem to think that MinNan could hardly take the same institutional level that Guóyǔ has now.

4.7 Interviewees’ point of view on Taiwanese language policies

The following three questions were about language and education. The first question

submitted through a checkbox, was “Do you think it is more important to study foreign

languages or other Taiwanese languages”155 and one could choose between “foreign language”

and “other Taiwanese languages”. The following two questions were “which foreign language,

in your opinion, is important?”156, and then “Which Taiwanese language, in your opinion, is

155“您認為最重要的是學習外語還是其他的台灣的語言?” 156您覺得學習哪一個外語言很重要?

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important?” with a textbox for the justification of the answers. The data shows that most of

the interviewed (303 people) think that studying a foreign language is more important than

studying local languages (50 people). Once again, the data collected on the English language

confirmed this trend. In fact, 319 people chose English as the most important foreign language

to study, 10 people chose Spanish and just 10 people chose Japanese. Other people chose

among other European languages (Italian, German, Russian, French) or Korean. The results in

this case could have been clear even without explanation. Taiwanese people for the most link

the study of another language to practical utility it, i.e. studying English is important, because it

is the <<國際共通語言>> (Guójì gòngtōng yǔyán, International common language). Among the

justification, the main cause was the necessity of speaking a language that allows the

communication with foreign people. Beside this, another factor that results from many

answers was the necessity to be fluent in English in order to find good employment.

On the other side, when the question inquired about the most important Taiwanese

language to study, just 39 said Guóyǔ, while 230 people said MinNan, justifying the choice with

the ties that link the language to the history of the country. This justification, as was for

English, confirms the data collected in previous questions of the survey. It is interesting also to

note that 43 people said that Hakka language is important to study. The reasons for the choice

however, showed two different sides. On one side, many people expressed their reasons with

sentences like <<seems there are many Hakka people>>157, but on the other side some other

people said <<because people who can [speak it] become fewer and fewer>>158. The data cited

previously in this work confirms these opinions. In Taiwan Hakka is in a minority, but still it

represents a considerable part of the total population. However, it was also shown that the

language it is not as vital as Guóyǔ or MinNan159. 34 people pointed out the importance of the

study of the aboriginal languages, almost all agree that the aboriginal culture is important for

Taiwanese, also considering that those languages are spoken just by a low number of people.

The reason why it is important to study them could be resumed in one of the answers :<< 多一

個人學，多一個人會>> (Duō yīgèrén xué, duō yīgèrén huì, One person more studies, one

person more can [speak it]).

4.8 Inquiring about languages policies

The last question asked “What do you think the Taiwan government should do in order

to protect Taiwanese minority languages?”160 The answer to this question was to be submitted

through a textbox. It was the only question that allowed an open answer (beside the

justifications to other questions) and the person interviewed could choose not to answer. This

last question was, in my opinion, fundamental for understanding if there is the social

environment in Taiwan necessary for a successful language planning, which Edwards (2009)

defines as the << deliberate action – reflecting official or unofficial policies or ideologies – to

157 <<好像很多客家人>> 158<<因為越來越少人會了>> 159See Ch. 2.2 160您覺得臺灣政府為了保護台灣少數民族的語言應該要怎麼做?

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influence the course of a language>>. In fact, << If language policy is to be successful, it needs

both a top-down process of political power and a bottom-up movement by the people>>

(Katsuragi, 2007). In chapter 3, the Japanese and KMT language policies were discussed,

showing how these two regimes adopted in both cases a top-down language policy by which

Japanese and Mandarin successfully became institutional languages, but just the latter was

successful in becoming also the daily communication language taking the place of local idioms.

It is however important to listen also to the public voice and to take in consideration if and

how the Taiwanese people want the government to take measures regarding their languages.

Summarising the collected data, it emerged that Taiwanese people do not want

MinNan to take the place of Guóyǔ in education and institutional functions; they rather think

that Guóyǔ is necessary for fulfilling this role. However, the majority of people recognized the

historical and the cultural weight that MinNan, Hakka and various aboriginal languages have

on their communities, and expressed their wish to see these languages side by side with Guóyǔ

in institutions and asked that these languages which, in different degrees, are becoming more

and more endangered, be protected and revitalized. Many of the people interviewed seem to

have clear ideas on the measure that institutions should take to reach these results, even if

one answer pointed out that << Taiwan's government can do nothing! Taiwanese should make

more use of their mother tongue>>161. Even if this answer cannot be considered as completely

right, because, as was previously said, government intervention is necessary, it still expresses a

key point in the actual Taiwanese linguistic panorama. Taiwanese people do not speak their

language enough in daily life so as to make these languages reach the same competence that

Guóyǔ already has. Another interviewee agreed with this point of view saying about the

change of trend in the use of local idioms, that he << [...] personally believes that (it) should

start from households>>.162

Other people instead pointed out that for “普遍使用” (Pǔbiàn shǐyòng, widespread

use), the government’s intervention is necessary and it must <<Start from education>>163. The

necessity of language planning that starts from schools was present also in other answers.

Many of those interviewed agreed that institutions <<May arrange for free classes in schools

or extra-scholar authorities, and through the teaching, continue the inheritance of these

languages>>164. Taiwan schools already offer classes in Taiwanese, besides Guóyǔ, in

elementary schools. However, the people interviewed seem to ask for an educational program

that could be followed by everyone, even outside schools and an extensive use of these

languages in education, possibly not limited just to a couple of hours per week. <<Establishing

a written form or dictionaries>>165 and recording the languages and the traditions of minority

languages are other important steps in the planning of these languages, even if both dictionary

and written forms of the languages already exist. Possibly, these kind of supports that are

more or less easily accessible for linguists should be made more accessible also to the

161<<台灣政府 沒有什麼做為! 台灣人應該要多使用自己母語.>> 162 << […] 個人倒覺得應該從家庭做起>>. 163 <<從教育著手>> 164<<[..] 可以在學校甚至其他校外機關辦理免費的語言教學透過教學,繼續傳承這些語言 >> 165<<建立書寫文字，或字典>>

65

public.166 In this optic, the Taiwan M.O.E.’s internet based “台灣閩南語常用詞辭典”167

(Táiwān mǐnnán yǔ chángyòng cí cídiǎn, Taiwan MinNan dictionary of common words)

represents a precious resource for people who desire to learn more about the language. The

government Hakka Affair Council168 and the Aboriginal Affair Council offer different resources

for learning about the languages and the cultures of these ethnic groups. Many of those

interviewed said that the government should not just <<make people who want to study, have

more choices>>169, but also it should <<encourage the promotion and development of local

languages>>170 and <<encourage children to use their mother tongue>>171. More than

encourage children to speak their mother tongue, it is important to educate the parents to

transmit the mother tongue. Children of course cannot speak the parents’ mother tongue, if

this is not transmitted to them.

Beside language classes and materials, many people think that promotion through

cultural events, ethnic centers or museums represent a valuable resource for the transmission

of the culture to younger generations. In this case also, considering the presence of various

ethnic museums and centers in Taiwan,172 the problem seems to concern mainly the

promotion of this to the public. Also in this aspect, both a top-down and a bottom-up

promotion are, in my opinion, necessary. It is true that governmental as well as private

institutions must offer an interesting access to the multiethnic panorama of Taiwan, promoting

this knowledge among the public and encouraging the interest toward Taiwan’s different

histories and cultures. However, as an interviewee pointed out, referring specifically to

aboriginal culture, <<Without the interest of the public, even if government promotes the

aboriginal people’s culture, it would be useless. >>173. Some people interviewed also suggest

making the languages << appear in the media, such as movies, TV shows, etc., […], making

mainlanders who originally do not understand it, able to learn Hokkien>>174.

The most interesting answer, which showed a great interest in the topic, was schematized in

three points:

166As a personal consideration, I want to say that it is a shame that people must pay up to 30$ for

reading some journals or references, fundamental to a better knowledge of a delicate matter such

endangered languages,. Making these works accessible for free means putting the problem in front of a

wider public consciousness, opinions and maybe solutions. A wider public knowledge on the matter

means gaining more resources not just in economic terms, but more than this, in human resources.

Taiwanese people demonstrate that they care about the matter and that they have deep and coherent

thoughts when they are required to think about their languages. If more people start to understand the

importance of saving the languages for the identity of the Country, more people will start to work in the

same direction to make it happened. In order to do so, an open source of information is indeed

necessary. 167 http://twblg.dict.edu.tw/holodict_new/index.html 168 www.hakka.gov.tw 169<<誏想學的人多一個選擇的機會>> note: I suppose that 誏 Lǎng is a mistype for 讓 ràng (allow)

170 <<鼓勵原鄉發展，促進語言>>

171 <<鼓勵幼童使用母語>> 172 新北市客家文化園區 173 <<如果沒有完好的制度，即使政府推動原住民文化，也是沒有意義的>> 174<< 開放語言在媒體出現, 如電影, 電視節目, 等等 […] 讓原是不懂閩南語的外省人也學會講閩南話

>>

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1) make global records of all aboriginal languages. (Includes audio and video)

2) require all Aboriginal communities to learn their tribal languages! (Same as

compulsory courses in college!)

3) give incentives to the various aboriginal tribes who retain the language! (Such as tax

breaks, etc.)175

This could represent in my opinion a first step to a successful language revival policy. Edwards

(2009) defines “language revival” as << the process by which a flagging or moribund variety is

reinvigorated>>. The three steps that the interviewee pointed out could effectively represent

a good start for the preservation of the aboriginal languages because it will involve actively all

the three agents which have a strong influence on language (government, aboriginal speakers

and linguists) in a positive and practical cooperation. Linguists, cooperating with aboriginal

speakers, could make records and studies on these languages, making progress on their

research but also helping to protect, preserve and transmit the knowledge of these languages.

On the other hand, they could help with the teaching of these languages and the eventual

corpus planning for giving these languages a better status and new functions.176 The

government could intervene directly with a top-down policy which ‘requires’ aboriginal people

to learn these languages, but also stimulates the public to put an effort the study and

transmission of these languages, through a bonus (which, besides a tax reduction, could be to

facilitate employment or scholarships). This could make aboriginal people not feel that they

are forced to learn their language, but instead to see this ‘requirement’ as a good chance to

preserve their culture without being disadvantaged in the society. This could also bring non-

aboriginal Taiwanese to become more interested in the study of the Formosan idioms that

could at this point undergo a change and acquire a better status, making it easier to preserve

them. A policy based on those steps could be used also with other languages.

4.9 A brief conclusion on the survey

After the analysis of the data collected by the survey, some self-criticism, as well as new ideas,

aroses. Firstly, I became more conscious of the real necessity of a better channel than internet

to introduce the survey. A written survey, more accessible to older generations, would provide

a wider range of data that could allow a better socio-linguistic analysis, which would consider

also the history of the languages. Languages, through their histories, are involved in a series of

more or less explicit policies, influenced by government and institutions or by public. Being

able to interview people who lived in the country for 60 or 70 years, and younger people who

are becoming more conscious of their identities, would surely bring different and interesting

points of view. In addition, inquiring more about some other aspects of the life of the people

interviewed, without entering into the intimate sphere, could be important. As already said, an

175 1 <<.將所有原住民語做全面性的 記錄。（包含錄音與錄影）>>

2.<<要求各個原住民族群必須學習各自部族的語言！（就像大學裡必修課程一樣）>>

3 <<.給予各原住民部族保留語言之獎勵辦法！（例如稅金減免等）>> 176This process is defined as “language revitalization” (Iannàccaro & Dell'Aquila, 2008, p. 23)

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unforgivable flaw was not inquiring about the language used with the partner/spouse.

Considering the increasing number of foreign spouses in Taiwan, the easier ways of

communicating with other countries for younger generations and the growing interest for

foreign cultures, it could be possible, through some key questions, to analyze, in different

generations, the influence that these new media and trends have on the linguistic panorama of

Taiwan. Occupation and/or university careers could be an important question for a

sociolinguistic analysis. The social status of a person often coincides with the employment.

Occupational languages and special lexicons are indeed an interesting field of study that can be

analyzed through this kind of survey.

Inquiring about the place where the interviewee was born and resides, it is possible to

acquire some data that can be analyzed through GIS177, having as output a map that shows the

geographic area in which a language is spoken. This would enable us to understand how the

natural environment interacts with the spreading of languages, as e.g. the use of varieties of

lower status in rural areas. Also in this case, submitting a paper copy of the survey, possibly in

different idioms, could help to gather better and uniform data. In this survey, many of those

interviewed are presently living in Taipei or in a foreign country. If it would had been possible

to submit the survey with a fixed number of interviews for every province, the data could show

more precisely a relation between the province and the strongest language in that area.

The textbox that allows the interviewed person to justify the answers represents an

important tool. Through the textbox, the interviewee can express his feeling about the

language that he chooses, explaining why that choice was made. However, many people

choose also to add information that was not required, but which proved to be useful for the

subject of the survey. The link between minority languages and the culture and history

emerged and has been confirmed through this textbox. The psychological status of the

interviewee that can be understood through a better and deeper analysis and by the use of

other questions that focus on it which would have been important to analyze the link between

the languages and the identity of the subjects. This problem, which arose during the analysis of

the open answers, was not considered during the draft of the survey, representing another

major omission of the entire work.

Among many other problems that I have noticed just after the conclusion of the

survey, the positive comments received from enthusiastic submitters, makes me think that a

further better inquiry is possible. The Taiwanese public is far from being disinterested about

the situation of local idioms and has demonstrated, in many cases, to be aware of the critical

situation in which some of those languages actually are. The knowledge on the matter varies

from person to person, but in the majority of cases, those interviewed had clear ideas about

the possible solutions to this problem.

In short, I do believe that the survey could have been better structured , could have

been spread through a better media and the analysis of data should have been focused more

on the psychological aspects of the answers. However, judging from the answers received and

the commitment of some people interviewed in explaining their opinion, I am satisfied that I

177Geographic information system.

68

was not just given a better knowledge on the matter through different points of view, but I had

also a chance to think about the matter basing on more data. This fact gave me more

knowledge about the sociolinguistic situation and new ideas for possible future works in this

field.

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5 Conclusion

5.1 An identity forged by history.

In this work, we tried to analyze how the historical and social events, along with

language policies, could influence the language ideology of a country, taking as example

Taiwan. History, culture and language in Taiwan have a pluralistic nature. Not just the different

language and ethnicity of the country created this multicultural scenario, but also the relations

that different people have toward them. Wei (2006) pointed out that <<from a multicultural

perspective, language policy can serve as a strategy not only to gain overdue recognition of the

rights of minority groups and their protection from discrimination but also to provide choice of

language for them in being educated.>> . From survey results discussed in 4.8, it emerged that

many Taiwanese people ask for and multicultural education even if, in many other cases, the

problem that their languages and traditions are facing starts from households. The linguistic

policies in Taiwan, historically, were never focused on the encouragement and promotion of

the multicultural and linguistic cooperation. Instead, Japanese and KMT policies were

centered on the concept of national language whose aim was to build a common sense in the

population that they belong to the institution called “nation”. As we saw, one of the devices

utilized by both Japanese imperialist government and KMT to reach this goal, was education.

Cardona (2006) pointed out that <<In order that the individual arrives to master in an

appropriate way the linguistic tools of his group, some form of training is always required;

Passive acquisition alone may not be sufficient. >>178. However, Cardona also pointed out that

<<The existence of mechanisms for language education is not necessarily a means of selection

or repression. >>179. The explicit and implicit language policies in Taiwan, at least until more

recent years, had always been repressive and selective. European powers, which firstly

recorded Formosan languages, adopted an educational system of conversion of the local

customs. The aim of the Dutch was to take advantage of local populations by civilizing the ones

that could be useful while slaughtering the ones that rebeled. This can be considered as an

implicit language policy. The extermination of a civilization brings at the loss of the

civilization’s language. On the other side, recording the local languages, giving a written form

to some of them, instructing preachers to learn how to communicate with the locals, are

examples of an explicit policy, with linguistic intervention on the language. It is not a mistake

to suppose that, during the short Dutch and Spanish period in Taiwan, local languages

178 <<Perché il singolo arrivi a padroneggiare nel modo opportuno gli strumenti linguistici del suo gruppo è sempre necessaria una qualche forma di addestramento; la sola acquisizione passiva non può essere sufficiente.>>

179 <<L’esistenza di meccanismi per l’educazione linguistica non è necessariamente un mezzo di selezione o di repressione>>.

70

underwent a deep and selective change, that transformed radically the identities of aboriginal

tribes. A deeper change surely happened in the last Qing rule’s period on the island. The

immigration of MinNan people from the mainland already changed deeply the sociolinguistic

situation of Taiwan. Indigenous tribes started to be assimilated more and more in the Han

universe, losing, often not by choice, their cultural and linguistic distinctive traits. Even if in

Chinese public or institutional discourse there is a trend to sponsor and keep fresh the

memory of Chinese victimhood, especially at the hands of the Japanese180 , and << a shared

reluctance to recognize the status of China itself as a colonizing power>> (Vickers, 2008), it is

important to underline that the claim of China (both PRC and KMT) over Taiwan is based on a

colonialist history. Rutter (1923) gives testimony of the atrocity of the Chinese toward the

Aboriginal tribes, which culminated in episodes of cannibalism and the sale of aboriginal

human flesh, witnessed by Davidson (1903, pg. 255). In this period it is hard to see any kind of

cultural or linguistic policy that encourages the multiethnic cooperation. Things did not change

under Japanese rule; Japanese policy was based explicitly on the assimilation of the different

ethnicities and identities into a new one, fully devoted to imperialism. The educational system

improved drastically under Japanese colonial policies, and this fact indeed was positive.

However, the school system was not, or at least not completely, devoted to the teaching of

critical thinking, as happened in Japanese Universities. However, it was under these

circumstances and, ironically, through the teaching of the universities in Japan which enrolled

also Taiwanese student that educated people started to build a Taiwanese Identity. As Orr

(1991) pointed out:

<< The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one's person. Subject

matter is simply the tool. Much as one would use a hammer and chisel to carve a block of

marble, one uses ideas and knowledge to forge one's own personhood. For the most part we

labor under a confusion of ends and means, thinking that the goal of education is to stuff all

kinds of facts, techniques, methods, and information into the student's mind, regardless of

how and with what effect it will be used.>>

One of the failures of the Japanese policy resides possibly in this factor. Their

education policy didn’t work well, or perhaps worked even too well that, in the end ,it lost the

purpose of forging Japanese people devoted to the Emperor, educating people who can use

the acquired knowledge to build critical thinking and the consciousness to be treated unfairly

in their own homeland. Language plays a key role in this process. On one hand, the access to

Japanese literacy helps to create an educated class, on the other hand, the development of the

台灣新文學運動 (Táiwān xīn wénxué yùndòng, Taiwan new literature movement) whose two

main features were the multilinguistic and political impacts.

According to Kerr (1965) <<Many thoughtful Formosan greeted the surrender with

deep emotion -- a mixture of elation, relief, and extraordinary anticipation of good things to

come>>. Their hopes were immediately turned down by the mainlanders’ bad administration

180 Mitter (2007), Cit. from Vickers (2008)

71

and the infamous 28th February Incident where thousand people were slaughtered. The policy

of KMT until recent years was a strict nationalistic propaganda that used the same tools as the

Japanese did, but with a stronger demographical and technological impact. The high number

of mainlanders181 who emigrated to Taiwan after the end of civil war must be considered as a

tool of the linguistic policy of KMT. To maintain the grip on China Mainland, KMT had to

<<settle among and establish control over indigenous people>>182. The language policy with

wide use of new media technologies, such TV and radio broadcasts, which spread the use of

Guóyǔ and banned other idioms, was indeed effective. The high enrollment in scholastic

institutions, that was following the great economic growth of Taiwan, helped even more to

spread Guóyǔ, at a time when citizens were asking and obtaining the right to speak the local

idioms.

In the last decade of the 20th century, some trials of language revival for minority

languages and local idioms were attempted in schools. However, at that point, the blame for

the endangered situation in which the languages are now is also on the shoulders of the

Taiwanese population. During the Japanese colonization period, the main reason why

Japanese policies did not succeed was the lack of need to use Japanese in the familiar

environment. Languages studied at school could possibly become second languages with a

high fluency, but mother tongue still was the one spoken in the familiar environment. This

happened as well in the starting stages of KMT policies, but drastically changed when the

means of education lost its original purpose. In my opinion, Taiwanese families do not see

education as a tool for ‘educating’ the person and making him able to be part of the

community, to use critical thinking and to learn. For many of them good education is

synonymous to a necessary step to well-paid employment, a factor that influences the

teaching of the language also in households. As Dr. Arcodia told me once, in many families the

belief is that <<國語賺錢, 台語不賺錢>> (Guóyǔ zhuànqián, tái yǔ bù zhuànqián, Mandarin

makes money, Taiwanese does not make money).

5.2 Proposal for language revitalization

To propose a language revitalization plan in Taiwan, in my opinion, is not utopian. Of

course, as Grenoble & Whaley (2006) pointed out, before starting a language revitalization

program, << a community must be realistic about what it wants to achieve and what it can

achieve with language revitalization>>. Starting a program whose final goal is the complete

reinstatement of the language in the community where it has its origins possibly could be a

difficult process. A more realistic goal, at least at the start, would be to reintroduce the

language in the community’s daily life, and to speak local idioms together with the national

181 <<two million refugees, including government officials and military personnel>> (Liu & Hung, 2002)

182 This is the definition that Oxford English Dictionary gives for ‘colonize’ http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/colonize

72

language. <<The Cornish language program is not, for example, trying to create a community

of speakers who no longer speak any English, but rather aims to have some people speak a bit

of Cornish;[…] Part of the success has come from having realistic goals>> (Grenoble & Whaley,

2006).

In my opinion, the first step in an effective policy in Taiwan should be to inquire about

what local communities want from their languages and, more importantly, if they truly want

their community languages to acquire a better status. Because revitalization of languages

requires community commitment in adopting the necessary measures of the policy. These

languages cannot be saved by “others”. It is necessary that the member of the community (re-)

start to use their language in daily life, and to transmit these languages to new generations,

with the advantages and disadvantages that this could bring. As emerged from the survey in

chapter 4, many people seem to want the reintroduction of their traditional languages in

Taiwanese daily life, even at an institutional level. However, it is also important to remark

again that the lack of the use of these languages is one of the causes of their critical situation

and this fault is on the population’s shoulders.

The multi-cultural, multiethnic and multi-linguistic features of Taiwan, however, should

not be seen as an obstacle or a problem, but instead as a precious resource. The different

points of view and knowledge that come from the different cultures and language in the island

could be useful in Taiwan’s development. But the most important thing is that Taiwan is a

multicultural country, with a multicultural identity. If more of these cultures will disappear,

Taiwan will lose part of its identity thus becoming more and more sinicized or westernized. As

emerged from the work and from the survey’s answers, Taiwan’s past is bound with MinNan,

Hakka and aboriginal languages. Guóyǔ and English represent the development and the future,

local languages represent the traditions. From my unexperienced point of view, I could say

that Taiwan’s “present" identity is deeply-rooted in the past183 , but with an eye on the future,

which is built through the use of Guóyǔ.

The introduction of local idioms in schools should not be intended as the total substitution of Guóyǔ with one of these languages. A good policy would be, in my opinion, the use of the mother tongue in everyday life, with the use of Guóyǔ restricted to school, so that it would become a second language184. Of course, this kind of school would work in small communities with a low ethnic differences. To translate the local situation of Taiwan to a global level, people of different languages communicate everyday by a lingua franca (that usually is English), maintaining their original language without having problems derived from these differences. This is one of the founding ideologies of the European Commission.185 According to Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson (2002) by acquiring a second language, even if it

183 And languages are the media through which the past and the tradition are transmitted

184 Of course, with an appropriate teaching method, in which Taiwan excels, and the appropriate hours per week.

185 “The European Commission maintains the policy that all EU citizens have the right to access all EU documents in the official language of the Commission, and should be able to write to the Commission and receive a response in their own language.” http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/language-policy/official_languages_en.htm

73

would not ever possess native-like competence , an individual can reach the range of ‘near-native proficiency’186, that can be used for formal purposes. When entering the scholar system which serves different communities of different languages, Guóyǔ would be the language of intercultural communication among students who have different mother tongues. They will learn from the start to collaborate in a multicultural environment and the necessity to communicate will push them towards the use of Guóyǔ. However, when back in one’s group, they would still feel it easier to communicate in the community language. This policy would not be different from what was in effect the Japanese linguistic policy in Taiwan with the difference that in this case what for the Japanese was a failure, here it would be the key to success. This policy would require three fundamental features to be succesful. First the full commitment of the family in teaching their language to new generations, instead of Guóyǔ. Families should be educated on how to educate their children, making them understand the advantages of a multicultural environment; the purpose of the school system should be seen as an educational tool and not as “good-employment-path” and the importance of transmitting the language and the traditions. Educating their children in a multicultural environment means teaching them to be proud of their origins (so that they do not feel ashamed to speak a ‘dialect’), and the respect for children of different ethnicities and their cultures. As a second feature, Government should provide programs for instructing and encouraging families in teaching native languages with the linguists support for achieving this goal. Government should also ensure that people of different ethnicities would be treated equally. Equal oportunity of study and employment, and same ease of access to insttutions must be a guarantee for the success of every policy. The third feature must be the institution of well trained staff, such as teachers, who learn to work in a multicultural environment, giving a uniform education to the student that speaks Guóyǔ as his first language and to the student who learned it as second language. Again, equality must be present in every policy. In conclusion, I think that Taiwan can be considered as a country with a unique multicultural identiy formed by the many histories of the different people who lived on the island. No matter how bad were the policies that succeeded on the island, they are all part of what today is Taiwan. To keep the same independent identity, the protection of traditions, customs and language is fundamental. This duty is on younger Taiwanese shoulders, but they need a government that guides them and an education that brings them to understand the importance of the local languages and cultures in their lives.

186 <<there is a small range of near-native proficiency levels that are very close to native-like proficiency and that cannot be perceived as non-native in normal conversation.>> (Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2002). It means in my opinion that a second language can reach the level of communication required to communicate in every aspect of daily social life.

74

If you ask Who is the father of the island of Taiwan I will tell you The sky is the father of the island of Taiwan If you ask Who is the mother of the island of Taiwan I will tell you The ocean is the mother of the island of Taiwan If you ask What is the past of the island of Taiwan I will tell you Blood and tears drop on the feet of the history of Taiwan If you ask What is the present of the island of Taiwan I will tell you Corruption in power is eroding the Taiwanese soul If you ask What is the future of the island of Taiwan I will tell you Step out on your feet, the road is open to you187

187 Lee Min-yung – If you ask (2001), translation by JOYCE HUANG http://www.gotpoetry.com/News/article/sid=6678.html

75

Appendix: graphs of questionnaire results

Tables:

Table 4 - Ethnicity

Table 5 - Guoyu Proficency

Table 6 - MinNan proficency

98

47

50

66

21

64

6

Ethnicity

母語 高等的 流暢的 中級的 初學者 基本的 不能說

276

29

33

13

0

1

0

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

母語

高等的

流暢的

中級的

初學者

基本的不能說

Guoyu proficency

98

47

50

66

21

64

6

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

母語

高等的

流暢的

中級的

初學者

基本的

不能說

MinNan proficency

76

Table 7 - Feeling on language

Table 8 - Favourite Language

Table 9 - father's language

295

44

7

2

2

2

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

Guoyu

MinNan

Hakka

Aboriginal languages

Japanese

English

What do you feel is your language?

179

79

3 229 32

10 3 7 5 30

50

100

150

200

Favourite language

1

188

116

131

1 1 6 3 1 1 1 10

20406080

100120140160180200

Father's language

77

Table 10 - Language spoken with father

Table 11 - Mother's language

Table 12 - Language spoken with mother

102

236

8 2 40

50

100

150

200

250

MinNan Guoyu Hakka Japanese Cannot Answer

Language spoken with father

1

194

110

371 1 2 1 3 2

0

50

100

150

200

250

Mother's Language

Totale

4

83

255

6 1 1 1 10

50

100

150

200

250

300

CannotAnswer

MinNan Guoyu Hakka Japanese English Amis Korean

Language spoken with Mother

78

Table 13 - Language spoken with Paternal Grandparents

Table 14 - Language spoken with maternal grandmother

2

218

76

18 1 3 5 128

0

50

100

150

200

250

Language spoken with paternal grandparents

232

75

222 1 4 1 1 14

0

50

100

150

200

250

Language spoken with maternal Grandparents

79

Table 15 - Language used with siblings

Table 16 - Language used with children

Table 17 - language most related with Taiwan

89

23

3 1 2

0

20

40

60

80

100

Guoyu MinNan Hakka Japanese English

Language used with siblings

6

73

1 3

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

MinNan Guoyu Kejia English

Language used with children

224

87

8 181 1 13

0

50

100

150

200

250

Language most related to Taiwan

80

Table 18 - Language of Institution

Table 19 - Language of development

Table 20 - Language of tradition

324

17 0 0 2 90

100

200

300

400

Guoyu MinNan Hakka AboriginalLanguages

English AllLanguagesor cannot

choose one

Language of institution

196; 56%

38; 11%

102; 29%

16; 4%

Language of developement

Guoyu

MinNan

English

Japanese

52; 15%

216; 61%

47; 13%

27; 8%10; 3%

Language of tradition

Guoyu

Minnan

Hakka

Aboriginal Language

All languages or cannotchoose

81

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