For 400 years, Taiwanese have been subject to foreign colonizers -- first the Dutch and Spanish, then the Manchu Empire, then the Japanese empire and finally the "Republic of China" KMT Chinese Nationalist Regime of Chiang Kai-shek and his son. In particular the last 100 years of first Japanese then KMT rule were brutal in attempted obliteration of Taiwan's Identity. Herein is chronicled the fight for its recovery.
It is great to see Taiwanese young professionals enjoying their Taiwanese language even though for their whole school life, they have been forced to use Mandarin and they are sometimes out of practice in expressing certain things in Taiwanese.
Here's a rough translation of their comments:
"Merry Christmas..." (speaker is originally from Chiayi) "Merry Christmas, pastor... You must remember to practice Taiwanese language every day..." (speaker is originally from Pingtung) "I'm sorry but I am too busy at the moment [to say anything on the video]..." (speaker is from Taipei) "Merry Christmas, pastor. We all practice Taiwanese every day, how about you?" (speaker is Hakka) "Do you remember how to speak Taiwanese? (This college student is from Kaohsiung and spoke too fast for me to catch two words...)" "Merry Christmas, pastor. Thanks for letting us use your apartment to celebrate Christmas. ...(in Mandarin: "Goodbye.")...Sorry, I should not say [goodbye in Mandarin], I should say, "Goodbye." [in Taiwanese]... Come back soon." (speaker is from Pingtung)
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If anyone has video links of other young folks in Taiwan using their non-Mandarin language mother tongue, please let me know. Use your digital camera to take video and you can upload your video clipping easily. Especially please take opportunities to video-tape young folks speaking Austronesian languages in Taiwan.
-------------- Here's another video of someone in Australia discussing mother-tongues in Hoklo Taiwanese. Notice how he still calls Mandarin "Kok-gí" [國語]-- the "national language." This propagandistic designation continued from the KMT authoritarian era creates a prestige-language environment that demeans other mother tongues in Taiwan.
The more appropriate designation of Mandarin would be "Hôa-gí" [華語] which is the international standard designation for Mandarin. Such usage would remove any problems in Taiwan, but still causes problems in China since it still propagates both a "prestige" title as well as misinformation. The Hôa 華 refers to ethnic "Chinese". That is like calling French "Latin" to the exclusion of other Latin-derived languages.
In Taiwan, there are three mutually unintelligible classical-Chinese derived languages: Taiwanese, Hakka, and Mandarin. There are many more mutually-unintelligible Chinese-derived languages in China including Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. Mandarin is the furthest from classical Chinese because it was heavily influence by the non-Chinese Manchu conquerers who ruled China and other east and central Asian countries in an empire that lasted for four hundred years. It could be argued that because of the forced usage in authoritarian communist China, Mandarin is becoming the main "Chinese" language and so the designation is appropriate. At any rate, the designation "Hôa-gí" [華語] is the international standard and should be used in Taiwan instead of "Kok-gí" [國語] for clarity and neutrality. One could also call it Pak-kian-gí Beijing-Speach [北京語] -- but in most people's minds, this designation has come to refer to a northern dialect of Mandarin.
Today is the day to speak your mother tongue, or the mother tongue of your parents' generation if it has become a second language to you.
Let's make this an annual event with lots of press and promotion!
The next step is to have ongoing activities and extra emphasis in the schools and at community activities and in the workplace to start on International Mother Tongue Day (February 21) and to end on Mother's Day (the second Sunday of May).
used in the sentence: Saⁿ-ê hong-thai chò-hóe lâi, góa kā sok-si̍t-mī kā be̍h-á-chiú chhôan-piān-piān.
• There is a lot of uncertainty in Taiwan because of the KMT-controlled government's aims at forcing through ECFA and its attendant binding Taiwan closer to authoritarian China.
Taiwanese has many words related to uncertainty:
There are different levels of uncertainty.
To say, "possibly," one might say khó-lêng or tāi-khài. "Perhaps" it is better to use kiám-chhái. To express a greater degree of uncertainty, as in "maybe," one says bô tiāⁿ-tio̍h or bô tek-khak.
If you are certain that something is not possible, use bô khó-lêng. Most certainly not: pèng m̄-sī.
Possibly not: bô it-tēng.
Certainly: it-tēng, tek-khak, tong-jiân.
Certain: it-tēng, khak-si̍t.
To express an unspecificied-- Tī bó͘ chi̍t ê soaⁿ-téng... "In a certain mountain..." (src: Maryknoll)
One uses bó͘, "certain; particular," to particularize a mountain without specifically naming which one. Notice that in English the word "certain" has a broader range of meanings whereas Taiwanese uses distinct words.
• Unfortunately, because the R.O.C. government-in-exile suppresses the use of Taiwanese and other non-Mandarin languages in public schools in Taiwan, there is not much opportunity to learn the vocabulary of the non-Mandarin languages associated with an academic setting. Furthermore, few essay or papers in these languages have ever been written by students. The normal editing processes are never experienced. The following Taiwanese expressions describe editing practices.
* Underline this sentence = "kā chit kú ê ē-bīn oē sûn"
oē = draw ; sûn = line ; ē-bīn = underneath
[Notice the homonym: the noun oē 話 in "kú-oē" meaning speech/word and the verb oē 畫 meaning draw/sketch. These two homonyms are obviously different in their Han characters. But actually in the romanization, one has very little trouble differentiating them because of their distinct parts of speech and the noun often being associated in a compound word and the verb often being associated with an object -- e.g. kú-oē "sentence" vs. oē tô͘ "draw a picture" ]
* Circle this sentence = "Kā chit kú-oē kho͘--khit-lâi." or "Kā chit kú-oē kho͘ kho͘-á"
Kho͘ is a verb that means "to circle" ; kho͘-á is the noun that means "a circle" -- just as in English one can say: "Circle this sentence." or "Circle a circle around this sentence." Or to get more fancy you could translate it as "Circumscribe a circle..."
* If the word or phrase is really poorly written, sometimes you should just strike it out. Taiwanese is quite vivid in the way to say that. Jack-the-Ripper fashion, literally, you say "kill/murder/slash that sentence!" = "Kā hit kú-oē thâi-tiāu." or "murder that word..." = "Kā hit jī thâi-tiāu." This word "thâi," meaning kill/murder/slash w/knife, is also what someone who is good at bargaining can do: Kā i thâi kè-siàu. "Cut/kill the price."
• Poa̍h-kiáu 賭博 means "gambling." In the fall of 2009 there was a referendum being held in Phêⁿ-ô͘ (Penghu or the Pescadores) on whether or not to allow gambling casinos ( kiáu-keng ). Unfortunately, gambling profits are often controlled by organized crime ( o͘-siā-hōe ) and corrupt government officials ( tham-ù ê chèng-hú ). Where you find casinos you also find drugs ( to̍k-phín ), violence ( po̍k-le̍k ), sexual crimes ( sek-chêng ), and human trafficking ( jîn-kháu ê bé-bē) where the victims are controlled with drugs ( iōng to̍k-phín khòng-chè in ). A few people or mafia organizations can make huge profits off gambling, but for most residents, there is no benefit ( hó-chhù ) but rather an accumulation of societal problems -- particularly addiction in its various forms.
Gambling proponents often use spin ( hó-thiaⁿ-oē ) to trick people (kā lâng phiàn--khì).
· Taiwanese still has the saying with variations that basically translate as "An Austronesian Grandmother and a Hoklo Grandfather" --- For example,
"Ū tn̂g soaⁿ-kong, bô Tn̂g-soaⁿ-má." -- "Have a Han grandfather, but no Han grandmother..." With that intermarriage of Austronesian and Han that makes up today's Taiwanese people, I thought it would be interesting to share some marriage and kinship related terms:
Chheⁿ-ḿ 生姆 or originally written 青姆 means a son or daughter's mother-in-law. Mandarin uses a different word: 親家母
Chhin-chiâⁿ 親情 relative by marriage, in-laws. Mandarin uses a different word: 親戚
· Expression: "... chhin-chhiūⁿ teh ùn tāu-iû." Ùn means "to dip." Tāu-iû 豆油 is "soy sauce." Notice that the Taiwanese word is different from the Mandarin: 醬油ㄐㄧㄤˋㄧㄡˊ. Taiwanese uses this character 醬 pronounced chiùⁿ to mean "pickled" or "canned" as in chiùⁿ-chhài 醬菜 "pickled/canned vegetables."
This expression "teh ùn tāu-iû" is used in social circumstances to describe very short visits. If someone "drops by" and then leaves, it is like dipping food in soy sauce.
This expression is also very appropriate to describe the attitude of the Chinese Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek's regime. They treated Taiwan as a temporary place from which they would fight back to China. They spoke of winning back China within three years after fleeing as refugees to Taiwan in 1949. So you can notice today that all the beautiful architecture is mainly from the Japanese era (pre-1945). The KMT regime put up many hasty structures, allowed squatter shack communities of former soldiers to take over many of the parks in the cities, and generally allow industry to heavily pollute the environment and degrade the landscape because they thought of Taiwan mainly as a resource to be exploited before heading back to China.
· hān-chè 限制 suppress
kìm-chí 禁止 forbid {The Korean word 금치 "kum-chi" shows a consonant-vowel homology with Taiwanese but not with Mandarin}
These two words are what the colonialist KMT Chinese Nationalist Party and the Japanese empire before them in Taiwan did in an attempt to destroy Taiwan's native languages.
• "developed baby fat from nursing" hàng-leng
When a nursing infant grows well with lots of fat rolls, one does not call the infant the common words for "fat" such as pûi-ê or tōa-kho͘-ê. Taiwanese has this special word hàng-leng for "baby fat." If you say that about a baby, the mother will be very delighted to receive the complement. Incidentally, the word tōa-kho͘ literally means "large circumference" and kho͘ specifically refers to the metal bands that circle around the old wooden buckets and hold the pieces of wood together. (Or think of whiskey barrels.)
• "how much?"
lōa-chē 若多 {The literary pronunciation (JI)of 若 is Jio̍k and 多 is To}; Mandarin uses a different word -- 多少 ( ㄉㄨㄛㄕㄠˇ)
In Taiwan, you can still sometimes bargain for things you buy. But unlike Thailand, it is usually pretty standardized so that people are not automatically marking up the price 400 percent because you are a foreigner. So even if you do not bargain, you can get a decent price in Taiwan.
