Taiwanese, also known as Minnanese 閩南語, or the "south of the Min River language," is one of Taiwan's two official languages. The other is Mandarin Chinese 國語. Taiwanese is a dialect - another form of Chinese - and it has borrowed many words from both Mandarin and Japanese. Just try having a Taiwanese (non-Mandarin) conversation about electronics, and you'll see what I mean.
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| Taiwanese phonics practice. Good luck with that. |
Taiwanese has a long history in Taiwan, going back hundreds of years. It was originally the language used in and around Fujian 福建 Province in China, and most people in this province still speak Minnanese today. Of course Minnanese speakers in Taiwan and Minnanese speakers in China have been separated by hundreds of years of geography, politics, and culture, so it's not surprising that the Minnanese spoken on the Mainland and the Minnanese spoken in Taiwan differ considerably.
On the west coast of Taiwan, Taiwanese is spoken by a larger percentage of the total population. Most of these people grow up speaking Taiwanese, and learn Mandarin as part of their schooling. This Mandarin is the legacy of the Kuomintang's 國民黨 arrival in Taiwan after the disastrous Chinese Civil War "concluded" in 1949. The KMT created its own administration in Taiwan, to replace the vacuum left by the Japanese, and the language of this administration was Mandarin.
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| Excerpt from Taiwanese textbook. |
The descendants of these KMT immigrants still live in Taiwan, though they all grow up surrounded by those whose first language is Taiwanese. Most of them can understand it when it's spoken, but they will be at pains to explain the subtler aspects of their lives in Taiwanese. This is also true of Hakkanese people 客家人 and aboriginal people 原住民. Those who live in Taiwan end up picking up odds and ends of this language, but a true mastery of it resides with those who can describe themselves as Taiwanese in ethnicity 閩南人, not just Taiwanese in nationality 台灣人.
People often ask me if I speak Taiwanese. My answer is usually "Yes, but not much." I can get the gist of it when it's spoken to me, but I am at a loss to express myself in Taiwanese. I speak it much better when I am drunk. Or at least I think I speak it much better when I'm drunk. I'm not really sure.
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| Wu Bai 伍佰 sings a lot of Taiwanese songs. |
Some readers of this blog have asked me about studying Taiwanese in a university here. While I am no expert on the subject, I do know of a few such programs in the bigger universities. One of the chief difficulties with this is the fact that the system for writing Taiwanese is only fully understood by a handful of specialists, and is all but inaccessible to someone at the elementary level. It might seem like a more interesting choice for those who style themselves linguists, but I have never met any foreign graduate of any university who could speak Taiwanese well. I suggest instead learning Mandarin intensively for at least two years, and only then beginning a study of Taiwanese from locals. This is, after all, how the locals learned it. This is also how missionaries learn it, and the only foreigners I've met who could REALLY speak Taiwanese were either missionaries or doctors who spent long periods of time living somewhere where they needed to know it.
My school has several teachers of Taiwanese, but they only show up once a week. The four of them teach all of the classes in a single day, and then they depart, leaving little progress in their wake. The students that already know Taiwanese continue to know it, and those who don't haven't learned much. My younger daughter is picking it up, but this is more due to environmental factors than anything else.
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| Jiang Huei 江蕙 is another well-known singer of Taiwanese songs. |
The problems of Taiwanese language education parallel those of Hakkanese, and of aboriginal language education. Mandarin is such an overwhelming force in Taiwanese culture, and for those who haven't grown up speaking these languages there is little chance of their ever learning to do so. Mandarin is everywhere in Taiwan: on TV, on the radio, on the Internet, and it can have a subversive effect on those who wish to preserve their identity as Taiwanese speakers. Even those who've grown up speaking Taiwanese often switch into Mandarin in the presence of classmates or coworkers.
Certainly Taiwanese is in no danger of becoming extinct. Not any time soon. Too many people speak it, and too many people identify with it for that to happen. But it is becoming less useful in certain sectors of Taiwanese society, and that's certainly something to think about. Languages are often judged by their utility, and the less useful they become the faster they fade from the collective consciousness. Should Taiwan ever become a truly independent country (in other words, should the government finally stand up and say "Yes, we are a country!"), Taiwanese may well experience a resurgence. On the other hand, an absorption into Mainland China would likely spell trouble for the Taiwanese language, as immigration from the Mainland would make this language even less relevant to daily life in Taiwan.
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