« previous post | next post »

I've had guests from Taiwan for the past few days. Two of them are mother and daughter, both primary school teachers. The mother is a nationally known teacher of Taiwanese language who received special awards from two presidents, Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian. She is very proud of the beauty of the Taiwanese language and is honored to be able to teach it to her students. She refers to Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) as "Huáyǔ 華語", as is done in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, and refuses to call it 國語 ("National Language"), because, as she says, "It is not the language of our nation".

Although the mother is from the south and is naturally completely fluent in Taiwanese, the daughter was born in the north and speaks very little Taiwanese.

The third guest is the husband of the daughter. He is an American from Oklahoma who has been living in Taiwan for more than two decades. Recently, after a very long process that involved being able to answer hundreds of detailed questions about Taiwan history, society, and culture, he became a citizen of Taiwan. His wife and mother-in-law are very proud of him for having done so, and he himself is extremely pleased at the outcome.

One last note about the extraordinary physiognomy of the mother. As soon as I saw her, I thought that she must have some aboriginal (Austronesian) blood. Upon inquiring, that turned out to be the case, though she is mainly Hokkien (Minnan). But there was something else very special about her appearance that made me think she also had European genes. Guǒrán 果然 ("as expected"), there is a tradition in their family that they had some Hélán 荷蘭 ("Dutch") ancestry.

N.B.: "Táiwān 臺灣" does NOT mean "Terrace Bay". See under "Readings".

Readings

Dutch Formosa (1624-1662)

Standard Chinese / Modern Standard Mandarin (MSM) / Standard Mandarin / Mandarin (I prefer to refer to it as MSM)

"Precious Isle Taiwan" (2/23/18)

"The sociolinguistics of the Chinese script" (8/20/17)

"Water control" (5/30/15)

"The Opacity and Difficulty of the Chinese Script" (9/18/08)

"Vitally worst: 'Chinese' sounds like 'to tear you to die'" (4/7/07)

"How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language"

Permalink