Ch 8 3 Mother Tongue vs National Language

Ch. 8 -3 Mother Tongue vs. National Language Based on Victor H. Mair. 2003 How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language 授課老師：蘇以文 I-wen Su 【本著作除另有註明外，採取創用CC「姓名標示 －非商業性－相同方式分享」台灣 3. 0版授權釋出】 The “Work” under the Creative Commons Taiwan 3. 0 License of “BY-NC-SA”.

Population profile of Taiwan More than 18 million of the 23 million population in Taiwan, the "native" Taiwanese, are descendants of Chinese who migrated from Fujian and Guangdong Provinces on the mainland, primarily in the 18 th and 19 th centuries. The "mainlanders, " who arrived in Taiwan after 1945, came from all parts of mainland China. About half a million indigenous peoples inhabit the mountainous central and eastern parts of the island are believed to be of Malayo-Polynesian origin.

National Languages Committee, MOE TSM - one national language of Taiwan (2000? ) Dictionary of Commonly Used Words in Taiwanese Southern Min (TSM) Romanization of Taiwanese Southern Min Input method of TSM characters List of the top 700 recommended words for TSM learning Daily column on learning TSM words

國語 guo 2 yu 3 漢語 han 4 yu 3 普通話 pu 3 tong 1 hua 4 The sole official written language One national language of Taiwan (2000? )

Accepted norms for writing Unwritability of the nonstandard Sinitic languages No established conventions for writing out TSM Various idiosyncratic, ad hoc methods for writing TSM in Chinese characters Japanese kana Mandarin phonetic symbols (bopomofo/zhu 4 yin 1 fu 2 hao 4) Roman letters Some combination

Why is it so hard to write TSM? The characters are perfectly suited for writing Literary Sinitic (LS) Regional vernaculars: absence of a tradition of writing 1200 BC-800 AD: restrict use of LS Until mid-Tang Buddhism, koine, > early Mandarin > modern MD (May 4) Strong scholarly bias against crude and vulgar writing Political prohibition Until July 14, 1987, the lifting of martial law

Koine Greek ‘common’ Random House Webster’s College Dictionary � 1. (n. ) koine (usu. cap. ) the form of ancient Greek, based mainly on Attic, that supplanted other dialects in the Hellenistic period and became the standard language, from which subsequent stages of Greek developed. 2. koine any language or dialect, often in modified form, in widespread use in an area where other languages were or still are spoken; lingua franca.

obstacles Many of the most frequent morphemes, gram particles, cannot be written with Chinese characters: 20 -25% Higher percentage if one were to write in a more purely colloquial TW – perhaps less than 40% of the morphemes can be written with the “correct” characters Substituted by Arbitrary homophones Near homophones Completely irrelevant meanings

The name “Taiwan” Originally from the ethnonym of a tribe around Pingan, the southwest of the island 1636 AD. , Taiouwang (Dutch) Tayowan, Taiyowan, Tyovon, Teijoan, Toyouan (Portuguese) 台窩灣 Tai 2 wo 1 wan 1 “Terrace Nest Bay” 大灣 da 4 wan 1 “Big Bay” 台員 tai 2 yuan 2 “Terrace Officer” 大員 da 4 yuan 2 “Big Officer” 大圓 da 4 yuan 2 “Big Circle”

Wan 4 hua 2 � 萬華 wan 4 hua 2 “Multitudinously Floriate” �艋舺 meng 3 jia 3/ bang-kah � An old word of the non-Sinitic indigenes for ‘boat’ � Sinographic form of the name changed during the Japanese occupation banka

Monga, the movie Taiwanese gangster pictures This nostalgia-tinged saga of wayward youth is the first to seriously rival Hong Kong’s ability to combine technical gloss and pretty faces into a riveting commercial package. Set in Monga (known officially as Wanhua), Taipei’s once notorious neighborhood in 1986 -87, primarily an exploration of the ties that bind a group of sworn brothers

Monga, the place Monga, in the ancient native Ketagalan tribe's language, means "canoe“ A place where the tribe people used to trade goods at the intersection of Xin 1 dian 4 River and Dan 4 shui 3 River where the City of Taipei was born

Movie strip http: //mongathemovie. com/en/trailer. html

“wrong” characters Lo 5 -moa 5 流氓 liu 2 mang 2 鱸鰻 lu 2 man 2 “perch-eel” Gangster Fish radicals? Fishy cognitive dissonance

Replacement Mechanisms Vulgarisation: stigmatization via debasement negative stereotyping Pursuit of prestige 雅致 ya 3 zhi 4 ‘refined’ 好聽 hao 3 ting 1 ‘pleasant to the ear’ 流暢 liu 2 chang 4 ‘fluent’

Vulgarisation stigmatization via debasement negative stereotyping 俗 su 2 “vulgar” 土話 tu 3 hua 4 “earthy speech” 閩 min 3 (radical of 虫 chong 2 “insect; snake”): a bug/snake inside a door > snake race Ban-lam-lang 蠻南儂 “barbarians of the south” Southern, barbarian, serpentine? ? ?

Prestige Subjective MD: -- with Mongolic, Turkic and other ‘barbarian’ features -- commanding position Associated with military & political power and economic clout Its designation as the official national language Its background in the koine of more than 1000 years ago A long history of written literature in a wide variety of styles Large amounts of scholarly research and reference materials

Copyright Declaration Work p. 1 Licensing Author/Source Victor H. Mair. 2003 How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language and used subject to the fair use doctrine of the Taiwan Copyright Act Article 50 by NTU OCW