The written language intelligible to speakers of all Sinitic tongues is Chinese, the only pictograph-based writing system still in use on a large scale. While mainland China chose to adopt “simplified” characters in a bid to ameliorate widespread illiteracy, in the Republic of China (ROC), “traditional” written characters are still employed.
Mandarin
Mandarin has four tones and is called Guoyu (national language) by people in the ROC. Its origin can be traced back to the late Ching dynasty, when the government decided to make the dialect spoken around Beijing the official language. Today, Mandarin is used or understood by the vast majority of the population.
However, in the early days of the Republic, this was not the case. In 1913, the Ministry of Education (MOE) established a commission to formulate a standard phonetic system based on the phonology of the Beijing dialect. Consisting of 37 phonetic symbols and four tone marks, the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols system has helped people learn proper Mandarin pronunciation since it was first introduced in schools. The system is still used in Taiwan today.
Holo
Holo is spoken by around 73 percent of the people in Taiwan. Among a variety of methods for representing the tongue in script, one of the most popular has been the Romanization system known as Pėh-oē-jī, which was first introduced by Presbyterian missionaries.
Many attempts have been made in Taiwan over the years to promote a natively formulated written system. The MOE, for instance, unveiled the Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet in 1998. In 2006, the MOE rolled out the Taiwanese Romanization Scheme for use in Holo teaching and language textbooks. However, as of today, most native speakers of the Taiwanese dialect of Holo remain untrained in reading their native language.
Hakka
The Hakka language in Taiwan has five variants, of which the SiXian and HaiLu dialects are the most widely spoken. SiXian is prevalent in Hakka communities in MiaoLi, PingTung and Kaohsiung counties; and HaiLu is most commonly spoken by the Hakka population of HsinChu County.
Hakka is, like Holo, primarily an oral language, and fluency in Hakka is becoming increasingly rare among Taiwan’s young people. To promote the language, the Council for Hakka Affairs (CHA) has drawn up and implemented a number of plans. These encompass the creation of a database for basic Hakka language materials, the publishing of dictionaries of the various Hakka dialects and the providing of funds to schools to teach Hakka. The CHA administered language proficiency tests for speakers of Hakka in 2008 that resulted in an 88.84-percent pass rate.
Indigenous Languages
Taiwan’s indigenous languages, classified as Formosan languages, belong to the same Proto-Austronesian language family as Malay and Hawaiian. The numbers of people who know how to speak indigenous language are declining in the recent years, as new generations growing up in cities become more fluent in Mandarin or Holo than their tribal tongues. To help keep these languages alive, the MOE has included them in school curriculum.
Language Education
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of preserving Taiwan’s rich linguistic heritage. This has led the government to promote the teaching of Holo, Hakka and indigenous languages. Since 2001, primary school students have been required to take a course in at least one of these languages.
For decades, English as a foreign language has been a required subject for students in junior and senior high schools in Taiwan. English was made compulsory from the third grade in 2005. In support of English learning, the MOE commissioned the Language Training and Testing Center to develop tests for five ability levels. From 2000 to 2008, more than 2.6 million people took these exams. In 2005, the five-year Plan for the Promotion of Second Foreign-Language Study in Senior High Schools was implemented, adding Korean, Russian and Latin as new elective courses to the already available Japanese, French, German and Spanish. In 2008, Japanese was the most popular choice.
Those wishing to pursue language study outside the university system may do so at private language schools or public educational institutions. While the most popular foreign languages taught here remain English and Japanese, interest in major European languages has been growing. A rising number of immigrants and guest workers from Southeast Asia have also encouraged schools to provide courses in such languages as Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese.
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