Is Hokkien A Living Language?

[James Campbell]

Taiwanese doesn't stand for any other language in Taiwan except Minnan. You can't refer to the aborigines languages or Hakka as Taiwanese. In fact most of them speak Taiwanese anyway, and have rusty abilities in Mandarin, at least the ones I've met. Most Hakkas also have very good Taiwanese ability, but they tend to be very focused on being language proficient since they are a minority and try to be mainstream as possible.

I've been attending the Semicon tradeshow this week. I ran into a few Malaysians today, and they found it easier to discuss in Hokkien rather than in Mandarin.

[ppk]

james, i think singaporeans dun call hokkien language as the singaporean tongue cos they are only about half of the chinese population. there are still other dialect groups, so its not very appropriate. for taiwan, until the nationalists went over in 1949, almost all among their population were ppl from fujian/hokkien, and the newcomers made up only1/5 of the total population. since mandarin is not popular then, calling hokkien as 'taiyu' or taiwan local tongue wont face much opposition. but as some of u might know, singapore has national service, ie, males go for army training for 2 yrs or so when they reached 18, regardless of race or background. the common tongue in the army is hokkien, not any other dialects.

pcpy, mandarin is the present official tongue in china, a descendant of hokkien and other dialects, and they are closely related. so its not a foreign language. hokkien uses the same writing as mandarin.

[KDLim]

I understand at one time, the national day address was by the PM of Singapore in English, Malay, Mandarin and Hokkien. But Hokkien was discontinued when the Speak Mandarin Campaign was launched. If I am not mistaken, it was reported in the press that even Hokkien used in Army was discontinued.

[PPK]

i think it would take quite sometime for hokkien to be discontinued in the army thou they claimed so. there are ppl from all walks of life and not everyone speaks english. the common tongue would probably be hokkien. easier for general communication, command and control. for official orders and drills thats another story. but with the 'improvement' in education, more and more will be speaking english.

[Mark]

Hi all,

Many seem to be under the illusion that most people in Singapore do/did speak Hokkien, however this is not the case.

There is the very very large Malay minority as well as the sizable Tamil minority and the minor Bengali minority (with other Indic languages trailing at the end), and the one language that really unites Singapore is English... err... I mean Singlish.

Singlish is a very colourful language, but thanks to the Speak Good English campaign, that's about to be wiped out as well. S'porean gahmen is sure good at erasing languages... why don't they try a Speak Good Klingon campaign next and erase Mandarin, English, Malay, Tamil, etc completely from the nation in favour of Klingon? Sounds like something they'd like, after all Klingon is a very influential language in intergalactical commerce and politics! *rolleyes*

[PPK]

dun worry, they still have the 'official coxford dictionary of singlish' for reference...

[Mark]

yes PPK

I was going to buy the print version of that, but wepsite version valley useful lah!

However somehow I doubt they care about Singlish at all, they seem over-ambitious here. If Thailand's GM suddenly says "ok people, Thai isn't a very good way of speaking English, we have to speak English correctly so that it is no longer Thai" is strange, Thailand has a national language unique to its own country, but they have no problem with international business.

And while I can sort of understand why they may want to promote "proper English" (vs proper Singlish), there's no need to make the language die. Many other campaigns have hurt languages in similar ways: The old Spanish dictator tried to promote Spanish at the expense of Galician, Catalan, Asturian, Valencian, &c (but if I recall correctly he did promote Basque for Basques) so far that he even tried to ban speech of these languages! Surely if you are killing a language and realise what you are doing you must be evil? But then I don't believe in absolute morals... hm...

[Mark]

James, you're wrong here. The politically correct usage of Taiwanese means Hakka, Hokkien, and aboriginal languages, I've heard Taiwanese people say it themselves and I've seen it written all over. It does make sense, doesn't it? When we say "Chinese", we don't refer just to Mandarin but to all the dialects? But we don't refer to Zhuang, Tibetan, etc. because we like to consider these their own nationalities even though PRC has tried to integrate them.

[Ken]

Hi all,

The term 'Taiwanese' naturally refers to Minnan language. But if the question is 'what are the Taiwanese languages?', then they include Minnan, Hakka & Aboriginal languages.

The frequent reference to Minnan language as 'Taiwanese' is a phenomenon that has become more popular in the last 12 years or so.
When I was in Taiwan in 1990, the use of term 'Minnan' was still common.
This could be due to the growing influence of the pro-Independance forces.

[James Campbell]

Mark,

Li mai ka goa cha-boo-kiaN ka lao-bu tng-chai anne la!!

Li chitma teh to-chit kokka? Li kui kang, tak kang long ka tai-oan lang cho-hoe bo? Goa m siong-sim.

Goa kui-kang long teh kong-si ka cho seng-li e tai-oan lang cho-hoe. Li sui-si mng sia tai-oan oe si simmih, chhiaN in ka li kong tai-oan oe, in bo kho-leng beh ka li o-beh kong simmih khekka-oe, simmih hoanna-oe, long m-si. In chiah e ka li kong tai-oan oe chiah tioh a. Ni-chhia, chit-e tai-oan oe chiu si li so-kong e banlam-oe. Hoan-tsai, chit-e msi hiahni phaiN liau-kai e taichi, a-m?

Kok-ji u kho-leng khah chheng-chho. Ka-su li kong 臺灣話, tong-jian chit-e si ka 閩南話 kang chit-e boo iuN. Na-bo, kasu li kong 臺灣的語言, chit-kiaN taichi long si bo kang-khoaN e. Bun-te si anne-hoh: li so-iong Taiwanese chit-e eng-bun-ji bo chheng-chho. Li eng-khai iong tai-gi lai kai-sek la!!

Li kam-u liao-kai?

Goa chhiaN tai-ka lai to-to chi-kao!

James