Teochew people in Taiwan?

Teochew is not spoken, at least locally in Taiwan. Wikipedia says that Teochew people in Taiwan has been Hokkienized, and speak Hokkien. It also says that some of them speak Hakka.

I know for a fact that some Hokkien people claim that they trace their ancestry to Shantou-Chaozhou area. Take my mother-in-law for example. All her family members live in northern Taipei, and speak Hokkien with a marked Tong'an accent. Yet they claim that they are Teochew people. Or at least that's what their family tree chart "claims". In this post, I will talk about three kinds of people who are thought to be Teochew. And I will question if they can really be considered Teochew.

Teochew people are speakers of the language, whose center is Shantou-Chaozhou area. It is a branch of Southern Min family. Most Chinese people in Thailand and Cambodia are Teochew. Hong Kong also has lots of Teochew people, including Mr. Li Ka-Shing, the richest tycoon. They are quite powerful in Singapore and southern peninsular Malaysia as well.

Type A "Teochew" people in Taiwan are not really Teochew people at all. They are Pepo tribal people. Pepo tribes are Malayo-Polynesian people people who became Sinicized. They had to pretend to be Han-Chinese so they could own land. In order to prove that they were Han, they had to produce a family tree. But All their Hokkien neighbors knew that they are really different from them. They even spoke Hokkien with an accent. Therefore, they claimed in their family tree that their ancestors are Teochew. They thought the neighbors wouldn't know. But it's easy to tell they really have nothing to do with Teochews. Like my mother-in-law, they speak Hokkien with a Tong'an accent, which is Quanzhou-leaning. If they are really Teochew, they should sound more Zhangzhou.

Type B "Teochew" people maybe Hokkienized Hakka people that originated from western Zhangzhou areas in Fujian Province. There are many such people in Zhanghua and Yunlin Counties. The funny thing that most of those people don't recognize themselves as Hakka. They regard themselves as Zhangzhou Hokkiens. But Older generation people still remember some Hakka words. And some have admitted that they are Hakkas recently, and are engaged in reviving their Hakka culture.

Type C "Teochew" people are actually related to Chaozhou, but are not ethnically Teochew. They are mainstream Hakka people who migrated to Taiwan from Shantou-Chaozhou region. In this region of Guangdong, as in neighboring western Zhangzhou of Fujian, Hakkas and Southern Min people are coexisting alongside each other. Among the mainstream Hakka people who migrated to Taiwan en masse, some originated from this Teochew-speaking region. So their ancestry tree rightly indicate that their ancestral origin is Chaozhou. But that doesn't mean that they are ethnically Chaozhou.

By the way, in Tainan, there is a dish called Chaozhou noodles. I wrote a blog post about it in the past. I don't know if this delicacy is related to Type A or Type C psuedo-Teochews. Or maybe it's related to Chaozhou Township in Pindong.

A final word of caution: Be careful when you discuss this topic with the people concerned themselves. As I said, they may well perceive themselves as otherwise. And we must respect that. They don't particularly like being told who they are by a foreigner. The same principle applies to talking to people who might have Pepo ancestry.

Taiwanese Hokkien is an appropriate term

I think Taiwanese Hokkien is an appropriate name for the language spoken as a heritage language by the majority of people in Taiwan.

It has been called many different names, including: Taiwanese, Southern Min, Hoklo, Holo, etc.

But I think Taiwanese Hokkien is the most appropriate one.

Hokkien is the term used by the British colonial authority in East and Southeast Asia to refer to the language of the vicinity of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. The center of this area is Amoy. So the accent of Amoy has traditionally considered to be the standard. It is into Amoy accent that the Hokkien Bible has been translated. (This might change in the future, as Amoy has accepted huge migrant population and become largely a Mandarin speaking city.) Even though the accents of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Amoy are a quite different from each other, they are still mutually intelligible.

Southern Min is a broader term. Even Teochew (the language of Swatow or Shantou) and Hainanese are parts of Southern Min. They are mostly mutually unintelligible with the Quanzhou-Zhangzhou. (The Teochew of Malaysia and Singapore is a different story because it has been greatly influenced by Hokkien.) So it is inappropriate to call Hokkien Southern Min. Hokkien is just one part of the Southern Min group of languages that are mutually unintelligible. This was not a problem in Taiwan, though, because there were extremely few Teochew speakers in Taiwan.

Hoklo and Holo have been used often in Taiwan in recent years. These are traditional terms. But they were seldom used by the people who spoke it themselves until after the Taiwan independence ideology became widespread. Holo is the preferred term by people from such backgrounds, understandably because it contains no word that suggests it originated from mainland China. But the use of this term is not very widespread in Taiwan. The popular term, instead, is Taiwanese, to which I shall turn later.

Hoklo, although shares the same roots with Holo, is not preferred by people who ascribe to Taiwan independence. This is presumably because the "hok" refers to Fujian Province of China.

Also, it has been suggested that "lo" is a word which means a person or a man, which has a derogatory connotation. It has been known that both Hoklo and Holo are terms used by Hakka people in Zhangzhou and Chaozhou areas to refer to Hokkien-speaking people, likely with a derogatory connotation.

When I visited the Museum of History in Hong Kong, I learned that people there refer to Teochew people as "Fuklo". If this is true, it would be totally inappropriate to call Hokkien people in Taiwan as Hoklo or its variation Holo, since they are not ethnic Teochew.

This leaves the discussion to Taiwanese. This is a popular term in widespread use. But it seems odd to me to call a language by the name of the place where only a minority of its speakers reside. (Well, you may use English as a counterargument. Only a minority of all English speakers in the world live in England. But we still call it English. But the thing is: English did originate from there, while Hokkien did not originate from Taiwan.) Another reason why this might be an inappropriate term is that it disrespects other ethnic groups who consider themselves to be "native" to Taiwan. For example, a Hakka person or an aborigine might question why their languages are excluded from being called "Taiwanese".

Even though Taiwanese Hokkien is an appropriate term, it is not without its shortcomings. It seems to be less problematic in southern part of Taiwan, namely, Jiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pindong and Taidong. In these areas, the accent of Hokkien is quite unitary. And the extent to amd ways in which Zhangzhou and Quanzhou accents are merged are very uniquely Taiwanese.

However, it is more problematic for nothern accents. For example, the accent of downtown Taipei is closer to Amoy than anything else, that of Tamsui closer to Tong'an and anything else, and that of Muzha closer to Anxi than anything else, etc. Each retains its proximity to its place of origin in China.

This being said, both southern and northern accents have large borrowed lexis from Japanese. This is uniquely Taiwanese, stemming from its colonial experience. Therefore, even northern accents, which are more closely related to their ancestral accents in China than their southern counterparts, can still legitimately be called Taiwanese Hokkien.

Mandarin as a Taiwan Language (MTL)

Mandarin used to be considered an outsider language in Taiwan. It was forced down people's throat with a high-handed "anti-dialect" campaign. But now it's become a Taiwan's language. The Taiwanese have adopted and appropriated it. So it can now carry the weight of the Taiwan identity. It's become the Language of the Heart" for the Taiwanese. They can use it unapologetically to express their Taiwanese-ness.

In the past, people were forced to feel "less than" because of their strong Taiwan accent in their Mandarin. Now, it's become an identity marker. Politicians even use it to their advantage. Many Waishengrens sometimes put on a stronger Taiwan accent when they want to emphasize their fraternity.

Well-educated urban Taiwanese think that their Mandarin is "biaozhun", just like newscasters. But that's being biaozhun in the Taiwansese standard. Mandarin speakers from outside of Taiwan recognize their so-called "biaozhun" speech as distinctly Taiwanese. Once I traveled to Japan with three of Taiwan's top news anchors. And we interviewed some scholars from mainland China. They all commented on the Taiwanese-ness of the news anchors' Mandarin. To Taiwanese ears, they just sound ""biaozhun", that's all. Taiwan Mandarin has become "transparent" to Taiwanese people. They don't notice anything special.

As you may well know, there are many "Taiwanisms" in Taiwan Mandarin. It's not my job to enumerate them here. But the Taiwanese speakers of Mandarin have invented enough new Mandarin words that can convey distinctly Taiwanese meaning. Just one example: Northern China Mandarin lacks words regarding rice. They don't eat it often. They prefer noodles. So the innovative Taiwanese borrowed words from Hokkien. So we say things like: "This mochi is very Q!"

I would go as far as to say that Mandarin is the new "Taiyu". Hokkien originated from Fujian Province in China. But nobody in Taiwan identify themselves with Fujian when they speak in it. The Taiwanese even call it "Taiyu". This is strange, come to think of it. There are more speakers of Hokkien outside of Taiwan, that is, in China and Southeast Asia, than there are in Taiwan. Yet, we still call it Taiyu. Maybe this is because the Taiwanese feel that they have already adopted and appropriated Hokkien enough to now call it a "local language".

Applying the same logic, why not call Mandarin "Taiwanese"? I know some foreigners who already do this.

Because of the historical accidents and  government educational policy, Hokkien has been in decline in Taiwan, other "dialects" even more so. But Mandarin has become the new Taiyu. This is a more powerful Taiyu, because it is shared by all who live in Taiwan. It is powerful also because it keeps creating new words and expressions to express Taiwanese minds and hearts.

Is there such a thing as the "northern accent" in Taiwan Hokkien?

2014年 新加坡 『福建人』:

http://youtu.be/yZfnBjbzWwk

Many non-linguist Taiwan people say that there are the "southern accent" and "northern accent" in Taiwan Hokkien. To that, I would answer: Yes, there's something which you may call a "southern Taiwan accent" if you want; but there's no such thing as one uniform "northern Taiwan accent."

Let me explain. I'll try to be brief and clear.

Everyone knows that there are different accents of Hokkien in different parts of Taiwan. They are all mixtures of various Quanzhou and Zhangzhou accents. It's just that they're mixed in different proportions. The Yilan accent, "suiN-suiN nuiN-nuiN" for "sng-sng nng nng", is the closest to Zhangzhou. Penang in Malaysia has a similar accent. Lugang accent is the closest to Quanzhou accent. All other Taiwan accents are somewhere in between. For example, Taipei urban accent is leaning toward the Quanzhou side in such a way that it is almost identical with the Amoy accent in China. Amoy has influenced Singapore a lot, so it's very close to Singapore Hokkien.

Without trying to oversimplify, if someone says "koe" for chicken, "tu" for pig, and "sian-siN" for a gentleman, that's Quanzhou accent. Quanzhou-oriented Taiwan accents include Amoy, Jinjiang, Tong'an and Anxi accents. It is spoken roughly along the coastal areas of Taichung, Zhanghua and various locations in the Taipei Basin. Older generation may even call you "lu", instead of "li", now prevalent all over Taiwan.

If, on the other hand, someone says a chicken should be called "ke", pig is "ti" and a mister is "sin-seN", you are hearing a Zhangzhou accent. There are not so many varieties of Zhangzhou accents in Taiwan for reasons I will tell you later, except that Yilan, Taoyuan, Nantou and inland Taichung are all Zhangzhou-dominated areas.

In northern Taiwan, there are very many different accents, caused by early migration patterns. For example in Taipei Basin alone, Amoy accent is spoken downtown, Jinjiang in Wanhua, Anxi in Muzha, Zhangzhou in Songshan, etc. In Shilin where I live, Zhangzhou accent is heard around the Mazu temple in the night market, but where I live closer to Shezi,  it's totally Tong'an accent.  (Tong'an accent is very noticeable, because they say "Tai-pak koaiN" instead of "Tai-pak koan" for Taipei County and "haiN" instead of "heng" for returning something borrowed. You still hear this often along Tamsui River in Shezi and Hougang areas of Shilin District.)

In Jiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pindong and Taidong, the situation is totally different. Everywhere you go, you hear the same accent. This is regardless of which part of Fujian their ancestors may come from. This accent is what I call the Common Taiwan Accent (CTA) or what Ang Ui-jin calls "Tai-oan iu-se im". It is closer toward Zhangzhou accent, but it's a leveled accent, meaning to say, different features of many accents are mixed together and "weird" features of each have been "flattened" toward the easier side. For example, "ke" is easier than "koe" so you go toward Zhangzhou for this word. On the other hand, Zhangzhou "sioN" is difficult to pronounce, so for this word. you choose the Quanzhou "siuN".

The reason for the uniformity is that migration from Fujian started earlier in the Jiayi-Tainan-Kaosiung area. So different accents have melted for longer time there. And Pindong and Taidong are populated with people originated from Kaohsiung.

CTA has become widespread all over Taiwan, replacing many Quanzhou-leaning accents. Amoy accent used to be considered  the standard in Taiwan in the past, because it's spoken in Taipei, and Scottish Presbyterian missionaries translated the Bible using this accent, and it had been the basis for Hokkien literacy in Taiwan. (Textbooks published in Japan mostly still use a Taipei-Amoy accent.) But it's now been replaced by CTA. The Hokkien textbooks that Taiwanese children use in schools now uses CTA. (They call it Tainan accent, which is inaccurate. For example, in Tainan accent, "good" is /hə/, instead of CTA "ho". ) The textbooks published within Taiwan for foreign learners also use CTA, much to the confusion of Japanese learners.

There are several possible reasons why CTA has become so prevalent. First, the influence of the media: Many Hokkien actors in Taiwan originated from koa-a-hi, which uses the Yilan accent, regardless of where the actor comes from. So they brought the Zhangzhou accent to TV screens. Second, Tainan has been a cultural center for Taiwan-independence-oriented people. Perhaps related to this, the vast majority of Hokkien newsreaders in Taiwan have Zhangzhou-leaning accents. (So much so that I find it easier to understand newscast from Amoy, China!) Third, because CTA is an accent which was born in Taiwan, it is not exactly the same as any accent found in China. This is quite unlike accents of northern Taiwan: For example, Taipei urban accent is almost the same as Amoy accent. So it appealed to the people who, for political reasons, wanted to dissociate themselves from mainland China. (It's the same logic as "Tongyong Pinyin"!) Finally, CTA could have spread with men who served in the military for the National Service. Perhaps because people came from all over Taiwan, and also perhaps because the ''southern-ness" of CTA appealed to the masculine identity of the military, it was used in the army and spread throughout Taiwan.

I have an anecdote that supports this last view. In my wife's family, her parents have a marked Tong'an accent. Womenfolk in her family have become Mandarin speakers, because back in their school days Hokkien was considered to be for bad girls, but retain a lot more Tong'an features than menfolk do. As for the male siblings, they have all gone CTA after completing the National Service!

Next time, I want to write about Hokkien spoken in Southeast Asia.

Cantonese as an identity marker among Malaysians residing in Taiwan

Thanks to my former student Goh Yi-yee, I've got those two  CNY TV commercials, one partly and the other entirely in Cantonese. The fact that Malay-owned companies choose to use Cantonese, not Hokkien or Mandarin, when trying to reach maximum Chinese-Malaysian audience shows how influential Cantonese is in Malaysia. Which is a bit strange come to think of it...

When I was in Malaysia, I hardly heard any Cantonese spoken except in Kuala Lumpur (KL) and Ipoh, where it is the lingua franca. So it was a mystery that almost all Chinese being heard on Malaysian TV and radio was Cantonese, when the biggest "dialect" group in Malaysia is actually Hokkien. But I was guessing that it must have been because the TV stations are in KL and many programs were imported from Hong Kong, so people had started thinking Cantonese was somehow cool.

Another big surprise, when I started having a lot of Chinese-educated Malaysians among my students here in Taiwan, was that Cantonese seemed to be an identity marker for them, regardless of whether they are ethnic Cantonese or not, or whether they come from Cantonese-speaking parts of Malaysia such as KL or Ipoh. In fact, even those from Penang, the heartland of Zhangzhou-accented Hokkien, East Malaysia where Cantonese people are almost non-existent, or southern peninsulr Malaysia, where Mandarin is much more prevalent than Cantonese because of the Singapore influence, were conversing with each other in Cantonese. And that was here in Taiwan, where practically nobody understands a word of Cantonese, perhaps with the only exception of "hou sai lei"!

Here are the results of my speculation after having lengthy conversations with my former and current Malaysian students.

Possible reason one: Identity marker
Like I said, most Taiwanese people don't have a clue when they hear Cantonese. But they do understand Mandarin spoken among Malaysians. So Cantonese can function as a fraternity language among Malaysians. That is to say, it makes them feel they are a part of the Malaysian community here. They're making themselves different from the Taiwanese who surround them. But why not other dialects? Why not Malay?

Possible reason two: Status of Cantonese in Malaysia itself
As I wrote at the beginning, Cantonese is considered something of a cool language in Malaysia, compared with other codes (=languages/dialects). Like I said in the last blog post, there is a domain segregation between Mandarin and Cantonese in central peninsular Malaysia. Mandarin is for "formal" occasions. Cantonese is for chit-chat among friends. This is exemplified in Malaysian FM stations. There, news reports on the hour are in Mandarin, and then it suddenly switches to Cantonese when the DJ's informal talk starts. Its informality makes it more suitable to be a fraternity code.

Possible reason three: The only non-Mandarin lingua franca
So Mandarin is out. Firstly because too many Taiwanese understand it! And secondly because it's too formal to be fraternal. Then, why not other "dialects", such as Hakka or even Teochew? (Hokkien is out, because Taiwanese understand it.) Well, excluding the important exceptions of Penang and Singapore where Hokkien is the lingua franca, can you think of anywhere in Malaysia where Chinese people from all ethno-linguistic subgroups speak with each other in a dialect? Nope, except Cantonese! Can non-Hakka people in some parts of Selangor or Kota Kinabalu speak Hakka? Can Hokkien people in Johor Baru speak Teochew and Foochow? Hardly, right? Cantonese is the only non-Mandarin "dialect" that is robust enough to be a lingua franca. (As for the reasons for its robustness, I've already written in another blog post. It's to do with British Hong Kong government's "clandestine" language policy.)

Possible reason four: Poor command of Malay
It's hard for non-Malaysians to believe, but it's true that there are lots of Malaysians who can't speak much Malay. Those who come to Taiwan to study are mostly from independent Chinese schools, so they've hardly had any chance to use Malay is all their lives. The Malay language is associated with ethnic Malays, who make up about the half of the total Malaysian population. And it's an open secret that many non-Malay Malaysians hold feelings ranging from ambivalent to sheer grudge towards Malays, whom many consider as receiving "undeserved" benefits. So the situation is totally different from those of Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. There, many Chinese people are monolingual in the national languages of the respective countries. On the other hand in Malaysia, Malay cannot be an identity marker for Chinese Malaysians living in Taiwan, for the practical reason that many can't speak it well in the first place.

So its got to be Cantonese. Nei chi m chi a?

Singapore influence? Fluent Mandarin speakers in southern peninsular Malaysia

The language life of young Chinese Malaysians in southern Malaysia has been influenced by the language policy of neighboring Singapore. This could be one of the examples of an interesting situation where the language policy of one country is affecting the populace in another.

Mandarin has different functions among Chinese-educated Malaysians in different parts of the country. I learned this from a conversation with one of my former students from Malaysia. I realized that I had been overgeneralizing. Here, I'm talking about those Chinese Malaysians who come from "Independent" Chinese Schools, in which that the sole medium of instruction is Mandarin. The situation in Malaysia is complex. So I'm excluding those who were educated in "National Form" Chinese schools, in which the medium of instruction is Malay or English at least for some subjects.

In southern peninsular Malaysia, namely Johor and Malacca, Mandarin has become the dominant language for almost all domains of life for younger people. This might be due to the influence of Singapore media, especially TV. Malacca is about the furthest point Singapore terrestrial TV signals can reach. In Singapore, the Chinese "dialects" are banned from public square since of the "Speak Mandarin Campaign". Therefore, all Singaporean Chinese TV programs are either produced in Mandarin or dubbed in it. In Singapore, as in Taiwan, Hong Kong films dubbed in Mandarin. (Which, I think, really sucks, in my opinion... It's quite daft to see "Fatt Gor" speaking in flunet Bejing-accent Mandarin!) Although Malaysian TV stations carry some programs in Cantonese, people in southern Malaysia generally prefer Singaporean TV stations. Because of this, students and graduates of independent Chinese schools in Johor are very fluent in Mandarin, and have an accent akin to standard Taiwanese Mandarin. If you walk into one of those schools now, you will hear students chit-chatting and gossiping in fluent Mandarin.

The situation is a little different in the rest of peninsular Malaysia. The Chinese communities in several important cities, such as Kuala Lumpur (KL) and Ipoh, are predominantly Cantonese-speaking. TV and radio stations are largely in KL, so this explains why Cantonese is so prevalent in Malaysia, even though Hokkien is the biggest Chinese ethnic group there. The Chinese-educated residents in those areas use Cantonese to converse with each other for daily purposes. Even though the medium of instruction is Mandarin, at least nominally, it is used only for formal situations, such as public ceremonies, speech contests, etc. Thus, people there feel more comfortable in Cantonese, while feeling insecure about their strongly-accented Mandarin. So Mandarin is restricted to formal domains. (By the way, I'm very interested in Cantonese being an identity marker for Chinese Malaysians residing in Taiwan. This is another story...)

The situation is similar in other cities in northern peninsular Malaysia, except that the dominant "dialect" may be Hokkien or Hakka. I once visited a city in the extreme north, where an Islamic political party has held power for a long time. I tried to socialize with students of a so-called Mandarin-medium school. Not only they spoke almost no Malay at all, they didn't even speak Mandarin well. So how do they communicate with each other? Hokkien, when at school or in town; and their own home "dialect", such as Cantonese or Teochew, when at home.

Sorry for sidetracking, but this suddenly reminded me of another interesting episode (for me). In that city in northern peninsular Malaysia, Chinese people watched Thai TV all the time. I asked them why. They said Thai pop music sounded better than Malaysian, especially Malay music, and that Thai TV programs were more entertainment-oriented than Muslim Malaysia. But do they understand the Thai language? Nope. I found out the answer when I visited the Thai side of the boarder. Thai people there spoke Hokkien! This was because there are many Malaysian Chinese tourists who visit there from Penang, a Hokkien-speaking city! This is another example of the language situation of one country influencing another, by the way.

Mandarin, not Hokkien: The first vehicle of pan-Taiwan identity

Mandarin has, for the first time, united various ethnic groups in Taiwan and strengthened Taiwan identity. Ironically, this is precisely what the government’s promotion of the language  was meant to prevent.

A parallel situation can be found in Burma, where Burmese became the language that united various anti-government forces even though it was the language that the Burmese authority was promoting in order to assert its Burmese identity and to marginalize other ethnic groups. (Kirkpatrick, 2010)

Until the end of the Qing dynasty rule, various ethnic groups of Taiwan did not have any common language, although Hokkien functioned as a Lingua Franca in a limited sense. When members of different ethnic groups had to contact with each other, they used Hokkien, as it was the language of the predominant ethnic group. Many people, perhaps most people, did not need to come in contact with other ethnic groups, so they were monolingual in whatever their ethnic language was. As for smaller communities of Hakka or Austronesian people surrounded by the sea of Hokkiens, they quickly assimilated and became Hokkien-speaking. So much so that many descendants of such people, both Hakka and Pepo-aboroginal, now consider themselves as ethnic Hokkien. The reverse almost never occurred. I mean, for example, few Hokkien people living among Hakkas assimilated to Hakka culturally and linguistically.

Under the Japanese rule, the colonial authority progressively promoted the use of Japanese, first as a medium of instruction (MoI), and then even as a home language. Consequently, Japanese became the island-wide lingua franca, especially among the well-educated and elites. As the contacts among the common mass increased, Hokkien also increased its importance as the lingua franca. Needless to say, Mandarin had not yet been promoted during this period, so only some sojourners originating from northern China and very few others knew the language.

So this was the situation the KMT government found itself in, when it took over the island in 1945 and then moved the provisional capital of the nation to Taipei in 1949. It faced resistance from Japanese/Hokkien-speaking local elites, so it was important for them to spread the use of Mandarin as soon as possible. The rest is the story you are all familiar with: The high-handed measures to promote Mandarin and eradicate “dialects” with such potential penalties as “dog-tags” and fines.

Hokkien remained the language of anti-KMT resistance and pro-Taiwan-independence nationalism until the end of 80's or probably even early 90's. When I first arrived in Taiwan in the early 90's, things were pretty straightforward: Hokkien-speaking taxi driver was pro-DPP betal nut chewer; and Mandarin-speaking professor in a suit and tie was a Waishengren and therefore pro-KMT/NP/PFP. It was also extremely common to spot older people anywhere in town who spoke better Japanese than me!

But things have changed a bit since then. Twenty years on, the chairperson of the DPP is a Hakka woman who doesn’t even speak Hokkien fluently. The younger generation has an ever stronger Taiwan identity and anti-Chinese sentiments, while at the same time being largely monolingual in Mandarin. (Even their parents probably only have limited proficiency in Hokkien.) It is no longer possible to distinguish a Waishengren from Benshengren solely from the way they speak Mandarin, unlike when I first came to Taiwan two decades ago. Indeed, some even don’t know which ethnic group they belong to themselves, other than the nationalistic sentiment that they are Taiwanese. (Matsuo, 2006) Mandarin has become the language of the heart as well as the mind of the Taiwanese people.

Ironically, Mandarin has become the language that united the various ethnic groups of Taiwan and thus a vehicle of ever-growing Taiwan identity.

I just read in a Kirkpatrick’s book that this is actually nothing uncommon. In Burma as in many countries, ethnic minorities have found solidarity and united force against the chauvinistic authority in the language of the authority itself. Come to think of it, would the anti-Spanish independence movement in the Philippines have been possible, without its leaders from different regions being able to communicate with other in Spanish? Perhaps the same applies to many, many post-colonial societies. And in the countries that have already become monolingualized, it is commonsense that the rulers and the opposition debate with each other in the same national language, which is the only choice for most people in that country.

Kirkpatrick, A. (2010). English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A multilingual model. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Matsuo, S. (2006). 台湾における言語意識と言語選択の実態. Taipei: 群學.