An inevitable consequence of applying monolingual assumptions to multilingual societies

This interesting article points out that Manobo languages in Mindanao are being lost to Cebuano, not to English or even Tagalog. It reports that people prefer to read the Bible in Cebuano and find the versions in their own languages "too difficult to read." It then challenges the age-old and mainly protestant claim that the Biblical messages are best conveyed in one's mother tongue.

Well, I would say such assumption derives from the linguistic nationalism arguments dating back to the Europe of Luther and Herder that needed to promote monolingualism. It fails to take into account the fact that Filipinos always code-mix and that one's primary language shifts over time and from domain to domain. That's why bible translations in a "pure" form of vernaculars are not so popular except in well-established ones like Tagalog, Cebuano and Ilocano. They sound "unnatural" with so many lengthy and unfamiliar words! They don't resemble the code-mixed form of the language they use in their everyday  lives!

Likewise, it's little wonder that some people prefer to read the Bible in English rather than in their own language. For me personally, too, colloquial translations like the Good News Bible (Today's English Translation) is far more readable than the predominant one in my language (New Interconfessional Version) which used formal register. Thanks to the GNB, my elementary-school-age daughters have access to the word of God. They will have to wait until at least after high school to have access to the formal register and unfamiliar kanjis in the Japanese bible. 

Vernacular=Christianity vs. Lingua Franca=Islam?

He said, in effect, Christianity spread rapidly in areas where literacy in local vernaculars was well established, whereas Islamization predominated in those where lingua francas were important. A very interesting observation indeed, although its applicability in areas outside Africa may be debatable. We also have to take into account that lingua francas may become mother tongues as a result of nativization and language shift. 

The Bible, the Brits and Hong Kong nationalism

British protestant missionaries believed a nation originated from a group of people who had the Bible translated into their own vernacular. 

This seems to be the case in Hong Kong, albeit with a 100-year time lag. 

Cantonese with its Hong Kong characteristics has been a defining feature of the emerging Hong Kong identity. 

Cantonese has become the lingua franca of Hong Kong, despite the fact that only about a half of the population of the British commercial enclave was from Canton, the rest coming from various linguistic backgrounds, including the local dialect which significantly differs from Cantonese.

This was probably due to the influence of Canton traders who had a history of trading with western merchants. 

The Brits apparently kept the lessez-faire  attitude to language matter in the territory, partly in fear of Chinese nationalism, whose medium was Mandarin, seeping in across the border. 

Fast forward to 90s and 00s: Very few residents felt they were anything other than "Hong Kong Chinese."

However, since it became clear that Beijing didn't honor One Country Two Systems formula in the 10s, more and more Hongkongers started to be attracted to Hong Kong independence movement, hitherto unpopular. 

One of the things that made them really feel they were different from the rest of the world was their lingo, now increasingly in its written form, spread wide thanks to informal publications like magazines and comics. 

The Bible didn't result in a Canton Nation, but a people seem to be emerging, at least partly thanks to the language policy (or lack thereof) of the British. 

絶滅した台湾シラヤ語を復活させようとするフィリピン人 A Taiwan-Philippine couple trying to revive Siraya

日本語は下に

When Martin Luther translated the Bible into vernacular, he had to choose one particular dialect of a Germanic dialect continuum. Thanks to the printing press, a lot of people read this Bible, even though what they spoke may have been different from the dialect used in it. Later on, that dialect developed into standard German. 

Protestants seem to have a "one language, one Bible, one nation" ideology. That's partly how the big European dialect continuum eventually became separated into established "national languages" like French, Italian, etc. That's also why western protestant missionaries had to make Bible translations in different dialects of China. But when they did that, just as in Europe, they also had to choose one particular dialect; in most cases, that of the major city in that area. For example, for Southern Min, they chose the dialect of Amoy, a hybrid dialect between Choan-chiu and Chiong-chiu dialects, which is still used in Bible translations in Taiwan. 

The article I share here is about a Taiwanese Pepo and Filipino Visayan couple who are working very hard to revive Siraya, an extinct Pepo language. They are quoted as saying they're doing it because Martin Luther said every person should be able to worship in the language of his own people. I think Luther wanted every people to be able to read the Bible in their "heart language." But when you have grown up speaking Taiwanese Hokkien and Taiwan Mandarin, aren't these your "heart language" already? 

シェアした記事は、今は 絶滅した台南のシラヤ語を、17世紀のオランダ人が訳したマタイ福音書を使って復興し、小学生に教えているフィリピン人の話：https://www.twreporter.org/a/taiwan-aborigines-siraya

マルティン・ルターが、みんなが自分の言葉で聖書を読めるようにと言って、聖書が民衆の口語に訳されたが、全部の方言で印刷しても印刷屋が儲からないので、主な町の方言を選んで訳した。それが、プロテスタントの「一つの言語、一つのエスニシティ、一つの聖書」という考えにつながっていると思う。それで結局、方言のグラデーションのようだったヨーロッパが、国家語ごとに分かれるようになった。

いろんな方言が混在していても、ヨーロッパの宣教師が辞書や文法書、聖書の訳を作るとなると、どこかの方言を選んで標準化する必要が出てくる。閩南語の場合は、泉州語に漳州語の要素が混入したアモイ語だった。これが台湾にもたらされて、日本時代の終わりまでは台湾語の事実上の標準語とされた。（それはたまたま台北方言にそっくりだった。しかし今、台湾の教育部が標準語扱いしているのは台南・高雄の台湾優勢腔。）

上の記事では、「シラヤ人である私達は、今、台湾語と北京語しかしゃべれないが、自分の民族語で神を賛美できるようになる必要があるので、シラヤ語の復活に尽力することにした」という意味のことが言われている。ほぼ全員が北京語を解するのにもかかわらず、必ず閩南語と客家語で次の駅のアナウンスをする台北市の公共交通機関に乗るたび、マルティン・ルターを思い出す。

Why New Taiwanese Bible is so Epoch-Making

A new edition of the protestant Bible Today's Taiwanese Version Romanized-Han Edition (現代台語聖經漢羅版), published late 2021, is quite epoch-making.

On each page, you see the romanized version in pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) on the left, Chinese characters on the right.

In order to understand its innovativeness, you need to have some background knowledge. Primarily, Taiwanese Hokkien (hereafter Taiwanese) is a language yet to be codified. That means, there is no single variety that is promoted by the government as the standard and accepted by all. Each place has its own variety, usually closer either to the Quanzhou or Zhangzhou dialect of Fujian. Traditionally, Amoy Version translated by Rev. Thomas Barclay and published in 1917, has been used in Hokkien-speaking churches across the world. As its name suggests, it uses the Amoy dialect, which is an amalgam leaning more towards the Quanzhou side. It is quite close to the local accent in the Taipei Basin, but not exactly the same. The Bible is typeset entirely in POJ only, which means the reader in Taiwan is forced to read it out with an Amoy accent, which is different from his or her own. The potential solution is a Taiwanese Bible entirely in Chinese characters. But the problem is that, like I said above, Taiwanese is not yet standardized, so there are potentially many different Chinese characters used to denote a single Taiwanese syllable. This causes trouble for the reader, because he or she does not know how a Chinese character should be pronounced in Taiwanese.

So this new version is quite revolutionary in at least two senses. First, the reader can now choose whether he or she wants to use the romanized version or Chinese characters version when he or she reads, solving the problem of different accents. This is useful in case the reader and/or audience are not familiar with the Amoy accent. The reader can choose to pronounce the Chinese characters in his or her own locally appropriate Taiwanese accent.

Second, this could reconciles the tension between the Old and New, in other words, the Amoy POJ tradition and newly emerging General Taiwanese (GT; 台灣優勢腔) accent. Traditionally, thanks to the Barclay's Bible, the standard orthography and pronunciation of the entire Hokkien-sphere have been the POJ and Amoy accent. However, starting from southwestern Taiwan, an amalgam accent called GT is spreading all across Taiwan, especially through the media. This variety is a Zhangzhou-based mixture, so it's quite distant from Amoy. The Ministry of Education (MoE) in Taipei has selected this variety (possibly for ideological reasons) and been using it in school textbooks. Because of mass media, this accent is becoming an unmarked one for many Taiwanese all over the island. The Tâi-lô (TL; 臺羅), the romanization system endorsed by the government although not yet widespread, is closely related to POJ. So it poses little problem for people who learned TL at school. 

Personally, I think the government should have just adopted POJ, which has been used to make people literate in Hokkien not just in Taiwan but also the rest of Hokkien-sphere. The motive behind TL, namely difficulty in typesetting, has already been overcome by new technology (unless the real motive was just trying to be as different as possible from the rest of the Hokkien-speaking world). If the publication of this new Bible will reverse the trend in favor of POJ remains to be seen.