Do Taiwanese speakers consider themselves Hokkien speakers?

Taiwanese Hokkien speakers in Taiwan, despite speaking substantially the same language, do not normally consider themselves to be belonging to the same speech community as the Hokkien speakers in Southeast Asia and Fujian Province in China. The reverse is probably also true, seen from the fact that Hokkien speakers from the Philippines customarily use Mandarin to communicate with Taiwanese speakers, despite their respective languages being mutually intelligible.

Mandarin now endonormative in Taiwan

Standard Mandarin used to be exonormative in Taiwan, but the norm giver later moved to the island, and then lost the mainland. Today, unless you are opposed to it for ideological reasons, Taiwan Mandarin is entirely endonormative in Taiwan, and has even become the "language of the heart" especially for the younger generation both domestically and among the diaspora.

台湾語と福建語

東南アジアの人が「福建語」と呼んでいるのは、福建省南部の泉州地区と漳州地区の言葉がいろいろに混ざったものです。フィリピンは泉州寄りで、ペナンは漳州寄りです。

 

福建省南部の港町アモイはイギリスの拠点だったので、周辺から人がたくさん集まって、この二つの地域の言葉が（割と泉州寄りに）混ざりました。キリスト教の宣教師は聖書をこのアモイ語に訳したり、辞書を作ったりしたので、ある程度標準化しました。福建省の中では少数派の言語なのに、Hokkienといえばこの言語を指すようになったのは、イギリス人のおかげです。

 

台湾北部の台北盆地やシンガポールは、アモイと泉漳両語の混ざり方が似ていた（どちらかというと泉州寄り）上に、イギリスの宣教師が訳した聖書も入ったので、アモイ語とほとんど同じ言葉をしゃべるようになりました。日本人は台湾を領有したときに台北を拠点にしたので、台湾語の辞書や教科書はこのアモイ語そっくりな台北の言葉になりました。今でも日本で売っている台湾語の教科書は、ほとんど台北よりの単語や発音です。

 

台湾では、地域によって、泉州寄りの言葉を喋っているところ（主に西部の海沿い）と漳州寄りのところ（西部内陸部と宜蘭）があります。南部の台南や高雄は、この台湾中の言葉が、割と漳州寄りに混ざって、新しい台湾語が発展しました。これが台湾の教科書やマスコミで使われている台湾語で、民主化時代以降、兵役や政治運動を通して男性を中心に広がりました。

 

東南アジアと台湾の福建語の違いは、もともと福建になかった西洋的や近代的なものや概念を、何語から借りたかです。マレーシア・シンガポールではマレー語と英語から、インドネシアではオランダ語から、フィリピンではスペイン語から、台湾では日本語から借りました。例えば、スーツのことをフィリピンでは「アメリカーノ」というのに、台湾では「セビロ」と言います。ただし戦後は北京語教育が普及したので、北京語を福建語読みした「セーツォン」もよく使われます。

 

香港やマカオには、インドネシアから移って来た華人がいっぱいいて、年配の世代は今でも福建語を使っています（子供たちには北京語で話しますが、結局彼らは広東語のモノリンガルに育ちます）。

 

違いはあるけれども、私はマレーシアやフィリピンに行って台湾語を喋って、ほとんど不自由なく通じました。実際、北京語以外の中国語が禁止されているシンガポールでも、台湾のテレビドラマの録画が、年配の世代を中心に人気がありました。

 

台湾人の中には、「台湾語」というからには台湾でしか通じないのか、と思っている人もいるかもしれません。香港や東南アジアに買い物に行ったとき、普段台湾で子供や外国人に聞かれたくないひそひそ話をするときに台湾語を使う癖がついつい出て、台湾語を喋ってしまうと、何を喋っているのかバレてしまう可能性があるので気をつけて。

 

余談ですが、今、日本に住んでいる福建省出身の人の多くは、福州の近くの福清の出身だそうです。そっちの方（福建省の北東部）は、アモイ語とは似ても似つかない言語を喋っています。福建省の言葉なのだから、彼らは自分たちが喋っているのを福建語というかもしれませんが、東南アジアでいう福建語や台湾語とは全然違う言葉で、全く通じないのであしからず。マレーシアのサラワクや、インドネシアの一部で話しているやつと近くて、Hokchiu とかHokchiaとか呼んでいます。台湾が有効支配している馬祖諸島でもこれに近いものを話しています。厳密には、福清語と福州語は違うが、福清人は多くが両方のバイリンガルだとも聞きます。福建省ではこの言語を話す人のほうがアモイ語を話す人より多いそうですが、東南アジアではマイナーな言語で、一部の群居地を除いては、周辺でメジャーな言葉に吸収されているようです。

 

私は福建語の未来に悲観的です。台湾を含め華人社会全体で北京語教育や現地語教育・英語教育が普及して、福建語はお祭りの儀式や教育を受けていないお年寄りとの言葉になっています。マレーシアなどでは若者が復興運動をやっていますが、影響力が今ひとつです。福建では強制的な北京語普及が行われていて、アモイの子供は半数以上福建語を話せないそうです。

 

こうなると、福建語存続のカギは台湾です。台湾では民主化以来、マスコミでも多く使われ、小学校の科目にもなっています。ですからほとんどの人が多少できますが、ほぼ台湾全土で、台湾語だけを日常的に使っている人たちは、やはり田舎のお年寄りなどが多い印象です。台湾語の牙城台南市での調査でも、小学生はほとんど家庭で北京語と英語しか使っておらず、台湾語を使うのは学校の台湾語の授業のときだけでした。最近、台湾政府が打ち出した「バイリンガル国家2030」という政策では、バイリンガルが指すのは北京語と英語のことです。このまま行くと、アイルランドのアイルランド語のように、象徴的な存在になってしまうでしょう。例えば、中国と対抗する意識を強調したい政治家が、普段の私生活は北京語と英語で行っているのに、演説のときだけわざと台湾語を使う、といった具合です。

 

台湾で、もともとは上から押し付けられた外来言語だった北京語ですが、台湾人に半世紀使用されて台湾のことを表現できるように台湾化して、学校や役所で使う「頭の言語」だけではなく、「心の言語」にもなっています。

 

最近、日本ではこの北京語を指して台湾華語という言い方も出てきましたが、私や私の家族は、詳細をいちいち説明するのは面倒くさいので、周りの日本人たちに対しては、この台湾化した北京語のことを敢えて「台湾語」と呼ぶときもあります。福建系の台湾人だけではなく、一部のお年寄りを除いたほぼ全員の台湾人に通じるのだから、福建語よりも、もっと「台湾語」と呼ばれる資格があるような気もしないではありません。

Teochew people

I once wrote that some Taiwanese people who identify themselves as Hokkien or Hakka might actually be descendants of Teochews.

Teochews are an interesting group of people among the overseas Chinese, whose ancestral land overlaps with that of Hakkas in the eastern part of Guangdong. Today, the main city is Swatow (Shantou) but it used to be Chaozhou in the past, from which the name of the group derive.

Although geographically from Guangdong, the Teochew language is closely related to Hokkien. Teochew spoken in places like Singapore is mutually intelligible with Hokkien, perhaps because it has been under the heavy influence from the latter, who form the majority there. But I heard that Teochew spoken in Swatow today is not readily intelligible to Hokkien speakers from Amoy.

The majority of ethnic Chinese in Thailand and Cambodia are Teochews, and even the royal family of the former has some Teochew ancestry.

The first Teochews who came into personal contact with me was a refugee family from Cambodia at the Chinese mass community back when it still met at Sophia University. That made me realize that the family running my favorite restaurant Cambodia in Takadanobaba actually was also Teochew.

The Singaporean exchange student I met also at the Chinese mass was also Teochew, and so was the family I stayed with when I was in Johor Baru, Malaysia, on my way to the UK back in 1992.

While I was in Hull, I once visited a Singaporean lady who married with a local English person. I remember she was also Teochew. The wife of one of my best friends from my Hull years is also Teochew, who come from an area close to Thai border on the east coast of Malaysia. Since Teochews from the majority of Thai Chinese, her family might have also moved from Thailand.

By the way, Mr. Li Ka-shing, one of the richest tycoons in Hong Kong, is also a Teochew and there's a YouTube video of him speaking in Teochew. Unfortunately, he is not a personal friend of mine.

Do you have any Teochew friends? Tell me about them.

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.

Is not promoting a language the best way to promote it? Examples from Hong Kong and Taiwan

I used to laugh at my mother who said in her blog posts almost everyday that she had spent the whole night writing a long post, and then it got deleted. Now the same thing has happened to me. Two lessons: First, you should not laugh at others, especially your own mother; Second, when you have written a post, publish it quickly. To do this, don't write posts that are so long that it needs to be reviewed before publishing.

Is not promoting a language the best way for the authorities to promote a language? I sometimes think it is. I'll show you two examples: Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The British authorities had a so-called laissez-faire approach toward languages in Hong Kong. But I have already written that this was a hidden way of promoting Cantonese, so that Hong Kong will have a different dominant language from mainland China. Although Cantonese-speaking people made up only half of the total population, it was possible to foresee that Cantonese would win out, given its influence in commercial and cultural spheres. In fact, Cantonese was so successful that it almost supplanted the local language of Hong Kong, Hakka, as well as other Chinese "dialects" originally spoken. Today, you could argue that Hong Kong is a pseudo-monolingual society in Cantonese. It is a symbol of Hong Kong identity, which is separate from that of mainland China. What a successful way of promoting Cantonese? And this was achieved by not promoting it.

Taiwan's example is somewhat reverse. Both the Japanese and KMT administration had very high-handed policy of trying to eradicate local languages and promoting Japanese and Mandarin respectively. They both did it by forcing those schoolchildren who transgressed the no-local-language policy to wear a dog tag that said something like "I am stupid". Intimidating local people succeeded in promoting the official language only superficially. Many Taiwanese people who grew up in that era, consciously or unconsciously, try to speak Mandarin with a very strong Taiwanese accent. Some even try to avoid the use of Mandarin altogether, sticking to Hokkien whenever they can. On the other hand, look at the younger generation who grew up after the democratic reform. The aggressive promotion of Mandarin was replaced by so-called "Mother Tongues" made a school subject. And yet, those people have now become native-speakers of Mandarin, fully comfortable with expressing their Taiwanese identity in this tongue that originated from Beijing! Recently, I often notice that some students even use the word "Taiwanese" to mean Mandarin, not Hokkien!

And what has happened to Hokkien, which is now "officially promoted" as a school subject? I'm sorry to say, but it seems that it is going the way of Irish in Ireland. Very soon, Taiwanese people will only be able to say some peculiar phrases and swear words in Hokkien, or hum some Hokkien tunes like "TiN-o'-o'" which they have learned at school, but not being able to convey any substantial message in Hokkien.

(But this will not mean the death of Hokkien; more than half of its speakers are outside of Taiwan; in China, Southeast Asia and Taiwanese communities in the U.S. and Japan. They will probably keep alive the language which will no longer be understood in Taiwan!)

Code-mixing in Taipei Mandarin

The most prevalent code among the young generation in Taipei is Taipei Mandarin, with extensive code-switching, especially with Taiwanese Hokkien lexis. Or so I thought.

I was recently surprised to have come across a young person who has lived all her life here in Taipei, but Taiwanese Hokkien was not among her repertoire for code-switching.

She could not follow the conversation I was having with my daughter and my wife, which was being conducted in Taipei Mandarin with some borrowed words from Taiwanese Hokkien. It was something along the line of: 「如果你把a-kong的te-koh kong-phoa的話，他一定會很生氣。」 I was being careful not to insert too many English or Japanese words in my utterances, in order to accommodate this young lady. But to my surprise, she only understood the Mandarin part, or so she claimed.

I didn't get to ask her background, but I would assume from her job description that she must have been educated in Taiwan at least until university. So it came to me as a surprise that she even didn't know some Hokkien words which I had considered to be basic.

In the past, I occasionally came across older generation people with roots in the mainland, who claimed that they understood no Taiwanese Hokkien, because they considered it to be a low-class dialect. It is rare to find this sort of ideology among the youth in Taipei nowadays, regardless of their cultural background. So I suspect that this girl I met yesterday was being sincere when she said she didn't understand us.

The lesson I learned from this incident is that I need to be more careful about accommodating my interlocutors, even if they are young people from Taipei, by sticking to Mandarin words whenever possible and appropriate.

Trilingual medical personnel in Taiwan

Medical personnel in Taiwan are at least trilingual. At the physical theapy room in a hospital where I visit twice a week, the language I hear most often is Taiwanese Hokkien. This is because most of the patients are elderly. The therapists communicate with them in Hokkien, of course, but I can tell that many of the young therapists are not very fluent in it. They must have grown up speaking almost exclusively Mandarin like other young people in Taiwan, and received special training in Hokkien to deal with Hokkien-monolingual patients. When they converse with other therapists regarding something they don't want their patients to overhear, for example someone's medical condition, they switch to English (Another instance of the boundary between the Outer and Expanding Circles being blurred). This is normal because medical training in Taiwan heavily use English. Aside from this, many doctors and nurses can speak Japanese as well.  I also know of some Filipino doctors practicing in Taiwan who are multilingual in this way. (They can speak Mandarin, Taiwanese-style Hokkien, as well as English, Filipino, Philippine-style Hokkien and perhaps even one more Philippine language!) I also know of a second-generation mainlander who had aspired to become a doctor in Taiwan, but gave up because of her failure to master Hokkien. It's difficult being a doctor in Taiwan and unable to speak Hokkien, because many patients are elderly.

Zhanghua Yuanlin (彰化員林) accent

My wife has a cousin who is a lawyer in San Francisco. Despite the fact that he has lived all his life in the United States, he speaks Taiwanese Hokkien (Hoklo, Amoy, Southern Min) fluently. How fluently? I would say much more fluent than someone of the same age who has lived in Taiwan all his life. He can make a speech in Hokkien ad lib. But there's one marked feature in his Hokkien: A Yuanlin accent.

Yuanlin accent probably is one of the very few accents that have features conncected only to one locality in Taiwan. Other marked accents, for example those closer to Quanzhou accent can be heard in many places along the west coast. Those markedly close to Zhangzhou accent can be heard in Yilan as well as in the south.

The special feature of the Yuanlin accent is that "eng" is pronounced as /eng/. So people say: "ki-a-BENG, BENG-BENG LENG-LENG. (枝仔冰，冰冰冷冷。)"

What is more interesting is how this feature survived in cousin's accent. His mother grew up in Taichung City, with her roots in Zhanghua. Her father had worked in Yuanlin for a time, and that's how he picked up the feature. Cousin's mother then immigrated to the United States while she was still relatively young.

Had she stayed in Taiwan, I think this feature could have disappeared by assimilation to the mainstream Taiwan accent, which is to pronounce "ing" as /ing/ or /ieng/. And had the cousin grown up in Taiwan, he could have lost Hokkien altogether in favour of Mandarin.

This is similar to how Hokkien-speaking girls in Taiwan tend to preserve marked features than men, because they seldom use the language outside of their own families. This is a topic I will write about some other time.

Sacred Heart Cathedral: IAWE conference in Hong Kong and Guangzhou (Day 4-2)

After the end of the conference, I hurried to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart to attend the anticipated mass. Thanks to Wendy's help, I was able to take the bus and find the place easily. The area seemed to be the old trading part of Guangzhou with many small warehouses and shops. The building there are very similar to ones seen in places like Kuala Lumpur, where a lot of Cantonese people migrated to. I love old southern Chinese shop houses. I wish I had more time to explore the old part of Guangzhou. Another reason to go back.

The Cathedral was built by the Paris Foreign Mission, just like many churches in Japan. So it has a familiar French Gothic feel, similar to the one in, for example, Ho Chi Minh City. A bit different from the Spanish style more prevalent in Taiwan, Xiamen and the Philippines. 

Back of the church. Renovated very well. When I first visited the St. Ignatius Church in Shanghai back in 1997, it was quite dilapidated with bullet holes still visible on the wall, possible caused by the red guards during the cultural revolution. But the condition here and now seems even better than the cathedral in Saigon. 

The church was packed with young people. I noticed that most of them were non-Catholics just visiting. It seems that there are quite a lot of young people who are interested to "come and see" to find out about the Christianity. There were also quite a lot of catechetical materials being distributed at the entrance of he church. I often hear the argument in Taiwan that the general apathy among the youth toward religion is because of affluence. But Guangzhou is not much less affluent than Taipei! 

Look how well-dressed those children are. Another evidence of the high standard of living in Guangzhou.

After feeding the spirit, now it's time to feed the stomach. I went into the first restaurant I saw after coming out of the gate of the church. A 小菜 made with potatoes is very uncommon in Taiwan. Taiwanese people regard potatoes to be something foreign. That's why it's called 洋芋. On the other hand, 土豆, which literally means "local bean" and used for potatoes in the mainland, means peanuts in Taiwan. I don't think many users of "土豆網" in Taiwan know that they are using the "Potato Net", though...

Even in the world capital of MSG, the wave of health freak food is coming...

I know I'm not in Beijing, but I have to eat this at least once whenever I'm in any part of China. Thanks to the presence of migrant workers from northern China, one could get good zhajiangmian even in Guangdong.

I was quite surprised that I had to pay nearly NT$200 for this dinner for one. And I don't think I got ripped off, like most foreigners used to do in the past in China. It just shows that food in Guangzhou is really no cheaper than Taipei. (I was going to check out a massage place after this, like I always used to do whenever I visited China. ) 

 

Wendy was so kind as to get those shouxin (sauseun; Cantonese for souvenir) for me, and brought them all the way to the venue of the conference. I appreciated it very much, because I really had no time to do any shopping at all. Thank you, Wendy! A kind of old southern Chinese shophouses is featured in the packaging of the first shouxin.

By the way, if you are in Guangzhou area right now, I strongly urge you to visit the cathedral at least once. It's well worth a visit!

(To be continued)