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. 

The power of government sanction

The power of government sanction: Tâi-lô, the system advocated by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, is quickly replacing the century-old Pe̍h-ōe-jī, surprisingly even in Malaysia and the Philippines. POJ is a well-established system with lots of publications. This shows what really counts is official recognition and promotion by a government, despite the fact that this alienates proponents of other systems. It is so ironic: The whole point about Taiwan switching from POJ to Tailo was to detach itself from the rest of the Sinosphere. What it actually did was to unwittingly "unite" the rest of the Hokken-speaking world. It's probably why Taiwan is now promoting Chinese-characters-based writing system, which is not readily available to non-Chinese-educated Southeast Asians.

Advantage of Chinese over Japanese 日本語に対する中国語の利点 中文優於日文的優勢

An advantage of Chinese over Japanese: The meanings of the scientific names of dinosaurs are apparent, even without knowledge of Latin and Greek. For example Brachiosaurus is 腕龍, which literally means "arm dragon." 

An advantage of Japanese over Chinese: Despite meaning of katakana being obscure, Japanese users have easy access to western literature on dinosaurs because the names sound substantially the same. 

日本語に対する中国語の利点: ラテン語やギリシャ語の知識がなくても、恐竜の学名の意味は明らかです。たとえば、ブラキオサウルスは腕龍で、文字通り「腕の龍」を意味します。

中国語に対する日本語の利点: カタカナの意味が不明であるにもかかわらず、日本人ユーザーは名前が実質的に同じように聞こえるため、恐竜に関する西洋の文献に簡単にアクセスできます.

中文優於日文的優勢：即使不懂拉丁語和希臘語，恐龍學名的含義也很明顯。例如腕龍就是腕龍，字面意思是“臂龍”。

日語優於中文的優勢：儘管片假名的含義晦澀難懂，但日本用戶可以輕鬆參考西方有關恐龍的文獻，因為名稱聽起來基本相同。

Written Taiwanese in movie subtitles 映画字幕の台湾語

Groundbreaking! Written Taiwanese, in a mixture of Chinese characters and romanized alphabet, as currently promoted by the government, accompanied solely by English, with no Mandarin in sight. In a children’s film at the National Taiwan museum. 国立台湾博物館で今日撮りました。画期的です。子供向けの映画で、教育部が推進している漢字ローマ字混じりの台湾語と英語のみの字幕。北京語は全くありません。

A "Russian doll" problem 2

I heard a teacher in southern Philippines complain that she now had to deal with three "foreign" languages instead of two. Previously, she and her students only had to struggle with Filipino and English. Now, in addition to that, she also has to deal with a variety of Cebuano which differs from the local vernacular. Only because the government designated her area to be part of the Cebuano-speaking region. 

A "Russian doll" problem 1

To revitalize a minority language, someone first has to pick one of the many existing varieties, develop it, codify it, write a grammar in it, make a dictionary in it, and teach it to promote it. People who speak other varieties of the same language feel disenfranchised. And they resist the top-down imposition of a "foreign" variety. Actually, the promoters of the minority language is doing exactly what they opposed and resisted when done by the promoter of the majority language. 

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.