The most commonly used home language in Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, 2010. ('cmn' = "Mandarin" 'nan' = "Hokkien"/"Min Nan" 'hak' = "Hakka" 'map' = Austronesian languages)
After World War II, a long martial law era was held in Taiwan. Policies of the government in this era suppressed languages other than Mandarin in public use. This has significantly damaged the evolution of local languages, including Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, Formosan languages, and the Matsu dialect. The situation had slightly changed since the 2000s when the government made efforts to protect and revitalize local languages.[6] Local languages became part of elementary school education in Taiwan, laws and regulations regarding local language protection were established for Hakka and Formosan languages, and public TV and radio stations exclusively for these two languages were also established. Currently, the government of Taiwan also maintains standards for several widely spoken languages listed below; the percentage of users are from the 2010 population and household census in Taiwan.[7]
Families of Formosan languages before Chinese colonization, per Blust.[8] Malayo-Polynesian (red) may lie within Eastern Formosan (purple). Note that the white section in the northwest of the country does not indicate a complete absence of aboriginal people from that part of Taiwan. On Chinese-language sources,[9] this area is listed as the homeland of various Plains Indigenous groups (e.g. the Kulon), and certain other groups (e.g. the Taokas) are arranged slightly differently than they are on the above map.Percentage of residents using an indigenous language at home in 2010.
The Taiwanese indigenous languages or Formosan languages are the languages of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples. Taiwanese aborigines currently comprise about 2.3% of the island's population.[10] However, far fewer can still speak their ancestral language after centuries of language shift. It is common for young and middle-aged Hakka and aboriginal people to speak Mandarin and Hokkien better than, or to the exclusion of, their ethnic languages. Of the approximately 26 languages of the Taiwanese aborigines, at least ten are extinct, another five are moribund,[11] and several others are to some degree endangered. The government recognizes 16 languages and 42 accents of the indigenous languages.
All Formosan languages are slowly being replaced by culturally dominant Mandarin. In recent decades the government started an aboriginal reappreciation program that included the reintroduction of Formosan mother tongue education in Taiwanese schools. However, the results of this initiative have been disappointing.[12][13] The television station Taiwan Indigenous Television and radio station Alian 96.3 were created as efforts to revive the indigenous languages. Formosan languages were made an official language in July 2017.[14][15]
The Amis language is the most widely spoken aboriginal language on the eastern coast of the island, where Hokkien and Hakka are less present than on the western coast. The government estimates put the number of Amis people at a little over 200,000, but the number of people who speak Amis as their first language is lower than 10,000.[16] Amis has appeared in some mainstream popular music.[17] Other significant indigenous languages include Atayal, Paiwan, and Bunun. In addition to the recognized languages, there are around 10 to 12 groups of Taiwanese Plains Indigenous Peoples with their respective languages.
Some indigenous people and languages are recognized by local governments. These include Siraya (and its Makatao and Taivoan varieties) to the southwest of the island. Some other language revitalization movements are going on Basay to the north, Babuza-Taokas in the most populated western plains, and Pazeh bordering it in the center west of the island.
Mandarin is commonly known and officially referred to as the national language (國語; Guóyǔ) in Taiwan. In 1945, following the end of World War II, Mandarin was introduced as the de facto official language and made compulsory in schools. Before 1945, Japanese was the official language and taught in schools. Since then, Mandarin has been established as a lingua franca among the various groups in Taiwan: the majority Taiwanese-speaking Hoklo (Hokkien), the Hakka who have their own spoken language, the aboriginals who speak aboriginal languages; as well as Mainland Chineseimmigrated in 1949 whose native tongue may be any Chinese variant.
People who emigrated from mainland China after 1949 (12% of the population) mostly speak Mandarin Chinese.[18]Mandarin is almost universally spoken and understood.[19] It was the only officially sanctioned medium of instruction in schools in Taiwan from late 1940s to late 1970s, following the handover of Taiwan to the government of the Republic of China in 1945, until English became a high school subject in the 1980s and local languages became a school subject in the 2000s.
Taiwanese Mandarin (as with Singlish and many other situations of a creole speech community) is spoken at different levels according to the social class and situation of the speakers. Formal occasions call for the acrolectal level of Standard Chinese of Taiwan (國語; Guóyǔ), which differs little from the Standard Chinese of China (普通话; Pǔtōnghuà). Less formal situations may result in the basilect form, which has more uniquely Taiwanese features. Bilingual Taiwanese speakers may code-switch between Mandarin and Taiwanese, sometimes in the same sentence.
Many Taiwanese, particularly the younger generations, speak Mandarin better than Hakka or Hokkien, and it has become a lingua franca for the island amongst the Chinese dialects.[20]
There are both colloquial and literary registers of Taiwanese. Colloquial Taiwanese has roots in Old Chinese. Literary Taiwanese, which was originally developed in the 10th century in Fujian and based on Middle Chinese, was used at one time for formal writing but is now largely extinct. Due to the era of Taiwan under Japanese rule, a large amount of loanwords from Japanese also appear in Taiwanese. The loanwords may be read in Kanji through Taiwanese pronunciation or simply use the Japanese pronunciation. These reasons make the modern writing Taiwanese in a mixed script of traditional Chinese characters and Latin-based systems such as pe̍h-ōe-jī or the Taiwanese romanization system derived from pe̍h-ōe-jī in official use since 2006.
Recent work by scholars such as Ekki Lu, Sakai Toru, and Lí Khîn-hoāⁿ (also known as Tavokan Khîn-hoāⁿ or Chin-An Li), based on former research by scholars such as Ông Io̍k-tek, has gone so far as to associate part of the basic vocabulary of the colloquial language with the Austronesian and Tai language families; however, such claims are not without controversy. Recently there has been a growing use of Taiwanese Hokkien in the broadcast media.
Accent differences among Taiwanese dialects are relatively small but still exist. The standard accent — Thong-hêng accent (通行腔) is sampled from Kaohsiung city,[23] while other accents fall into a spectrum between
Hái-kháu accent (海口腔): representing the accent spoken in Lukang, close to Quanzhoudialect in China, and
Lāi-po͘ accent (內埔腔): representing the accent spoken in Yilan, close to Zhangzhoudialect in China.
Much of Taiwanese Hokkien is mutually intelligible with other dialects of Hokkien as spoken in China and South-east Asia (such as Singaporean Hokkien), but also to a degree with the Teochew variant of Southern Min spoken in Eastern Guangdong, China. It is, however, mutually unintelligible with Mandarin and other Chinese languages.
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Townships/cities and districts in Taiwan where Hakka is a statutory regional language according to the Hakka Basic Act
Hakka (客家語; Hak-kâ-ngî) is mainly spoken in Taiwan by people who have Hakka ancestry. These people are concentrated in several places throughout Taiwan. The majority of Hakka Taiwanese reside in Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli. Varieties of Taiwanese Hakka were officially recognized as national languages.[3] Currently the Hakka language in Taiwan is maintained by the Hakka Affairs Council. This governmental agency also runs Hakka TV and Hakka Radio stations. The government currently recognizes and maintains five Hakka dialects (six, if Sixian and South Sixian are counted independently) in Taiwan.[24]
Cantonese is mainly spoken by immigrants from Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong, and Macau. Various Cantonese-speaking communities exist throughout Taiwan, and the use of the language in Taiwan continues to increase.
There are a reported 87,719 Hongkongers residing in Taiwan as of the early 2010's;[26] however, it is likely that this number has increased following emigration following political tension from the Hong Kong national security law in 2020.[27]
Written vernacular Chinese is the standard of written Chinese used in official documents, general literature and most aspects of everyday life, and has grammar based on Modern Standard Mandarin. Vernacular Chinese is the modern written variant of Chinese that supplanted the use of classical Chinese in literature following the New Culture Movement of the early 20th Century, which is based on the grammar of Old Chinese spoken in ancient times. Although written vernacular Chinese had replaced Classical Chinese and emerged as the mainstream written Chinese in the Republic of China since the May Fourth Movement, Classical Chinese continued to be widely used in the Government of the Republic of China. Most government documents in the Republic of China were written in Classical Chinese until reforms in the 1970s, in a reform movement spearheaded by President Yen Chia-kan to shift the written style to a more combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文）.[28][29] After January 1, 2005, the Executive Yuan also changed the long-standing official document writing habit from vertical writing style to horizontal writing style.
Today, pure Classical Chinese is occasionally used in formal or ceremonial occasions and religious or cultural rites in Taiwan. The National Anthem of the Republic of China (中華民國國歌), for example, is in Classical Chinese. Taoist texts are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed. Buddhist texts, or sutras, are still preserved in Classical Chinese from the time they were composed or translated from Sanskrit sources. In practice, there is a socially accepted continuum between vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese. Most official government documents, legal, courts rulings and judiciary documents used a combined vernacular Chinese and Classical Chinese style (文白合一行文）.[30] For example, most official notices and formal letters are written with a number of stock Classical Chinese expressions (e.g. salutation, closing). Personal letters, on the other hand, are mostly written in the vernacular, but with some Classical phrases, depending on the subject matter, the writer's level of education, etc.
In recent times, following the Taiwan localization movement and an increasing presence of Taiwanese literature, written Hokkien based on the vocabulary and grammar of Taiwanese Hokkien is occasionally used in literature and informal communications.
Chinese language romanization in Taiwan tends to be highly inconsistent. Taiwan still uses the Zhuyin system and does not commonly use the Latin alphabet as the language phonetic symbols. Traditionally Wade–Giles is used. The central government adopted Tongyong Pinyin as the official romanization in 2002, but local governments are permitted to override the standard as some have adopted Hanyu Pinyin and retained old romanizations that are commonly used. However, in August 2008, the central government announced that Hanyu Pinyin would be the only system of romanization of Standard Mandarin in Taiwan as of January 2009.
Zhuyin Fuhao, often abbreviated as Zhuyin, or known as Bopomofo after its first four letters, is the phonetic system of Taiwan for teaching the pronunciation of Chinese characters, especially in Mandarin. Mandarin uses 37 symbols to represent its sounds: 21 consonants and 16 rimes. Taiwanese Hokkien uses 45 symbols to represent its sounds: 21 consonants and 24 rimes. There is also a system created for Hakka language.
These phonetic symbols sometimes appear as ruby characters printed next to the Chinese characters in young children's books, and in editions of classical texts (which frequently use characters that appear at very low-frequency rates in newspapers and other such daily fares). In advertisements, these phonetic symbols are sometimes used to write certain particles (e.g., ㄉ instead of 的); other than this, one seldom sees these symbols used in mass media adult publications except as a pronunciation guide (or index system) in dictionary entries. Bopomofo symbols are also mapped to the ordinary Roman character keyboard (1 = bo, q = po, a = mo, and so forth) used in one method for inputting Chinese text when using a computer. In more recent years, with the advent of smartphones, it has become increasingly common to see Zhuyin used in written slang terms instead of typing full characters – for example ㄅㄅ replacing 拜拜 (bye bye). It is also used to give phrases a different tone, like using ㄘ for 吃 (to eat) to indicate a childlike tone in the writing.
The sole purpose of Zhuyin in elementary education is to teach standard Mandarin pronunciation to children. Grade one textbooks of all subjects (including Mandarin) are entirely in zhuyin. After that year, Chinese character texts were given in annotated form. Around grade four, the presence of Zhuyin annotation is greatly reduced, remaining only in the new character section. School children learn the symbols so that they can decode pronunciations given in a Chinese dictionary and also so that they can find how to write words for which they know only the sounds. Even among adults, it is almost universally used in Taiwan to explain the pronunciation of a certain character being referred to by others.
Vietnamese: There are somewhere around 200,000 Vietnamese in Taiwan, many of whom speak Vietnamese. There has been some effort, particularly beginning in 2011, to teach Vietnamese as a heritage language to children of Vietnamese immigrants.[33]
Malay: Malay language are understandable by Malaysian Chinese and Bruneian Chinese as their national language. However, very few of them adopt Malay language as first language.
English: English is widely taught as a foreign language, with some large private schools providing English instruction. Taiwan's government under the 2030 Bilingual Nation policy promulgated last 2017 to make English an official language and to provide for English to become a second language by 2030.[34]
^ abcdefghijkNot designated but meets legal definition, that is "本法所稱國家語言，指臺灣各固有族群使用之自然語言及臺灣手語。"[2] ("a natural language used by an original people group of Taiwan and the Taiwan Sign Language")
^Blust, Robert (1999). "Subgrouping, Circularity and Extinction: Some Issues in Austronesian Comparative Linguistics". In Zeitoun, Elizabeth; Li, Jen-kuei (eds.). Selected Papers from the Eighth International Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. Taipei: Academia Sinica. ISBN9789576716324.
^Cheng, Robert L. (1994). "Chapter 13: Language Unification in Taiwan: Present and Future". In Rubinstein, Murray (ed.). The Other Taiwan: 1945 to the Present. M.E. Sharpe. p. 362. ISBN9781563241932.
^"100 Nián 12 yuè" 100年12月 [December 2011]. Nèizhèng bù rù chūguó jí yímín shǔ (in Chinese). 2012-01-20. Archived from the original on 7 March 2014. Retrieved 2010-07-12.
^Tsao, Feng-fu (2000). "The Language Planning Situation in Taiwan". In Baldauf, Richard B.; Kaplan, Robert B. (eds.). Language Planning in Nepal, Taiwan, and Sweden. Vol. 115. Multilingual Matters. pp. 60–106. ISBN978-1-85359-483-0. pages 75–76.
^Cheong, Ching (2001). Will Taiwan Break Away: The Rise of Taiwanese Nationalism. World Scientific. p. 187. ISBN978-981-02-4486-6.
^Fischer, Susan; Gong, Qunhu (2010). "Variation in East Asian Sign Language Structures". In Brentari, Diane (ed.). Sign Languages. Cambridge University Press. p. 501. ISBN978-1-139-48739-9.
^Yeh, Yu-ching; Ho, Hsiang-ju; Chen, Ming-chung (2015). "Learning Vietnamese as a Heritage Language in Taiwan". Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development. 36 (3): 255–265. doi:10.1080/01434632.2014.912284. S2CID143320658.
