The word "genocide" was coined in a 1944 book by Raphael Lemkin called "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" in which he wrote:
"Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
Four years later, in 1948, the UN passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Under the above conditions, the Japanese colonial system, then the KMT's policies, led in large part to the "integration of ... the past five decades," (Editorial, January 10, pg. 8) as you term it. So your editorial which "argues" against "nativeness" and mandatory language training classes is an acceptance of this infamy.
Colonization has resulted in a serious loss of cultural diversity.
Let us consider the following. According to a 1996 Ethnologue report, [www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Taiw.html] of the 28 languages listed for Taiwan, 13 are extinct or nearly extinct -- all Aboriginal languages. Several, if not all, of the remaining indigenous languages are endangered due to the low number of young people speaking them.
Legal protection in the form of mandatory mother language teaching is one element that may help balance the onslaught of the dominant settler culture against Taiwan's Aboriginal peoples. Other essential measures include large scale restoration of lands, and compensation for past repression.
Languages are not merely a "tool for communication" but are an essential part of any culture. Your preaching of "free market principles" is Neo-liberal fundamentalism which seeks to commodify everything. It also accepts the tyrannical legacy of the Japanese and the KMT, which caused so much devastation to Taiwan's Aboriginal cultures.
There will be difficulties in implementing multi-lingual education but the alternative is what Vandana Shiva, a noted Indian human rights activist, has termed a "monoculture of the mind."
Mark Munsterhjelm
Taipei
The old way is the best
I enjoyed reading your editorial "Romanization must strike a balance" (Page 8, Jan. 9) and have a few comments.
What's most interesting to me is the statement that "the Wade-Giles system should be rescinded from the list of potential systems for future deliberations" because "a total of 136 syllables require additional phonetic signs or diacritic marks, making it a fairly cumbersome system for printing and typing."
This is interesting because if there is any logic and consistency in these people's thinking, this same argument should have led them to eliminate all the other three systems, ie Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1986), China Hanyu Pinyin and Taiwan Tongyong Pinyin, because a total of some 400 or so syllables still require additional phonetic signs or diacritic marks to accurately represent the Chinese phonemic system.
The differences between Wade-Giles, Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1986), Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin, especially those between the latter three, are really trivial. They share the same underlying design principle that tones are optional add-on features.
Fundamentally different from this design principle is Gwoyeu Romatzyh, also known as Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II (1928), which treats tones as phonemic and an inalienable component of the Chinese syllable, resulting in the capability of representing the entire Chinese phonemic system without resorting to the use of any diacritic marks.
RSS