Invisible languages
The news item discussing aboriginal affairs ("Writers win Awards," Dec. 21, page 3) spoke about three Aborigines receiving recognition for their work at the Fourth Aboriginal Reporting Literature Awards Ceremony.
I suppose that for this ceremony, as for the previous three, many thousands of words were submitted by the contestants, but I wonder how many were actually aboriginal words -- a thousand, a hundred, ten, even one?
In other words, I wonder how many writers actually penned their thoughts for these contests in their own language, rather than in the so-called national language, Mandarin.
I have no intention of being churlish about what the Aborigine writers in question have achieved, but I do find it odd, to say the least, that provision is made to give them literary prizes, but only if they don't write in their native language.
I would love to be contradicted, but my guess is that the Council of Cultural Affairs of the Ministry of Education have never invited citizens of Taiwan to submit work in any of the languages of this country other than Mandarin.
Taiwan has millions of speakers of Minnan and Hakka, and thousands of Aborigine- language speakers, but not one single line of literature -- prose or poetry -- in any of these languages is in publication.
In the UK, my own country, the National Arts Council awards prizes to authors who write in English, but also to people who choose to write in other languages native to the UK, for example Welsh or Gaelic. If the Council were ever to make the incredible suggestion that Welsh writers must write in English to qualify for a prize, there would be uproar, and quite rightly.
The result is that the variety of native languages spoken in the UK is fairly represented by the variety of books in those languages to be found on shelves in bookstores, whereas in Taiwan, a Mandarin monopoly reigns.
How boring, but why don't I hear even the faintest whisper of an uproar?
COLIN SPENCER
Hsinchu
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