With the Cabinet's approval of a national languages development draft law, language policy in Taiwan made a breakthrough in the law's twin goals of "localization and internationalization," and the first has already been achieved. Internationalization is the next step.
Taiwan is an island with multiple languages and cultures. After the Japanese era, Taiwanese, Hakka and Aboriginal languages were suppressed by the powerful Chinese authorities, and some nearly died out completely. The draft law can help revive them. It's not related to independence; it's just sensible language policy.
With greater economic development, internationalization has become the focus.
Many people study English because it is a global language. Chinese is now gaining ground.
The Taiwanese government should adjust its language strategy with practical measures.
English is a second language in Hong Kong and Singapore, but people in both cities can still speak Chinese well. They are good examples for Taiwan.
The draft law is a great start to the "localization" goal. But localization and internationalization are both important. And the policy makers should seek correct language policy instead of votes.
Henry Wu
Kaohsiung
Having lived through former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tumultuous and scandal-ridden administration, the last place I had expected to come face-to-face with “Mr Brexit” was in a hotel ballroom in Taipei. Should I have been so surprised? Over the past few years, Taiwan has unfortunately become the destination of choice for washed-up Western politicians to turn up long after their political careers have ended, making grandiose speeches in exchange for extraordinarily large paychecks far exceeding the annual salary of all but the wealthiest of Taiwan’s business tycoons. Taiwan’s pursuit of bygone politicians with little to no influence in their home
US lobbyist Christian Whiton has published an update to his article, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” discussed on the editorial page on Sunday. His new article, titled “What Taiwan Should Do” refers to the three articles published in the Taipei Times, saying that none had offered a solution to the problems he identified. That is fair. The articles pushed back on points Whiton made that were felt partisan, misdirected or uninformed; in this response, he offers solutions of his own. While many are on point and he would find no disagreement here, the nuances of the political and historical complexities in
Taiwan faces an image challenge even among its allies, as it must constantly counter falsehoods and misrepresentations spread by its more powerful neighbor, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). While Taiwan refrains from disparaging its troublesome neighbor to other countries, the PRC is working not only to forge a narrative about itself, its intentions and value to the international community, but is also spreading lies about Taiwan. Governments, parliamentary groups and civil societies worldwide are caught in this narrative tug-of-war, each responding in their own way. National governments have the power to push back against what they know to be
The Ministry of the Interior late last month released its report on homes that consumed low amounts of electricity in the second half of last year, offering a glimpse of the latest data on “vacant houses” — homes using less than 60 kilowatt-hours of electricity a month. The report showed that Taiwan had 914,196 vacant houses, or a vacancy rate of 9.79 percent, up from 9.32 percent in the first half of last year and the highest since 2008, when it was 9.81 percent. Of the nation’s 22 administrative areas, Lienchiang County (Matsu) had the highest vacancy rate at 17.4
RSS