As the government moves to rectify the devastating past suppression of languages such as Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka and the various Aboriginal tongues, it has become common to read news reports in which people question such policies and the importance of learning such languages.
Just months after National Taiwan University professors shut down a student representative who spoke Hoklo at a university cooperative shop board meeting, oddly comparing speaking Hoklo to smoking cigarettes, controversy erupted again last week.
The latest incident involves the wife of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) presidential candidate.
Lee Chia-fen (李佳芬) called the Ministry of Education’s efforts to promote Hoklo a waste of time and resources.
As if her husband’s often ignorant comments were not bad enough, Lee has made the news for a number of misguided statements, including erroneously claiming on Monday that elementary-school students are being taught about “anal sex” and “orgasms,” and that the Kaoshiung Megaport Festival “has made many mothers weep.”
While the comments were not made by Han, there is a certain social responsibility politicians running for president and their campaign team have to maintain. Fervent supporters might believe what Han and Lee say without question, but that does not bode well for society.
However, they are not the only people making outlandish statements.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to offend people. It seems to be a growing trend among politicians worldwide, which is alarming.
Lee’s comments led to the Democratic Progressive Party and the KMT trading barbs last week, before an Academia Sinica Institute of Linguistics academic tried to debunk Lee’s claim on Friday.
It appears that the rationale behind Lee’s comment is that learning these languages in school instead of at home would hinder students learning foreign languages, namely English.
That is a totally different problem.
The nation’s English education environment has long been incompetent — even when students were only learning Mandarin and English at school — and it definitely needs fixing.
If Han wants Taiwanese students to be better at English, he and his staff should look at how to improve the curriculum and the style of teaching instead of targeting native languages, which are finally getting the respect they deserve after decades of neglect and suppression.
Such an attitude is reminiscent of the colonial mentality brought by the Japanese and the KMT, in which one language is considered more important than another, and it is especially insulting coming from the KMT.
Since passing the National Languages Development Act (國家語言發展法) in December last year, the government has been doing a great job of leading by example: Last month, real-time Aboriginal-language interpretation was provided for the first time at an official meeting at the Presidential Office.
“The government will do more and bring about changes to make up for the lack of effort in the past so that an Aboriginal-language-friendly environment can be built,” President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said.
This is the correct attitude.
While current KMT members should not be faulted for the policies their party implemented in the past, they could at least make an effort to be conscious of what happened and be supportive of efforts that seek to undo the damage.
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
Chile has elected a new government that has the opportunity to take a fresh look at some key aspects of foreign economic policy, mainly a greater focus on Asia, including Taiwan. Still, in the great scheme of things, Chile is a small nation in Latin America, compared with giants such as Brazil and Mexico, or other major markets such as Colombia and Argentina. So why should Taiwan pay much attention to the new administration? Because the victory of Chilean president-elect Jose Antonio Kast, a right-of-center politician, can be seen as confirming that the continent is undergoing one of its periodic political shifts,
Taiwan’s long-term care system has fallen into a structural paradox. Staffing shortages have led to a situation in which almost 20 percent of the about 110,000 beds in the care system are vacant, but new patient admissions remain closed. Although the government’s “Long-term Care 3.0” program has increased subsidies and sought to integrate medical and elderly care systems, strict staff-to-patient ratios, a narrow labor pipeline and rising inflation-driven costs have left many small to medium-sized care centers struggling. With nearly 20,000 beds forced to remain empty as a consequence, the issue is not isolated management failures, but a far more
RSS