A lack of online resources can make learning Taiwan’s Aboriginal languages incredibly difficult. But a new app called Moedict Amis dictionary (阿美語萌典—方敏英字典) has made learning the Amis language as easy as cecay, tosa, tolo (one, two, three).
A group of volunteers have come together to create the first ever Amis language dictionary app for mobile phones. The group includes both Amis and non-Amis, engineers and tech luddites — and even a former legislator and a Catholic priest.
The app’s development is not targeted at language enthusiasts but for the Amis to save their language from years of regressive government policies, and urban migration that has crippled the development of Aboriginal languages.
Photo: Aaron Wytze Wilson
“We’re not just looking to preserve the language for future generations, but also hoping to set off a cultural revival for other Aboriginal languages,” says group member Tsai Wei-ting (蔡維庭).
FACING EXTINCTION
According to a UNESCO report in 2009, Taiwan’s Aboriginal languages are in serious danger of extinction unless drastic action is taken to preserve them.
Photo: Aaron Wytze Wilson
Due to decades of regressive language policies under the Japanese and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governments, people of Aboriginal background grew up and were educated in a language that is not originally their own.
Taiwan’s Amis are no exception. Although the government estimates the Amis population at a little over 200,000, the number of people who speak Amis as their first language is estimated to be lower than 10,000.
However, the exact number is not known because no government survey has been carried out to find it.
Photo: Aaron Wytze Wilson
With such a rapid decline in native-speaking Amis, immediate action is needed to prevent further decline. However, the government’s response has been slow because it doesn’t seem willing to acknowledge how dire the situation is.
ALINGATO, AMIS FOR THANK YOU
Just as the Amis language is facing a critical juncture in its preservation, a group of software engineers and concerned citizens have come together to create an Amis dictionary phone app.
Photo: Aaron Wytze Wilson
“We didn’t have too much interest from the Amis community at first, until Lafin Miku, who is Amis, stepped forward to help out with the project” says Miaoski Lin (林哲民), one of the app’s software programmers.
Lafin and Lin are part of the netizen collective g0v, a civic activist group that uses tech, new media and data to solve some of Taiwan’s biggest social and political problems.
Lafin has acted as a critical go-between for the group and the larger Amis community. “It’s a very meaningful project, but I was skeptical at first. Digitizing an entire dictionary is so tiring,” Lafin says.
Much of the Amis language is preserved in leather-bound dictionaries that are decades old, with very few of them making it online.
Converting them into digital content is an exhausting task, requiring weeks of monotonous scanning and data input.
To simplify the procedure, the group uses crowd-sourcing, a tactic that allows multiple group-members to work on the task of scanning and inputting at once.
The group has also been fortunate to have the help of two patron saints of the Amis language.
The first is former People First Party legislator Tsai Chung-han (蔡中涵), a respected member of the Amis community who has spent decades of his own time and money to compile an Amis-Chinese dictionary.
The second is 82-year-old father Maurice Poinsot, a French Catholic priest who moved to Taiwan when he was 21 years old to do missionary work in Hualien.
Poinsot compiled his French-Amis Dictionary along with now-deceased father Louis Pourrias.
Both Tsai and Poinsot have generously allowed the group to use the copyrights of their respective dictionaries free of charge.
“They are extremely supportive of our project,” said Tsai Wei-ting, “all they ask is that we show them the app when it’s finished.”
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The group has made remarkable progress in the span of a year, with the first version of the app already online. They plan to add new features soon, including real voice pronunciation, dialect variations, and recordings of traditional Amis stories and legends.
The group hopes other Taiwanese Aborigines will feel empowered to start their own language dictionaries, and have made the programming code used to create the app available for anyone to use. “It’s important that Aborigines are not left out of the digital movement,” said Lafin.
The app is available now on both iOS and Android operating systems, and is free to download.
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS