Premier Su Tseng-chang (
"The core purpose of the bill is to prevent native tongues from dying out as a result of `incorrect' language policies that were adopted by the government in the past," Su said.
Su was responding to a question from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Su Chi (
The Chinese-language United Daily News reported yesterday that all languages would in future be regarded as "national languages."
Su said that the new policy was intended to preserve all languages rather than encouraging their extinction by forcing everybody to use Mandarin Chinese. All languages should be regarded as "national languages," but there is still only one "official language," he said.
Council for Cultural Affairs Chairman Chiu Kun-liang (邱坤良) noted that, more than a decade ago, UNESCO listed Taiwan as a place where mother tongues are vanishing.
Chiu said the government, including the Ministry of Education and the Council for Cultural Affairs, has worked hard to preserve dying languages.
He said the bill was aimed at preserving all mother tongues, rather than replacing Mandarin Chinese as the official language.
"All mother tongues in the country -- including Hakka and Aboriginal languages -- are equal, and all tribes or ethnic groups in Taiwan have the right to use their own languages, and that is the reason why the government is drafting a bill to protect native languages," Chiu said.
Defending the bill, Minister without Portfolio Lin Wan-yi (
"In the past, the government discriminated against all languages apart from Mandarin Chinese," he said. "This is wrong and this policy accelerated the demise of many languages."
Languages should be regarded as part of a nation's culture and the government should do whatever it takes to preserve them, Lin said.
"It is quite natural for a country to have more than one language. Speakers of different languages must learn to respect each other -- that is what we are doing now," Lin said.
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
Tainan, Taipei and New Taipei City recorded the highest fines nationwide for illegal accommodations in the first quarter of this year, with fines issued in the three cities each exceeding NT$7 million (US$220,639), Tourism Administration data showed. Among them, Taipei had the highest number of illegal short-term rental units, with 410. There were 3,280 legally registered hotels nationwide in the first quarter, down by 14 properties, or 0.43 percent, from a year earlier, likely indicating operators exiting the market, the agency said. However, the number of unregistered properties rose to 1,174, including 314 illegal hotels and 860 illegal short-term rental
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
ECONOMIC COERCION: Such actions are often inconsistently applied, sometimes resumed, and sometimes just halted, the Presidential Office spokeswoman said The government backs healthy and orderly cross-strait exchanges, but such arrangements should not be made with political conditions attached and never be used as leverage for political maneuvering or partisan agendas, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks after China earlier in the day announced 10 new “incentive measures” for Taiwan, following a landmark meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in Beijing on Friday. The measures, unveiled by China’s Xinhua news agency, include plans to resume individual travel by residents of Shanghai and China’s Fujian
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