Language rights advocates and academics yesterday stood up for students at National Taiwan University (NTU) who wish to speak their mother tongues, after two professors instituted a rule that school meetings must be conducted in Mandarin only.
The incident was an example of “cultural bullying,” as it prevented students from speaking in their mother tongue and had contravened the National Languages Development Act (國家語言發展法), Taiwan Association of University Professors deputy chairman Chen Li-fu (陳俐甫) said.
“It is a basic right of citizens... Yet these two professors at a leading university deprived the students of their language rights and continued the cultural oppression of Taiwanese,” Chen said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
At a NTU Cooperative Shop board meeting on July 30, student representative Sun Phok-ju spoke in Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), but was ordered to stop by chairwoman Shih Hsiu-hui (施秀惠), a biology professor, who said that agricultural economics professor Jerome Geaun (官俊榮) had proposed a motion for the meeting to be conducted in Mandarin only.
Geaun was at the June 30 meeting and justified his motion by comparing speaking Hoklo to smoking cigarettes.
“You have the liberty to smoke, but you cannot infringe on other people’s liberty,” which is why there are non-smoking areas, he said.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
Sun said that at an earlier meeting, Shih had demanded that people only use the “official language” and said that people using any other language would not be allowed to speak and would not be recorded in the meeting’s minutes.
“I talked about our rights to speak our mother tongue, and mentioned the National Languages Development Act, but it was no use. Shih would not allow us, even though we had people at the meeting who were willing to act as translators,” she said.
“Then Geaun compared people speaking Hoklo to people smoking cigarettes... He was equating speaking Hoklo to damaging other people’s health, like secondhand smoke,” Sun said. “It was a grave insult to many of us.”
Alliance to Promote Common Use of Hoklo director Khoo Hui-ing (許慧盈) said that Shih and Geaun were imposing their idea that Mandarin is a superior language to the exclusion of other languages, which would cause other languages to die out.
Attorney Huang Di-ying (黃帝穎) said that the Ministry of Education and Control Yuan should investigate the matter, as the two professors’ words and actions were discriminatory and contravened the language law.
In related news, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Taiwanese are now allowed to use the romanized spellings of their names in Hoklo, Hakka and Aboriginal languages for their passports.
It is now possible to have romanized names transliterated from one of the national languages, Bureau of Consular Affairs Director Antonio Chen (陳俊賢) told a regular news conference in Taipei.
The change comes after an amendment to Article 14 of the Enforcement Rules of the Passport Act (護照條例施行細則) was passed on Friday last week, Chen said.
Previously, only Mandarin Chinese names could be romanized.
Additional reporting by CNA
PROVOCATIVE: Chinese Deputy Ambassador to the UN Sun Lei accused Japan of sending military vessels to deliberately provoke tensions in the Taiwan Strait China denounced remarks by Japan and the EU about the South China Sea at a UN Security Council meeting on Monday, and accused Tokyo of provocative behavior in the Taiwan Strait and planning military expansion. Ayano Kunimitsu, a Japanese vice foreign minister, told the Council meeting on maritime security that Tokyo was seriously concerned about the situation in the East China and South China seas, and reiterated Japan’s opposition to any attempt to change the “status quo” by force, and obstruction of freedom of navigation and overflight. Stavros Lambrinidis, head of the EU delegation to the UN, also highlighted South China Sea
SILENCING CRITICS: In addition to blocking Taiwan, China aimed to prevent rights activists from speaking out against authoritarian states, a Cabinet department said The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday condemned transnational repression by Beijing after RightsCon, a major digital human rights conference scheduled to be held in Zambia this week, was abruptly canceled due to Chinese pressure over Taiwanese participation. This year’s RightsCon, the world’s largest conference discussing issues “at the intersection of human rights and technology,” was scheduled to take place from tomorrow to Friday in Lusaka, and expected to draw 2,600 in-person attendees from 150 countries, along with 1,100 online participants. However, organizers were forced to cancel the event due to behind-the-scenes pressure from China, the ministry said, expressing its “strongest condemnation”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said it expects its 2-nanometer (2nm) chip capacity to grow at a compound annual rate of 70 percent from this year to 2028. The projection comes as five fabs begin volume production of 2-nanometer chips this year — two in Hsinchu and three in Kaohsiung — TSMC senior vice president and deputy cochief operating officer Cliff Hou (侯永清) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Silicon Valley, California, last week. Output in the first year of 2-nanometer production, which began in the fourth quarter of last year, is expected to
Taiwan’s economy grew far faster than expected in the first quarter, as booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications drove a surge in exports, spilling over into investment and consumption, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. GDP growth was 13.69 percent year-on-year during the January-to-March period, beating the DGBAS’ February forecast by 2.23 percentage points and marking the most robust growth in nearly four decades, DGBAS senior official Chiang Hsin-yi (江心怡) told a news conference in Taipei. The result was powered by exports, which remain the backbone of Taiwan’s economy, Chiang said. Outbound shipments jumped 51.12 percent year-on-year to
RSS