The Global Coalition for Taiwanese Languages yesterday held a press conference to protest recent remarks by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) that using a Romanized phonetic system to teach native languages would constitute a betrayal of Chinese culture.
Hung made the remark at a press conference last Thursday in response to rumors that incoming Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) was pushing for the use of a Romanized phonetic system to teach Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) in elementary schools. Currently, elementary school students are required to take at least one course on a local language, such as Hoklo, Hakka or an Aboriginal tongue.
The coalition, previously named the Global Taiwanese Movement Federation, supports the use of a Romanized phonetic system. It countered Hung's claims, saying the current system is no more loyal to Hoklo than a Romanized system.
"Han characters and the current phonetic system cannot capture the true sound and essence of Hoklo; Hoklo cannot be represented accurately with the Mandarin Chinese system," said Lee Chin-an (李勤岸), a spokesman for the group.
Currently, the Hoklo language in Taiwan is represented by Han characters, with adapted charac-ters representing words unique to Hoklo. The coalition said that such a system was inefficient due to the sheer number of words that would have to be created to represent all the words in Hoklo. The added burden of learning these characters makes Hoklo difficult to learn for non-native speakers, the coalition added.
"A Romanized phonetic system is very easy to learn and facilitates widespread native-language education. If you learn the 18 sounds of the system, then you can speak Hoklo, Hakka, or indigenous languages without any barriers," Lee said.
"Using a Romanized system would make Hoklo a more international language that can be easily learned by all people," Lee added.
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