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Tu offers new definition of national languages

The terms "Taiwanese" and "national language" -- the former referring to the Taiwanese language, or "Hoklo," and the latter Mandarin Chinese -- would trade their official meanings if the Cabinet's national language development bill were to become law, Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) said yesterday, apparently contradicting Premier Su Tseng-chang's (蘇貞昌) comments last week on how local languages would be designated according to the bill.

"Taiwanese" would refer to Chinese Mandarin as spoken locally and the "national language" would refer to Taiwanese, Tu said while answering lawmakers' questions -- posed in Mandarin -- in the legislature's Education and Culture committee yesterday.

"The national language would no longer be what we're speaking now," Tu told lawmakers.

Unveiled as a draft bill last week, the national language development bill seeks to preserve the nation's many languages, particularly Aboriginal ones, amid a dying out of numerous local mother tongues, Su said last week.

But all local languages, including Mandarin, would be regarded as "national languages," even though there would only be one "official language" according to the bill, Su added, referring to the status of Mandarin as the nation's official lingua franca.

Tu yesterday all but negated the premier's remarks with his comment that Mandarin would no longer be a national language if the bill were to pass, invoking the ire of pan-blue lawmakers.

"Minister Tu, your whole career as education minister has revolved around de-sinicization, ideology and politicking," Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Ching-hua (李慶華) said.

"Don't leave the education ministry with all your education policies amounting to nada, nothing, zero! Zero!" Lee added.

Seeking clarification of how the bill seeks to designate Mandarin and Hoklo, KMT Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) asked Tu if Mandarin as spoken locally would be officially termed "Taiwanese" because "the accents of Mandarin speakers on either side of the strait are different" and if Taiwanese would be termed "Hoklo."
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