Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said he considered it unnecessary to insist that people write the first of the two Chinese characters for “Taiwan” in full traditional form (臺), as the simplified form (台) requires fewer strokes and is used by more people.
Some people prefer the character written in traditional form, while others favor writing it using the simplified form, Wu said, adding that he “respected people’s right to choose.”
“As long as people who write the character do so properly and those who read it know what it is, each form is fine. [Writing using the variant character] has been established by [customary] usage,” Wu said.
Wu made the remarks while commenting on a recent policy by the Ministry of Education to replace the simplified form of the character printed in the ministry’s literature and textbooks with the traditional form, a goal the ministry said it hoped to accomplish by the end of next year.
The ministry said students who wrote the character using the simplified form in national exams or entrance exams would not have grades deducted.
“Writing the character in traditional form is not compulsory, even in school exams,” said Chen Hsueh-yu (陳雪玉), executive secretary of at the ministry’s National Languages Committee. “What we seek to accomplish, however, is to encourage institutions and schools under the ministry to use the character written in its traditional form.”
After the ministry studied the origin of the character, it decided that the tai in the name Taiwan should be written in traditional form rather than its simplified counterpart, Chen said.
“It’s not that people who are used to writing Taiwan using the simplified form for the first character are wrong per se, but from an educational standpoint, we advocate traditional characters and are duty bound to make that clearly understood by teachers and students,” Chen said.
Earlier this year, the ministry reaffirmed its commitment to teaching traditional characters in the nation’s classrooms after a parent complained that his child had been assigned the study of simplified characters for homework.
The ministry’s Department of Elementary Education said at the time that promoting traditional Chinese characters in school had always been — and remained — the ministry’s policy.
“Traditional Chinese characters are important cultural assets. Their significance as documented in historical documents is unquestionable,” the department said.
“Traditional Chinese characters should be adopted in school, in textbooks and teaching assignments since their promotion is a national policy,” it said.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) sparked controversy last year when he said that Taiwan and China should come to an agreement on the use of Chinese characters, prompting angry responses from both sides of the political spectrum.
The People’s Republic of China introduced the simplified form of Chinese characters in the 1950s and 1960s to help combat illiteracy in the country.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
RULES IGNORED: CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang said that crew members who break the rules would be required to complete the full 14-day quarantine Three EVA Airways flight attendants were fired last month and this month after they failed to follow the government’s quarantine requirements. This was the first time that flight attendants have lost their jobs for quarantine failures. One flight attendant reportedly breached the quarantine mandate by going to school, visiting relatives and dining with friends, while lying to the company about her activities, EVA Air said. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) have established disease prevention measures for cabin crew members, such as monitoring their health and reporting their temperature daily, the company said. While on flight duty, crew
LOOPHOLES: The people behind biased media content produced by a Chinese network, likely without sending staff to Taiwan, remain anonymous, a source said Beijing’s latest attempt at psychological warfare through heavily biased online media is aimed at sowing discord and polarizing Taiwanese society, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s comment came in response to Chinese network Southeast Television, which late last month began broadcasting an online program featuring commentary by Taiwanese unification supporters that authorities suspect was filmed illegally in Taiwan. To circumvent cross-strait regulations, the broadcaster collaborated with online service provider Baidu to air the series titles Diverse Voices From the Taiwan Strait (台海百家說). Only Taiwanese are shown on camera, without revealing the host, interviewer or production team. In one video, political commentator and
A group of overseas Taiwanese in Norway are taking a case on their national identity to the European Court of Human Rights — with plans to file the case in the first half of next year — after Norway’s Supreme Court rejected their appeal to change their listed nationality from “China” to “Taiwan,” Joseph Liu, a Taiwanese lawyer living in Norway, told reporters on Monday. One of the initiators of the movement, “My Name, My Right,” Liu and his group plan to hire lawyers from the UK and France who know European law and have knowledge of Asia to represent them,
SUPPRESSION: Michael Tsai, a former defense minister, said that Beijing’s list of Taiwan independence advocates contravenes the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights The best way to respond to threats from China against Taiwan independence advocates is for the president to publicly reiterate Taiwan’s sovereignty, former minister of national defense Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said on Sunday. Chinese media on Nov. 15 said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was compiling “a list of stubborn Taiwanese separatists and will severely punish them in accordance with [China’s] Anti-Secession Law and hold them accountable for their actions for the rest of their lives.” Chinese media subsequently accused Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) of being a “first-rate war criminal,” because of his policy on mask exports. “The vast majority
RSS