Family education is the most significant factor in promoting and preserving mother languages in Taiwan, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairman Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said yesterday on International Mother Language Day.
“It is regrettable that some parents have not tried to teach their children how to speak their mother language,” Su said at a press conference organized by the Taiwan Mother Tongue Alliance to promote native languages, including Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese), Hakka and other Aboriginal languages.
The alliance launched an annual event two years ago in which consumers who speak native languages at select businesses receive a discount. More than 100 clinics, restaurants and stores across the country are supporting the campaign this year.
Photo: CNA
People cannot abandon their mother tongue, which is the root of any culture, Su said. The respect of mother languages is the respect for the cultures of all ethnic groups.
The government’s policy on mother language and culture is crucial in preserving native languages as well, Su said, citing the example of the Japanization movement initiated by the government during the Japanese colonial period and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government’s banning of native languages after it fled to Taiwan in 1949.
“Mother languages will not be preserved unless the nation’s leader has the right attitude toward linguistic heritage and true respect for cultural diversity,” Su said.
Chinese was the only language used on public address systems for a long time until the Taiwan Provincial Assembly demanded the government add Hoklo and Hakka to the service when Su served as a provincial councilor in the 1980s, he said.
The event, which runs from yesterday to Monday, aims to encourage people to speak native languages and pass on diverse cultures, as well as to promote equal status for all languages in Taiwan, alliance chairman Li Khin-huann (李勤岸) said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching