Retired teacher Hung Wei-jen (洪惟仁) received an award from the Ministry of Education yesterday for outstanding contribution to Taiwanese native languages in light of his nearly three-decade-long effort to map the nation’s linguistic diversity.
Hung, 67, has nearly completed a project to produce the first comprehensive language map of Taiwan.
He said his work on the project is into its 29th year and is now entering its final phase: preparation for publication sometime next year.
The award represented an about-face by the government as during the Martial Law era, Hung was jailed for six years as a political prisoner.
While in graduate school, he had campaigned for freedom and democracy, and advocated the overthrow of the repressive Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government, Hung said.
“For that kind of talk, I got arrested and thrown in jail. So I was on Green Island (綠島) for six years,” he said.
“As a political prisoner, I could not get a job when later released from prison. So I began to study the nation’s native languages, which was my passion. Later I studied for a doctorate at National Tsing Hua University when I was 50. At 57, I obtained my doctorate,” he said.
He took up teaching at National Taichung University of Education and remained there until his retirement.
“While working at Academia Sinica, I initiated a project to produce the world’s very first language map of Taiwan. My research team and I traveled throughout the country, from the northern tip to the southern tip. Field research and actual household visits are needed to study the linguistic and geographic distribution of Taiwanese [also known as Hoklo], Hakka and Aboriginal languages,” Hung said.
His team made extensive and detailed surveys to record the languages spoken by people in villages and townships throughout the nation. Through the process, the retired teacher said the team uncovered many interesting things.
“For example, in past records, Hsinchu County’s Sinfong Township (新豐) resident’s were said to speak the Hakka’s Sihsian dialect (四縣). However, our field visits found people there spoke Hakka’s new Hailu dialect (海陸). For supporting evidence, we went to the local cemeteries to verify the chronology of family records,” Huang said.
He also found that Yunlin County’s Siluo Township (西螺) had many Hakka speakers in the past, but the language is seldom heard there nowadays.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS