When I was an elementary-school student, anyone caught speaking what was then called a “dialect” would have to wear a sign around their neck saying “I must speak Chinese” or something of that ilk. We would often call the signs “dog tags.”
If the person forced to wear a sign heard someone else speaking a “dialect,” they could take it off and pass it to the other child.
I can still recall bumping into some kids from school outside my house. One of them said something in Hakka. Speaking Hakka outside of school usually would not get you in trouble but, on this occasion, one of the kids was wearing a dog tag. He turned to the transgressor and said: “You spoke Hakka.” He then took out the tag, gave it to the kid who had spoken and ran off.
If Hakka is a dying language, the main cause of this would be the government of the time of which I have just been speaking. Adults who were children at that time still consider Hakka to be a dialect; a lowly and vulgar one at that. It is in danger of dying. It is a matter of some delight to me that Hakka is coming back and is being elevated from its former position.
The Executive Yuan has passed draft amendments to the Hakka Basic Act (客家基本法) and a Hakka-language radio station has been launched, with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) making a speech entirely in Hakka to mark the event.
This month, the annual National Hakka Conference will be somewhat different from past years, and the Hakka community should take full advantage of this crucial opportunity.
The Hakka spoken in Taiwan is not a dialect of Chinese, and both Hakka and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) are considered by linguists to be languages in their own right. The amended draft version of the act clearly states that Hakka is to be considered a national language, on an equal basis to the others.
This is all fluff, what we need is a change in mindset and for people to start speaking Hakka, not to see it as something shameful, but something to be proud of; not as something to look down upon or to feel embarrassed about, but rather as something to cultivate and develop.
The state and private sectors need to take affirmative action, such as the launching of the Hakka-language radio station, and bring Hakka into all spheres of public discourse. The national conference, for example, should invite young Taiwanese fluent in Hakka to speak and act as exemplars.
When the conference encourages the use of Hakka, it should involve more than a few key politicians or a number of people from overseas performing on stage: the conference should require participants from the Hakka community, not just the organizers and the hosts, to use Hakka.
This is also a good time to ask all those politicians who are not conversant in the language to take a leaf out of Tsai’s book.
More importantly, they should try to completely overturn the previous mindset of having to wear “dog tags” as punishment for speaking Hakka, encouraging its use as something to be proud of and to relish and put an end to the idea that one should not use the language.
Finally, we should do more to encourage the younger generation to speak Hakka more and to bring it back into everyday use.
This would be more effective than writing laws encouraging the idea.
We should take this opportunity to resurrect the language before it disappears.
Albert Chu is a retired doctor living in the US.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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