The Ministry of Education announced recently that it was considering changing the official name of the Minnanyu Language Certification Test, replacing the term Minnanyu (閩南語, “Southern Min [abbreviation of Fujian Province]”) with Taiyu (台語, “Taiwanese”). The ministry said suggestions would be welcome during a 60-day public consultation period.
As there is probably no other term in Taiwan that would stir up stronger feelings than “the Taiwanese language,” it is important that the proposed name change is addressed with great care, and through consultation with people directly involved with language history and classification.
The terms “the Southern Min language” and “the Taiwanese language” have very different historical and linguistic backgrounds: The former term, common in linguistics, simply and clearly describes the position of this language within the complex world of human languages.
The word “Min” places this language within the highly divergent Min branch of the Sinitic language group — a larger set of languages that also includes Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese and a number of other mutually unintelligible, yet linguistically related languages originating in China (hence the name “Sinitic”).
The term “Southern” specifies the position of Southern Min within the Min branch, distinguishing it from the other varieties of Min Chinese.
However, the term “Southern Min” is not entirely unproblematic because some of its peripheral forms exhibit so many differences from the more central varieties that they are barely mutually intelligible.
In linguistic terminology, in such cases, one is no longer referring to “varieties of a single language” (known as different dialects), but rather different languages, such as Spanish and French, or Korean and Japanese.
Why are all these languages classified as “Southern Min” today if they are not mutually intelligible?
The answer can be found by looking at language history. Languages are constantly changing in a large variety of ways — one of the factors driving these changes is contact between languages, which for example is one of the main reasons some Southern Min varieties (such as what is spoken in Datian, or Zhongshan) are so different from Hoklo.
Treating these as “separate languages” or “transitional dialects” is based on the multiple linguistic differences they exhibit vis-a-vis other varieties of Southern Min.
The situation is entirely different from the primarily colloquial term “Taiwanese,” which was coined by Japanese officials during the 50-year Japanese administration of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945.
It was not founded on a careful linguistic comparison of the Southern Min language used in Taiwan with the varieties used in China (which at that stage must have been almost identical), but rather was based on the simplistic conclusion that the language is “not Mandarin, not Japanese, but apparently spoken by everyone in Taiwan,” therefore it must be called “Taiwanese.”
Therefore, the term has existed for just slightly longer than a century — a mere moment in history. Moreover, its application in colloquial Southern Min must be even shorter.
It is well known that this “Taiwanese language” is just a form of Southern Min brought to Taiwan during the 17th century by Han settlers from China.
These Chinese immigrants spoke several different varieties of Southern Min. However, these differences were not obvious to the Japanese officials who had no background in the linguistic history of China.
Our understanding of the historical background of the term “Taiwanese language” should make it clear that this term has no linguistic basis.
However, it has been argued that the variety of Southern Min used in Taiwan is “different” from the Hokkien used in China. This is undoubtedly true, but the presence of linguistic differences per se does not automatically warrant a change in linguistic classification.
In linguistics, the reconsideration of language classification (and possible renaming) must be founded on demonstrable and very extensive phonetic, lexical, morphological or syntactic differences between varieties of a language, which would preclude — or at least greatly reduce — the mutual intelligibility among them.
On the question of whether the variety of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan is different enough from the varieties of Southern Min that it historically derives from warrants a change in the name, the scientific answer would probably be that it is not.
The only field in which the two might exhibit more obvious differences is the lexicon. Unlike the varieties used in China, the Southern Min spoken in Taiwan contains a number of loanwords from Japanese that entered the language during the Japanese era.
It has been said that Taiwanese has about 200 Japanese loanwords, but while this might appear to be a lot, linguistically speaking it is insignificant when compared with the whole lexicon.
If these handful of loanwords are used as the basis to revise the history of the Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, a detailed study of the differences among this language variety and its genetic relatives abroad should be conducted, to objectively determine what impact these loanwords have on mutual intelligibility.
A more serious argument against renaming this language “Taiwanese” is the generalness of this term, which would imply that the language called “Taiwanese” is some kind of representative, main or inherent language of Taiwan — which is simply not the case.
The most used language in Taiwan today, beyond any doubt, is Mandarin — a language spoken by virtually everybody and in every sphere of life.
Although historically speaking, Mandarin is also a relatively recent “linguistic import” from China, it is well known that the Taiwanese variety of Mandarin exhibits many important differences from the Mandarin as spoken elsewhere, such as in Beijing — these include a large number of phonetic and lexical differences, and the written language differs even more drastically.
Yet, despite all these differences — which greatly outnumber the differences between Hoklo and its closest genetic relatives in China — it would probably not occur to anyone to change the name of the Taiwanese variety of Mandarin into “Taiwanese.” Instead, one frequently sees and hears the term “Taiwanese Mandarin” (or its less appropriate variant “Taiwan Mandarin”).
The same thinking could be applied to the variety of Southern Min spoken in Taiwan, especially if it can be demonstrated that it exhibits a number of significant linguistic differences from its relatives in China (and elsewhere, such as the Philippines, or Malaysia).
Therefore, it could be called “Taiwanese Hokkien” or “Taiwanese Southern Min.” Both terms have been around for quite some time and successfully used in linguistic literature.
Calling this language “Taiwanese” would also be quite unfair to the other languages used in this multilingual and multicultural society:
First, the speakers of Hakka began moving from China to Taiwan during the same period as the speakers of Min, and while Hakka never attained the same popularity in Taiwan as Southern Min, much like its linguistic cousin, it possesses a large number of local native speakers and exhibits certain linguistic differences from its genetic relatives in China.
Second and more problematically, the Austronesian languages of Taiwan are indigenous to this land and probably deserve to be called “Taiwanese” more than any other language. In linguistics, they are called “Taiwanese” via their linguistic classification as part of the “Formosan” languages, employing an otherwise obsolete term “Formosa.” The term “Taiwan” (itself of Austronesian origins) began to appear in maps only during the late 17th century.
If Southern Min were renamed “Taiwanese,” one would acquire two entirely unrelated linguistic entities called “Taiwanese,” one being a group of Austronesian languages with several thousand years of presence in Taiwan, and the other — a Sinitic language with at best four centuries of presence here, and no linguistic relationship to the other Taiwanese languages.
This would be awkward from the perspective of the genetic classification of languages, and would be likely to cause a great deal of confusion when the linguistic history of Taiwan is presented to Taiwanese students — this is a topic that has been neglected far too long, resulting in a very vague understanding of the synchronic linguistic picture of Taiwan and its evolution.
My experiments in the classroom have revealed that most students here are unable to mention even one indigenous Taiwanese language.
While it is necessary to conduct regular “check-ups” of language evolution and reappraisals of their classification, changes in language names must follow linguistic, and, to some extent, historical principles, to avoid potentially very damaging mistakes.
If it is reasonably demonstrated that the variety of Southern Min might be sufficiently different from its genetic cousins elsewhere, plausible names could given, such as “Taiwanese Southern Min” or “Taiwanese Hokkien.”
These terms would reflect the synchronic uniqueness and geographical distribution of this language variety, without obscuring its historical background and broader linguistic affiliation.
The locally popular, but entirely unscientific term “Taiwanese” would probably continue to exist colloquially for some time.
However, since it is neither accurate historically nor linguistically, it should be gradually phased out.
Aurelijus Vijunas is professor of phonetics and historical linguistics at National Kaohsiung Normal University.
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