Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo).
However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations.
Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes.
However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law in Taiwan, language repression became severe. To uphold the legitimacy of the Republic of China on Taiwan, the KMT required that only Mandarin Chinese be used in public, including in classrooms, government announcements and on TV. To protect their children from being bullied or punished, parents stopped speaking Tai-gi to their children, leading Mandarin to replace Tai-gi in public and private life.
Lim Cheng-iu (林貞佑), an academic at National Cheng Kung University, observed that during martial law, Tai-gi preservation efforts were most visible in the US, where overseas Taiwanese were not subject to the KMT’s language ban.
Taiwanese-Americans attempted several times to start monthly Tai-gi publications, with the latest one — the Tai-bun Thong-sin Bong Po (台文通訊Bong報) — still in publication today. They also congregated to hear Tai-gi sermons at churches on Sundays.
Through everyday conversation, they preserved vocabulary that was forgotten in Taiwan itself. After martial law was lifted in 1987, Taiwanese-language television shows, news, and songs experienced a renaissance. Since then, candidates from all of Taiwan’s political parties have used Tai-gi in their campaign speeches and since 2001, all Taiwanese elementary school students are required to take a local language course. In this way, it was individuals in Taiwan and overseas who worked together to preserve Tai-gi.
In the 1980s, the foremost concern among Tai-gi activists was how Tai-gi should be written. The Presbyterian Church of Taiwan used the Peh-oe-ji system to Romanize the language, while other academics used Chinese characters with tonal markings. Even though standardization remains an issue, with elementary schools still teaching regional variations of Tai-gi, many academics who I interviewed viewed other challenges as more pressing.
Tiun Hak-khiam (張學謙), a professor at National Taitung University, believes that one of the biggest challenges for preserving Tai-gi is the divisive ethnopolitics of Tai-gi activism: pro-independence politics and inter-ethnic conflict (“Holo chauvinism”). Both problems are illustrated in the name “Tai-gi” itself.
Most native Tai-gi speakers reject alternate names such as “minnan” (閩南) or “Hokkien” because those names originated from the KMT, which wanted to emphasize Tai-gi’s origins in southern China (Fujian). Those who view Taiwan as a separate political and cultural entity from China have no desire to perpetuate rhetoric that Taiwanese culture comes from China.
Shih Mu-min (石牧民), a professor at National Taiwan Normal University, told me that, being pro-independence, he would not call it minnan and prefers Tai-gi.
However, he acknowledged that emphasizing the movement’s pro-independence politics alienates people with other political convictions. Many see the partisan aspect of the Tai-gi movement as a major detriment to its development.
Additionally, some ethnic minority activists, such as Hakka or indigenous activists, have their own qualms about the term Tai-gi, which translates to “language of Taiwan.”
Tiun recalled that when Taiwan first democratized, some Tai-gi activists misguidedly attempted to force Tai-gi onto ethnic minorities, telling them: “If you are Taiwanese, speak Taiwanese.”
Tiun emphasized the need to express solidarity with other ethnic communities to overcome this mistrust: “You not only have to save your own language, but you also have to learn other people’s languages.”
Beyond these ethnopolitical conflicts, the Tai-gi movement suffers from a lack of resources. Even though local language classes are required at elementary school, the classes are only one or two hours per week and use Mandarin as the medium of instruction.
Moreover, Catherine Chou (周怡齡), a professor at National Chengchi University, pointed out that the majority of Tai-gi content (eg, textbooks, social media and history Web sites) are created by unpaid volunteers, which is unsustainable in the long term. Instead, the government must do its part to create resources and programs.
In 2019, Taiwan passed the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法), but it has so far proved to be mostly symbolic rather than bringing about tangible change.
The academics I spoke with offered a wide range of more effective recommendations on how to accelerate preservation of the Tai-gi language.
Tai-gi language efforts can be radically improved within the classroom, including by correcting societal prejudices. Teachers must dissociate heritage languages from connotations of gang culture or poverty, and correct misconceptions that bilingualism impedes children’s ability to learn Mandarin properly. They must also convince parents that heritage languages can indeed communicate “modern” ideas such as science and technology.
Last year, Academia Sinica hosted a series of sociology lectures in Tai-gi to prove that point.
Once parents, teachers and students accept that bilingualism is an asset, Tiun encourages teachers to prioritize a “mother-tongue first” bilingual approach. Teachers must use the target heritage language as the medium of instruction. Written signs and verbal announcements should be in both languages.
Chou applauded Taiwan’s very first Tai-gi immersion school in Kaohsiung as a prime example of effective language instruction.
Tiun acknowledged that this type of intensive bilingual education would require many more teachers to become fluent in a heritage language and thus would require the government to incorporate heritage language training into teachers’ colleges. In fact, requiring heritage language fluency for teaching, as well as other government jobs, would be highly beneficial to the revitalization movement, as it would offer a direct pay-off for learning the language.
Nevertheless, many of the academics told me that the classroom alone had limits. What about when students go home?
Tiun suggested that the government open free adult learning centers for parents who wish to improve their own heritage language fluency, as well as subsidize bilingual children’s storybooks, television shows and social media content.
Shih has expressed the hope that one day, a high-quality piece of Tai-gi entertainment will go viral, bringing global attention to Taiwan’s heritage languages.
Many academics found other countries deeply inspirational.
Tiun told me: “Switzerland is ... a model, underscoring that different language communities should enjoy equal status within the state.”
In that vein, many interviewees recommended international collaboration as another strategy.
Tai-gi activists must strategically identify countries that would be sympathetic to heritage language revitalization.
Liu Chan-Yueh (劉展岳), the Taiwan Studies Chair at the INALCO Asian languages institute in Paris, pointed out that French society has always believed speaking French is necessary to understand French culture, even if it is no longer a global lingua franca.
He found that French people interested in Taiwan were easily convinced of the importance of Taiwan’s heritage languages.
Huang Yu-ru, a former culture director at the Houston Taiwanese School of Languages and Culture in Texas, shared similar positive experiences visiting Barcelona, Spain, where Catalonians sympathized with Taiwan’s geopolitical situation, including regional language preservation.
As the largest overseas Taiwanese community is in the US, many academics believed that Taiwan-US Tai-gi programs would be most popular.
Chou suggested that Taiwan should collaborate with organizations such as the Keng-lam Su-in (Mosei Academy), a Tai-gi-language school in San Jose, California.
Ultimately, the academics encourage overseas Taiwanese to use their cross-cultural network and skills to introduce Taiwanese languages and culture to friendly communities.
When thinking about Taiwan’s most pressing issues, heritage language preservation seldom comes up. Yet for the academics I interviewed, preserving Tai-gi is a lifelong commitment.
Although language preservation might not single-handedly change Taiwan’s geopolitical situation, Taiwanese and the government should invest in it as a form of historical reparation, to keep the language from going extinct and to honor Taiwan’s elderly generation, the only demographic that still commonly speaks Tai-gi.
Tiun emphasized that multilingualism would set Taiwan apart from “the suppression of minority languages in the People’s Republic of China” and demonstrate its commitment to “democratic principles and popular sovereignty.”
As Taiwan fights to be recognized as a unique political and cultural entity, Lim reminds us: “Before we expect other people to respect our culture, it is important to show that we respect our own culture first.”
The author would like to thank Tiun Hak-Khiam from National Taitung University; Shih Mu-min from National Taiwan Normal University; Liu Chan-Yueh, the Taiwan Studies Chair at INALCO in Paris; Catherine Chou from National Chengchi University; Huang Yu-ru, former culture director for the Houston Taiwanese School of Languages and Culture; and Lim Cheng-iu from National Cheng Kung University. Carissa Cheng is the 2025 Ya-Hui Chiu Summer Fellow for the Global Taiwan Institute, a Washington-based think tank dedicated to insightful research on Taiwan-US relations. She recently graduated from Stanford University.
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