Miao Lin-Zucker (林季苗) wanted to teach Taiwanese how to speak French; instead she’s helping the French learn Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese).
As of last week, nearly 120 people had expressed interest in the first ever Hoklo classes (listed as Taiwanais in French) offered by Les Cours d’Adultes de Paris, one of the largest public language learning institutions in France. The courses begin online next month.
“It’s getting easier to explain Taiwan to people here due to its recent international visibility,” Lin-Zucker says. “So it doesn’t seem as strange anymore to promote a Taiwanese Hoklo class. I’m not training language experts here, I just want this language to keep being used.”
Photo: CNA
Lin-Zucker, an associate professor in the foreign language department at the University of Lyon, says she was inspired by the popularity of the Taiwanese Hoklo classes offered as electives for the first time last year at National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO). More than 70 students signed up for the first semester, which despite being held online, featured karaoke contests and poetry readings.
“As long as there is interest, the government is willing to give the classes a try,” Lin-Zucker says. “We didn’t really talk about politics, the discussion was mostly about linguistics and education. Surprisingly, I didn’t face any pushback.”
COURSE OFFERINGS
Photo: CNA
Lin-Zucker was finishing her master’s studies in teaching French as a foreign language when the Mandarin-learning craze took off with the rapid rise of China during the 2000s. She switched gears and finished her program focusing on teaching Mandarin.
Over the years, she felt an urge to do something for Hoklo, her mother language, especially in light of the decline in usage among young people in Taiwan.
“Many Taiwanese can freely converse with foreigners in their respective languages, but they cannot use Hoklo to talk to their elderly neighbors,” she says.
Photo: Screen grab
Lin-Zucker hopes to find out more about her French students’ motivations after classes start, but she believes that the interest is due to Taiwan’s raised and largely positive international profile, featuring values that align more with other democratic nations.
Liu Chan-yueh (劉展岳), who teaches the Hoklo classes at INALCO, will also lead the classes at Les Cours d’Adultes de Paris. Originally a Mandarin teacher at the institute, he says that the opportunity to offer Taiwanese Hoklo as an elective opened up after the departure of the Chinese department’s Cantonese teacher.
Liu says there was much debate over whether to call it Minnan or Taiwanais, but he insisted that the differences between the two were large enough, especially if the instructor hails from Taiwan.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Lin-Zucker says she simply describes it as the second-most spoken language in Taiwan.
“We don’t want to become too deliberate when promoting the nation,” she says. “The description is quite neutral, and if someone is interested in Taiwan and wants to dive deeper, they can sign up.”
PRACTICAL TONGUE?
Like Lin-Zucker, Liu says that awareness of Taiwan in France has grown significantly in recent years. Compared to 10 years ago when he had to keep explaining the difference between Taiwan and Thailand, he says he did not need to do much clarification when promoting the new class.
Liu says due to scholarships offered by the Taiwanese government, many of INALCO’s students have been to Taiwan or plan to visit, which boosted interest in learning its second-most spoken language. Returning anthropology or sociology students also noted that knowing Hoklo makes a significant difference especially when doing field research in the south, or with older people.
“We also have four teachers from Taiwan, and if they enjoy our classes they might also become interested in our mother tongue,” Liu says.
However, the practicality of Hoklo is a lingering question, as the casual visitor to Taiwan can easily get by with Mandarin or, in many cases, English. Lin-Zucker says there doesn’t always need to be a practical reason for a language to become a trend — the French, for example, were quite fervent in learning Mandarin in the 60s and 70s, before it was economically beneficial to do so.
“We also have to depend on Taiwan’s young people to try using the language more, so that there are more practical avenues to use it regularly,” she adds.
Liu says that the “usefulness” of a language should also not be seen as black and white.
“Something that’s not practical now doesn’t mean it’s useless, one just doesn’t have the opportunity to use it yet,” he says. “Many people come to Taiwan then find out that Mandarin isn’t enough for what they want to do. This notion should be strengthened — how should Taiwanese society create more opportunities and mechanisms for foreigners to use Hoklo?”
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
There is considerable frustration and confusion among many, both in Taiwan and abroad — including in Washington — as to why the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seems so dead set on using their legislative leverage to slash defense spending and disrupt the ability of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration to function. Are they pawns of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Are they traitors? In reality, there are multiple reasons. In the first column in this series on this subject, “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How and why the TPP and KMT help Beijing” (Sat May 16, page 12), we examined three
It took 12 years and months of standing in the same mountain location for director Liang Chieh-te (梁皆得) to capture a few seconds of footage: Taiwan’s largest resident raptor locking talons with its mate and spinning through the air in a courtship ritual. With only about 1,000 left in the wild and very short flight windows, the mountain hawk-eagle remains among Taiwan’s most elusive birds. The species generally produces only one offspring per year. Using forest cameras, the film crew and research teams document the arduous process the monogamous pairs go through for the chick to hatch and grow up, weathering
RSS