The Ministry of Education (MOE) this week announced that it plans to change the name of its official certification test for Hoklo from Minnanyu (閩南語, “Southern Min [abbreviation of Fujian Province]”) to Taiyu (台語, “Taiwanese”).
The ministry on Thursday said it planned to amend Article 2 of the Minnanyu Language Certification Test’s Examination Fees Standards based on the Executive Yuan’s national language development plan launched on Aug. 22, 2022.
Suggestions are welcome during the 60-day public comment period, the ministry said, adding that barring any significant changes, the amendment is expected to be promulgated as soon as September.
Photo:Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
Book publishers have said that they have long used the term Taiyu in their educational materials, citing works by former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan’s (連戰) grandfather Lien Heng (連橫), which also used the term Taiyu, the government said.
Academics and experts who compile and edit Taiwanese Minnanyu dictionaries have said that the version spoken in Taiwan is different from that used in China’s Fujian Province.
The education ministry in 2009 created the first Taiwanese Minnanyu proficiency certification test.
However, the following year, under then-president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration, the Nine-Year Education Program was updated to change all references of “Taiyu” and “Taiwanese Minnanyu” to simply “Minnanyu.”
In 2011, the ministry’s certification test was renamed the Minnanyu Proficiency Certification Test.
In 2019, during then-president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, the legislature passed the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法), which certified that all “natural languages” used by ethnic groups in Taiwan and Taiwanese sign language are national languages.
In 2022, the Executive Yuan demanded that all government facilities prioritize using indigenous languages, Hakka, Taiyu, the Matsu dialect of the Eastern Min and Taiwanese sign language.
The directive was intended to promote uniformity in promoting national languages and standardizing language development, documents and other materials, the Executive Yuan said at the time.
About 30,000 to 40,000 people take the exam each year.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS