What can be accomplished in a 10-year period?
Two women, one with Han and one with Yami heritage, completed a book entitled Yami Texts with Reference Grammar and Dictionary (
At a seminar on Austronesian native languages in 1994, Maa-Neu Dong (董瑪女) from Orchid Island met with Victoria Rau (何德華), a professor in the English department at Providence University in Taichung, who holds a doctorate in linguistics from Cornell University in the US.
Rau, who had directed her energies toward Austronesian languages after receiving a scholarship to study Indonesian during her studies at Cornell, immediately agreed when Dong asked if she would compile teaching materials for Yami.
Rau said most Yami students can't speak Yami, a Philippine-Batanic tongue that is part of the Austronesian language family.
The speed at which the language is disappearing is worrying, Rau said, especially since the language lacks a script, which makes it a huge challenge to record and compile it into a dictionary.
Dong said that she and Rau also gained access to the Institute of Ethnology at the Academia Sinica, where they helped professor Liu Pin-hsiung (劉斌雄) with the collection and translation of the oral tradition of the Yami tribe.
The two completed the first Yami teaching materials in 2000. By 2003, Rau had completed her studies of Yami grammar and finished the first draft of their book, which was published by Academia Sinica earlier this year.
In order to bring the study of Taiwan's Aboriginal languages to the attention of the international community, the two also applied for a grant from the School of Oriental and African Studies' Endangered Language Documentation Program to prepare digital archive materials for the Yami language.
Anyone interested in the digital archives can visit their site at yamiproject.cs.pu.edu.tw/yami.
The bilingual Chinese and English site can be searched in both languages, as well as in romanized Yami.
The first of 10 new high-capacity trains purchased from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem arrived at the Port of Taipei yesterday to meet the demands of an expanding metro network, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. The train completed a three-day, 1,200km voyage from the Port of Masan in South Korea, the company said. Costing NT$590 million (US$18.79 million) each, the new six-carriage trains feature a redesigned interior based on "human-centric" transportation concepts, TRTC said. The design utilizes continuous longitudinal seating to widen the aisles and optimize passenger flow, while also upgrading passenger information displays and driving control systems for a more comfortable
Taiwan's first indigenous defense submarine, the SS-711 Hai Kun (海鯤, or Narwhal), departed for its 13th sea trial at 7am today, marking its seventh submerged test, with delivery to the navy scheduled for July. The outing also marked its first sea deployment since President William Lai (賴清德) boarded the submarine for an inspection on March 19, drawing a crowd of military enthusiasts who gathered to show support. The submarine this morning departed port accompanied by CSBC Corp’s Endeavor Manta (奮進魔鬼魚號) uncrewed surface vessel and a navy M109 assault boat. Amid public interest in key milestones such as torpedo-launching operations and overnight submerged trials,
Quarantine awareness posters at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have gone viral for their use of wordplay. Issued by the airport branch of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency, the posters feature sniffer dogs making a range of facial expressions, paired with advisory messages built around homophones. “We update the messages for holidays and campaign needs, periodically refreshing materials to attract people’s attention,” quarantine officials said. “The aim is to use the dogs’ appeal to draw focus to quarantine regulations.” A Japanese traveler visiting Taiwan has posted a photo on X of a poster showing a quarantine dog with a
SECURITY RISK: A university student sent a general alarm signal to THSRC’s control center on April 5, causing four operating trains to temporarily halt services The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday pledged to submit a report on ways to harden the communication security of railway systems after a university student hacked into Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp’s (THSRC) radio communications system and disrupted operations of four high-speed rail trains last month. Investigation by the police and prosecutors found that the university student and radio enthusiast, surnamed Lin (林), first used a software-defined radio (SDR) filter to analyze THSRC signals, downloaded the data to a computer, cracked the parameters and then programmed the codes into his radio devices. Lin then sent a general alarm signal to
RSS