An online dictionary of Aboriginal languages and cultures has been compiled to help preserve indigenous mother tongues and collective memories that are quickly dying out, the Ministry of Education said.
The ministry urged the public, particularly Aborigines, to take advantage of the e-dictionary at citing.hohayan.net.tw/default.asp.
The ministry said the reference work can help users reinforce, learn or revive these dying languages and cultures before it is too late. It covers the mother tongues of 14 Aboriginal mountain tribes and the Pingpu plains (low-lying areas) Aborigines.
The e-dictionary also has sections on 16 cultural subjects, including religions and worship, myths and legends, social organizations and functions, languages and philology, archeological sites and relics, and history.
The need for an e-dictionary on Aboriginal cultures was highlighted by the eye-opening visit to Taipei by a member of the Tao tribe on Orchid Island (蘭嶼).
The Tao man, known as Chou Lung-fa (周龍發) in Chinese, was in Taipei recently to collect his prize money after winning a contest to quit smoking. But what surprised many was when he accepted the award, Chou spoke Tao, because he “didn't know how to speak Mandarin Chinese,” a rare phenomenon at a time when a majority of Aborigines, particularly the younger generation, don’t speak their mother tongues.
Even on Orchid Island, where the Tao have lived in relative isolation from Han Chinese for more than 800 years after migrating from Batan, Philippines, the tribe's language has only been well preserved in two of the six villages on the island.
In other villages, the language is dying out, with only elders speaking it.
By linguistic or philological classification, the Tao and the Batan belong to the Batanic language group, a subgroup of the Malayo-Polynesian group of Austronesian languages, the ministry said.
According to Robert Blust, a prominent linguist with the University of Hawaii’s Department of Linguistics, the Formosan languages form nine of the 10 primary branches of the Austronesian language family, making them a vital resource.
Taiwan’s Aboriginal languages, however, are dying out because of cultural assimilation, according to National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, which was one of the compilers of the e-dictionary.
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