The government risks marginalizing Taiwan’s local languages as it pushes to make the nation bilingual in Mandarin and English by 2030, an academic said yesterday.
Chiang Wen-yu (江文瑜), a linguistics professor at National Taiwan University, speaking at a Taipei forum organized by the Professor Huang Kun-huei Education Foundation, urged the government to focus on making Taiwan “English-friendly” to preserve local languages.
The event aimed to aid the Executive Yuan in forming its language policies, the organizers said.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
Elevating English over the country’s local languages is self-marginalization, Chiang said, adding that a bilingual policy makes no sense when more than 20 languages are spoken in Taiwan.
Although English is an official language in 56 countries, nearly all of those nations are former British or US colonies, which Taiwan is not, she added.
Language is a defining feature of cultural identity and adopting a foreign language is likely to harm the nation’s sense of self, she said.
Educating children in a language that they do not use naturally daily creates difficulties in teaching it, she said.
The burden of learning such a language might also worsen class inequalities, as the average family cannot afford private language schools, which charge as much as NT$160,000 per semester in tuition, she said.
That Taiwanese speak poor English is a myth originating from a lack of self-confidence, she said, adding that multiple polls show that Taiwan is one of the friendliest countries to visitors.
Effective communication with foreigners is not a sufficient rationale for the government’s long-term language policy, as technology is likely to solve the problem of translation in the next decade or so, she said.
Making Taiwan a friendly environment for English speakers is a more practical and reachable goal than promoting bilingualism, she said.
The Executive Yuan should rescind its proposal to establish a bilingual national development center and pare down its bilingual program, said Her One-Soon (何萬順), a Chair Professor of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at Tunghai University.
The government’s language policy should be designed to promote Taiwanese culture, make better use of existing language resources and avoid commercial entanglements with the English-language certification industry, he said.
Ministry of Education counselor Chiu Yu-chan (邱玉蟾) said the ministry would implement the bilingual nation program cautiously and make necessary adjustments following deliberation by officials.
Additional reporting by CNA
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