President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President William Lai (賴清德) and Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) yesterday encouraged Taiwanese to celebrate their languages and culture on International Mother Language Day.
The day is observed annually on Feb. 21, as designated by UNESCO.
“Taiwan’s various languages and cultures make Taiwan unique,” Tsai said in an interview on ICRT’s We Love Hakka program, the United Daily reported.
Photo: CNA
Tsai encouraged Taiwanese to communicate in their mother tongues and identify with their roots.
Promoting mother languages is not only a global trend, but a great way to understand Taiwan’s various cultures, which can unite Taiwanese and make them feel proud, the article cited the president as saying.
Tsai also talked about her experience in learning Hakka, praising it as an elegant language that has deep connections with Taiwan.
She said that she tries to speak it whenever she attends Hakka events.
“Mother languages are the most beautiful sounds of the era,” Lai wrote in a Facebook post.
He also wrote of the importance of passing down and promoting languages, as it helps people to respect and connect with each other, as well as appreciate the beauty of Taiwan and its culture.
“It has long been the government’s goal to make the world see Taiwan through mother languages,” Lai added.
The Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法), which requires elementary, junior-high and high-school students to learn mother languages, and other policies are intended to “show respect for the culture, beauty and stories of every language,” Lai wrote.
Lai urged people to learn multiple languages and start “speaking our tongues” to make Taiwan an eclectic place.
You also celebrated the occasion on Facebook, writing that Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) faces “genuine risks” and would disappear if no action is taken to save it.
While he was a member of the now-defunct Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council, You said he asked the government about mother language education six times during question-and-answer sessions, and after being elected as Yilan County commissioner, he initiated mother language education.
Then-minister of education Mao Kao-wen (毛高文) said that mother languages should be learned at home, and the Yilan County Council cut the budget for the education program, You said.
Fortunately, the government included mother languages in education programs nationwide a few years later, he added.
You said that the Legislative Yuan is testing simultaneous interpretation and other language services.
In addition, romanization and Chinese characters are included in the Legislative Yuan Gazette for legislators who speak indigenous languages, You said.
The legislature also co-organized a Hoklo poetry reading competition and established a Hoklo poetry reading club in an effort to preserve the language, You added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching