Language rights advocates and groups supporting “Taiwanization” have called on the government to change its linguistic designation for Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) from Minnanyu (閩南語, Southern Min) to Taiyu (台語).
The word Minnan has overtones of racial discrimination, and in the past, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) authoritarian government used “unlawful” means when designating it the “official name” for Taiyu, Taiwanese Pen Tai-bun Pit-hoe, the Takao Promote Tai-gi-bun Association and other advocacy groups said in a statement.
When Nvidia cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), who was born in Tainan, spoke in Hoklo during a recent visit to Taiwan, he referred to the language as Taiyu, the statement said.
Photo: CNA
“Therefore we urge the Ministry of Education to follow the Executive Yuan’s resolution to prioritize the term Taiyu instead of Minnan,” it said
No article in the Constitution, nor any legal provision requires the use of Minnan when referring to Hoklo, the statement added.
Furthermore, the Min (閩) symbol is composed of the radical for door, and the component for insects (虫) or beast, which in ancient times referred to snakes, it said.
“The use of Minnan by northern Chinese was intended as racial discrimination when referring to the people of the Fujian or Minnan region,” the statement said, adding that some textbooks say the term meant “snake people” or “persons crawling on the ground.”
“Therefore Minnan when applied ... to speakers of the language, is like Han Chinese in the past referring to Taiwan’s indigenous people as fan [番, ‘uncivilized, or barbarians’] who spoke fan languages,” the statement said.
The government’s continued use of the term Minnan violates people’s right to language equality and contravenes the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights; the UN’s covenants on protecting civil and political rights, and social and cultural rights; and the Development of National Languages Act (國家語言發展法), which went in to effect in 2019, it said.
The groups urged the Ministry of Education “to respect the wishes of Taiwanese, to change the term in school textbooks ... and to take action through an official notification from the ministry” saying that the language should be referred to as Taiyu, not Minnan.
Other organizations involved in the statement included the Taiwanese Romanization Association, the Taiwan-Vietnam Culture Association, Toa-bak-chiu Liam-koa-thoan, National Cheng Kung University’s Department of Taiwanese Literature and the Hoat-Ki Tai-gi Ki-kim-hoe Taiwanese Foundation.
Eight restaurants in Taiwan yesterday secured a one-star rating from the Michelin Guide Taiwan for the first time, while three one-star restaurants from last year’s edition were promoted to two stars. Forty-three restaurants were awarded one star this year, including 34 in Taipei, five in Taichung and four in Kaohsiung. Hosu (好嶼), Chuan Ya (川雅), Sushi Kajin (鮨嘉仁), aMaze (心宴), La Vie by Thomas Buhner, Yuan Yi (元一) and Frassi in Taipei and Front House (方蒔) in Kaohsiung received a one-star rating for the first time. Hosu is known for innovative Taiwanese dishes, while Chuan Ya serves Sichuan cuisine and aMaze specializes
Taitung County is to launch charter flights to Malaysia at the end of this year, after setting up flights to Vietnam and Thailand, the Taitung County Government said yesterday. The new charter flight services, provided by low-cost carrier Batik Air Malaysia, would be part of five-day tour packages for visits to Taitung County or Malaysia. The Batik Air charter flight, with about 200 seats, would take Malaysian tourists to Taitung on Dec. 30 and then at 12:35pm return to Kuala Lumpur with Taiwanese tourists. Another charter flight would bring the Taiwanese home on Jan. 3 next year, arriving at 5:30pm, before taking the
Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) plans to ease strained capacity during peak hours by introducing new fare rules restricting passengers traveling without reserved seats in 2026, company Chairman Shih Che (史哲) said Wednesday. THSRC needs to tackle its capacity issue because there have been several occasions where passengers holding tickets with reserved seats did not make it onto their train in stations packed with individuals traveling without a reserved seat, Shih told reporters in a joint interview in Taipei. Non-reserved seats allow travelers maximum flexibility, but it has led to issues relating to quality of service and safety concerns, especially during
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
RSS