wfn.org | Taiwan's Presbyterians Petition to Preserve a Language

[Taiwan Church News <pctpress@ms1.hinet.net>]

Taiwan Church News 2669, April 27, 2003
Reported by Li Hsin-ren. Translated and rewritten by David
Alexander

   In the 19th century most people in Taiwan were illiterate.
Evangelists and educators supported by the English and Canadian
Presbyterian churches introduced a system for writing the
Taiwanese language in Latin script. This system had been devised
in China's Fujian Province, which shares the same language as
Taiwan.  The Taiwan Church News was published in this "romanized"
script from its beginning in 1885 until 1969, when it shifted to
Chinese characters.  Over these many decades of church life, and
even for years since, hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese people
have learned and used "Church Romanization", a system for putting
the words they speak into a phonetic form of writing.
   In recent years the Central Government's Ministry of Education
has taken an interest in developing a phonetically based system
for writing Taiwanese and other ideographically expressed
languages in use here. The Presbyterian Church in Taiwan (PCT)
contributed to the discussion, suggesting that the government
adopt the system which has existed for over a century, and which
is already known by tens of thousands of literate people.  But
the government has opted for a "universal" system believed
effective for Taiwanese, Hakkanese and Mandarin.
   Last week the PCT re-mobilized a petition drive, aimed at
gathering 50,000 signatures before May 5th. The Church's special
committee on Mother Tongue promotion, (which also promotes
Aboriginal languages and Hakkanese) claims that "Church
Romanization" is both practical and of historical value.
   Siao Hok-to, the head of the Mother Tongue Promotion
Committee, explained the origin and urgency of the petition
drive.	The "National Language Promotion Committee" of the
Ministry of Education recently selected a system known as the
Taiwan Language Phonetic Alphabet (TLPA) as the national standard
without regard for the contribution of Church Romanization or the
suitability of TLPA for common use.
   "In 1990," he said, "when TLPA was beginning to be developed,
there was some comparative work done relating to Church
Romanization, but the systems have since diverged to the extent
that they are incompatible."
   TLPA was promoted as being more practical for use in computer
word processing.  But since that claim was made software has been
developed that works well with the church system.
   More significantly, TLPA comes with no literary history.  An
extensive body of work, not only Bibles and Hymnals, exists in
Church Romanization.  These include literary, historical and
scientific works.  Should TLPA become the "standard" system none
but a few specialists will have access to the archive.	The
contributions of over 100 years will become useless.
   Mr. Chhoa Khun-siu, a member of Tek-seng Presbyterian Church
in Kaohsiung City, is a member of the Taiwan Romanization
Association.  He said, "From the standpoint of linguistics, TLPA
cannot be regarded as a written language."  He says that the long
use and 'field testing' of Church Romanization makes it an
unquestionably valuable literary tradition.
   The petition drive was sanctioned by the General Assembly in
February, but few signatures came in.  Now that it nears the time
when papers must be submitted, efforts have been redoubled. In
addition to bringing the petition, members of the Mother Tongue
Committee plan to call on policy makers at the Ministry of
Education.  The effort will fly in the faces of policy direction
and of the gradual diminution of use of Taiwanese among younger
generations here.  Mr. Siao calls on parents to use their mother
tongues in the home for normal casual conversation.

For more information: Mother Tongue Committee
yasala@mail.pct.org.tw
		      To sign the petition online
http://203.64.42.21/lian-su

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