Social and church groups concerned for future of Taiwanese as mother language

["Taiwan Church News" <enews@pctpress.org>]

3094 Edition

June 13~19, 2011

General Assembly News

Social and church groups concerned for future of Taiwanese as mother language

Reported by Chiou Kuo-rong

Written by Lydia Ma

Since 2000, UNESCO has stressed the importance of keeping mother languages 
alive and it has set February 21 as “International Mother Language Day”. The 
purpose for such a day is to remind the world that some minority languages are 
at risk and need to be preserved, and to promote cultural diversity and 
multilingualism. 

Sadly, the Taiwanese government is not on the same page when it comes to 
promoting multilingualism and continues to elevate Mandarin at the expense of 
Taiwanese and other native languages in its education system.

“Taiwanese language education is my right” Alliance convener Wi-vun Taiffalo 
Chiung said that according to the current Ministry of Education curriculum for 
elementary schools, students must take at least 17~24 periods of Mandarin, 
12~16 periods of English, but only 1 period of Taiwanese per week. To add 
insult to injury, Taiwanese classes are not even graded.

For these reasons, the alliance protested in the front steps of the Ministry of 
Education (MOE) on June 13, 2011, and demanded the MOE respect the rights of 
Taiwanese to be educated in Taiwanese.

PCT Taiwan Ethnic Languages Committee Chairwoman Tan Hong-hui took part in this 
protest on behalf of PCT. She said that PCT local churches combined use more 
than 20 languages every Sunday to worship God and the PCT is determined to 
protect all Taiwanese mother languages and stay rooted in this land with all 
its inhabitants. She added that Christian doctrine and theology would agree 
with such a position.

“If we don’t stand up and speak out, will our language still exist 20 or 50 
years from now?”, Tan asked, urging the Ma administration to give this right 
back to the people and normalize Taiwan’s education system. 

This is not the first time the alliance has appealed to the government on the 
matter of increasing the number of hours mother languages are taught in public 
schools.     

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