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became fluent in Japanese, especially in the urban areas of the country, this was especially true during the last ten years of colonial rule as more and more of the population completed their Japanese education. By using Japanese exclusively in education and the public domains this policy eventually had a negative effect on people’s ability to speak and use other languages like Hakka and Southern Min. There were fewer and fewer opportunities to use these languages as Japanese became the language of discussion that many people either forgot or never learnt how to speak these other languages.
2.5 Conclusions
This chapter argued that it was language ideology that influenced Japanese language policy during the colonial period that lasted for 50 years in Taiwan. The Korean and Taiwanese experiences were similar in many ways but the colonial system that the Japanese introduced into Korea was more brutal than the one that they introduced into Taiwan. The Japanese introduced several assimilation polices onto the island, these polices were gradually phased in during the early colonial governments but as time passed and the war in the Pacific worsened for the Japanese their assimilation polices also changed. By the end of the war many Taiwanese had taken on Japanese family names and the Japanese language was the only acceptable form of communication- especially in the public forums. Each time the assimilation polices changed educational policy changed as well. What has emerged from this study is that although the Japanese introduced the common schools it seems that they were geared towards children of the merchant and gentry class, those parents could afford both the time and luxury of educating their children. There was in place of system of two-tiered education; one for the local Taiwanese students and one for Japanese students. The education that the local Taiwanese students received was not up to the same level
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that was offered to the Japanese students. There were ways around this obstacle and some parents did send their children to Japan for further education that was just not available on the island at the time. The Japanese did see the need to train local Taiwanese as teachers and doctors and eventually the common schools extended throughout the island. Japanese educational policies were seen as one of the means of their assimilation policies. What emerges from this study of colonialism is that it was the Japanese that left the most permanent mark on the island. The roads and railways that they either built or upgraded are still being used today. Without Japanese land reform it is rather doubtful that the new government that later came to power could have carried out the land reform policies that they later introduced. Under Japanese colonialism the local population did benefit, they were better educated (in Japanese) and had better health care and food, most of which went to Japan leaving the local producers little choice as to where the crop could be exported. New strains of rice and sugar were introduced relegating the domestic strains as second tier crops.
Japanese language instruction was not as successful as it might appear. Some new language learners spent years studying Japanese only to find out that they could not actually speak the language.
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CHAPTER III
LANGUAGE PLANNING AND POLICY IN TAIWAN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF LANGUAGE PLANNING IN TAIWAN 1945 TO 1987
Introduction
This chapter argues that language ideology was used to suppress language in Taiwan during the period from 1945 to 1987. Following the position taken in the previous two chapters it was language ideology that shaped and influence language planning and development in Taiwan under the Nationalist Government in Taiwan from 1945 to 1987. The Kuomintang held onto the belief that they were in fact the rightful government of China and that they would return to the mainland.
They held this belief until 1979 when the United States recognized Beijing as the government of China. The Nationalist government in Taiwan brought with them language and educational polices that were introduced when the Republic of China was first established in 1911.
Bernard Spolsky (2004) writes in his book Language Policy that there are three components of the language policy of a speech community: its language practices- the habitual pattern of selecting among the varieties that make up its language repertoire; its language beliefs about language and language use; and any specific effort to modify or influence that practice by any kind of language intervention, planning and management. There are also direct efforts to manipulate the language situation.
Tsao (1999) writes that language planning can be defined as the organized pursuit to solutions of
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language problems. The scope and range of the activities covered under language planning are wide and diverse in their nature. In his monogram Tsao traces the socio- historical roots of language policy and education in China and how it was transplanted to Taiwan with the coming of the Nationalist government to Taiwan in 1945. His monogram traces the development of Standard Mandarin and using simplified characters when writing Chinese and how these policies were transplanted to Taiwan when the Nationalists came. Tsao’s monograph is important in that it is one of the few to trace the socio-historical roots of how language policy and education were transplanted from China and brought to Taiwan after 1945.