regimes, and thus the major spoken languages and writing systems have also been on a constant change.
The following sections will further discuss the ethnolinguistic settings, different language varieties, and the evolutions of spoken and written languages of Taiwan.
Section 3.1 elaborates different ethnolinguistic groups; section 3.2 introduces the diverse language varieties; section 3.3 and 3.4 expound the evolutions of spoken and written languages of Taiwan.
3.1 Ethnolinguistic Groups in Taiwan
Due to the fact that language is frequently used to rouse the ethnic self-awareness of group members, an ethnolinguistic group is defined as those people that identify and are identified by others as sharing a common ancestral and linguistic
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origin.45
There are a few ways to categorize the people in Taiwan.
Some suggest that all the people in Taiwan should be called Taiwanese which is further divided into Han Chinese and indigenous Taiwanese, and Han Chinese is again further divided into Hoklo, Hakka, and Chinese Mainlanders. Some argue that people in Taiwan could be classified into Bensheng Ren (本省人，people from within the province) and Waisheng Ren (外省人，people from outside the province), and Bensheng Ren consists of Hoklo and Hakka people.
In this section, Hoklo, Hakka, aboriginal people, and Chinese Mainlanders are discussed separately without putting them into any specific categories since it has always been difficult and controversial to define ethnicity in Taiwan.
3.1.1 Aboriginal People
The aboriginal people, whose languages belong to Austronesian-Formosan language family, have resided in Taiwan for thousands of years. From Han perceptions and based where they lived, these tribes were roughly divided into two different groups. The first group refers to Shou-fan (熟番; ripe barbarians, civilized barbarians) or Pingpu (平埔族; groups of the plains). The term Shou-fan indicates that they were more or less blended into Han societies, and the term Pingpu means that they lived in the plains of western Taiwan. The second group refers to Sheng-fan (生番; rude barbarians, uncivilized barbarians) or Gaoshan (高山族; groups of the mountains), which suggests that these people were out of Han influence and resided in mountain areas of Taiwan. Pingpu consists of Siraya (西拉雅), Ketagalan (凱達格蘭), Kavalan (葛瑪蘭), Taokas (道卡斯), Pazch (巴則海), Papura (巴布拉), Babuza (貓霧
45 Feifel, Karl-Eugen. 1994. Language Attitudes in Taiwan - A Social Evaluation of Language in Social Change. Taipei: The Crane Publishing Co., Ltd, p. 26.
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捒), Hoanya (洪雅), and Thao (邵). Gaoshan is composed of Atayal (泰雅), Saisiyat
(賽夏), Bunun (布農), Tsou (鄒), Rukai (魯凱), Paiwan (排灣), Amis (阿美), Puyuma (卑南), and Yami (雅美).46
According to the Council of Indigenous Peoples (行政院原住民委員會), the number of aboriginal people in Taiwan is around four hundred ninety thousand, about 2% of the total population. Currently, 14 groups have been recognized by the government. They are the Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Yami, Thao, Kavalan, Truku (太魯閣), Sakizaya (撒 奇 萊 雅 ), and Sediq (賽 德克).47
3.1.2 The Hoklo
Hoklo (福佬，鶴佬) is the name of a group of people and also the name of a language variety spoken by those people.48 Hoklo are also called Minnan Ren (閩南 人) and their language Minnan Hua (閩南話). Some scholars suggest that nowadays
the term Taiwanese should be justified to replace the term Hoklo. Nonetheless, this thesis still adopts the term Hoklo since the academic and civil society of Taiwan has not yet reached an agreement on this issue.
The ancestors of the Hoklo, who started immigrating to Taiwan during the 17th and 18th centuries, mostly came from Changchou (漳州) and Chuanchou (泉州) prefectures of Fujian province (福建省, a coastal province of southeast China). Today, according to Government Information Office (GIO, 行政院新聞局), the Hoklo constitutes the largest ethnolinguistic group in Taiwan, accounting for approximately
46 Tsao, Feng-fu. 1999. The Language Planning Situation in Taiwan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 20(4 & 5): 329-330.
47 Refer to
http://www.apc.gov.tw/main/docDetail/detail_ethnic.jsp?cateID=A000427&linkSelf=147&linkRoot=1 01
48 In Taiwan, nowadays a great number of non-Hoklo people are also able to speak Hoklo.
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70% of the population.49
3.1.3 The Hakka
The term Hakka literally means “guest family” or “guest people”. Hak means guest and ka means family or people.
Most of the Hakka immigrants arrived Taiwan only after the middle period of Qing Dynasty. Due to the differing immigration period, environment, reciprocity and conflict between Hoklo immigrants, the Hakka moved a couple of times into inner regions of the island after immigrating to Taiwan. Moreover, some Hakka were assimilated by Hoklo because of their disadvantaged social, political, and economic status.50
At present, approximately 15% to 20% of the population is composed of Hakka.
They are mostly concentrated in Hsinchu City, Hsinchu County, Miaoli County, Chungli in Taoyuan County, Meinong in Kaohsiung County, and in Pingtung County.
Hualian and Taitung County in the east could also find some smaller presences. In recent decades, Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung metropolitan areas have been attracting more and more Hakka due to economic reasons.
Although there are a significant number of Hakka in Taiwan, they are still disadvantaged from political and economic perspectives. As a result, Hakka tend to conceal their identities in order to smoothly mingle with other ethnic groups, especially Hoklo since they comprise the majority of the population and could be found all over Taiwan, and ward off prejudices that might have a negative impact upon their survival and development. Thus, the concept of “Hoklo Hakka” (福佬客) is gradually recognized and discussed by the academia.
49 Refer to http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/yearbook/ch02.html
50 Refer to http://www.hakka.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=22244&ctNode=2211&mp=2210
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Today, it is not surprising that many Hakka in Taiwan are able to fluently speak Hoklo language variety and (or) Mandarin. However, it would be rare that people of the other ethnic groups are capable of speaking proficient Hakka language variety.
This phenomenon depicts an unbalanced interaction between Hakka and people of other ethnic origins (especially Hoklo). Nowadays, quite a few Hakka youth have completely lost the ability to speak Hakka language variety, and, to make things worse, some of the Hakka youth even forget, deny, or ignore their original identity with an eye to smoothly blending into the mainstream culture.
3.1.4 The Chinese Mainlanders
The term Chinese Mainlander (hereafter Mainlander), or Waisheng Ren (外省人, meaning people from external provinces), functions as an ethnic marker that collectively refers to those Chinese immigrants, regardless of their diverse provincial backgrounds, who came from mainland China after World War II or 1949, and also refers to their offspring born in Taiwan.
After the civil war against the Chinese communists on the mainland, the ROC government retreated to Taiwan with a sudden influx of approximately one million to two million immigrants.51 These immigrants were composed of people from different provinces of mainland China, and thus they spoke a number of mutually unintelligible Chinese language varieties. In spite of the linguistic diversity, common experiences in politics and army united them into a social group.
About half of the Mainlander groups came from Mandarin areas, but this did not imply that all these people were able to speak standard Mandarin owing to the influence of their strong hometown accents. More than 40% of them originated from
51 There is no consensus from scholars upon the exact number of Chinese immigrants so that the number varies between 1.5 to 2 million people.
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southeast China and spoke the language varieties of the provinces of Fujian (15%), Chekiang (浙江, 9%), Guangdong (8%), Hunan (湖南, 8%), and Kiangsi (江西, 4%), as their mother tongues.52
In the beginning, the Mainlanders were generally regarded as a socially and politically privileged group, despite the fact that some of them were also distributed at the lower level of the society. With Mandarin functioning as the lingua-franca and unifying force, they as a powerful minority eventually form a distinct ethnolinguistic identity quite different from the other ethnic groups. As a consequence, the mainlanders in the early years rarely made any effort to learn Hoklo or Hakka.
However, with Taiwan dramatically going through a number of political, economic, and social changes, the Mainlanders and their descendants gradually became bilingual in Mandarin and Hoklo or Hakka. Today the Mainlanders account for approximately 13 % of the population.53