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Ping-pu. In 1989 it was reported that the population of the Amis was 129,200, the Paiwan 60, 434, the Atayal 78,957, Bunan 38, 627, Puyuma 8,132, The Rukai 8,007, the Tsou 5, 797, Saisiyat 4, 194 and finally the Yami with a population numbering 4, 335 individuals.
Tsao gives two major reasons for language erosion in Taiwan. The first reason given is the promotion of Mandarin as the national language of Taiwan to the exclusion of all other languages, and the widespread language of wider communication: English. Mandarin has been promoted as the national language of Taiwan for more than fifty years now and it was not until Martial Law was lifted that local languages such as Taiwanese could be used in broadcast media- especially on the radio. After 1987 some Taiwanese broadcasting was permitted, but its scope it turned out would be limited to an hour a day.
Indigenous languages and culture face an ever-growing challenge in Taiwan that is the language of wider communication. English has become more prominent here in Taiwan, many parents believe that if they want their children to get ahead in an ever-demanding world then English language skills are an important asset to have. Many children are sent to English classes to learn English in some sort of effort to get ahead. In the early 1980’s despite being illegal many English Language Schools spouted up all over the country. Tsao argues that in fact the government has all but ignored indigenous languages which he suggests have led to all sorts of problems including the breakdown of the family and other social problems.
3.4 The arrival of the Nationalist government in Taiwan
Taiwan had been effectively ruled by the Japanese for a period of fifty years, and when Taiwan was returned to Chinese rule after this time the local population of Chinese descent were happy
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that their ties with the mainland were about to be renewed. Some of the local population welcomed the newly arriving forces and looked forward to the reestablishment of ties with the mainland. This period of happiness as it turned out was to be rather short lived after all. The newly arrived KMT forces began to treat the local Taiwanese more like a conquered people than as liberated Chinese. The mainlanders who had recently arrived soon took over all the major posts in the administration, education and state-owned enterprises, much like the Japanese had done before them. These administrators soon began to abuse their positions of authority and began to acquire personal wealth as the resources of Taiwan were transferred to the mainland in the KMT’s ongoing war with the Communists on the mainland. (Simpson: 241) At the same time the poorly educated soldiers began a series of looting and theft that was widespread. Much of Taiwan’s resources were diverted to the mainland and because of this the once strong economy set up by the Japanese was soon in rapid decline.
By 1949 the war against the Communists was going very badly for the KMT forces and as up to 2 million soldiers and administrators fled to Taiwan. This new influx of population all had to be fed and clothed and housed and this situation only made tensions between the local population and the mainlanders only more difficult. Taiwan was to become the KMT’s strong hold as it regrouped and prepared for its eventual return to the mainland. The KMT then declared Martial Law as a temporary measure claiming they were still at war on the mainland. The KMT then could not be challenged by another other political force in Taiwan with the introduction of Martial Law.
As for language policy the KMT once it arrived instituted strict measures that were to have one outcome: the removal of all things Japanese on the island. The first to go was the Japanese language itself. Japanese was banned from all public places and in broadcast media. KMT language policy was to be used to re-sinize the local population that had been under Japanese influence for
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more than fifty years, and they wanted to make the local population into good Chinese citizens.
The KMT seized all Japanese materials and Japanese was no longer to be used in newspapers. The KMT were intent upon one thing: the complete purging of all things Japanese on the island, and any Japanese influence the local population had picked up with 50 years of Japanese rule on the island.
At the end of World War Two in 1945 Taiwan was returned to Chinese rule. Language polices that had been formed in mainland China and had been for some time already. Language policy was an important issue facing the new government that had formed in China in 1911 after the end of the Ching government. When the Nationalists took over Taiwan they simply brought with them language and educational polices that had already been formed in China and made only minor changes to the policies that were formulated in China. For a better understanding of the polices that were introduced in Taiwan after 1945 a basic outline of these policies and how they were initially introduced is necessary to complete the entire picture. In 1911 the Republic of China was established and was faced with two major issues, that of unification and modernization. China at the time comprised of over 50 different ethnic groups each one of them speaking at least one or more different languages representing Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Altaic, and Indo-European languages. The Han were by far the largest group representing up to 90% of the population. This group spoke seven different dialects, and perhaps hundreds of sub-dialects. All of these were mutually unintelligible with the other dialects that were spoken in China at the time. The major dialects spoken in China at the time were Mandarin 70%, Wu 8.4%, Cantonese 5%, and Min 4.2%, Hakka 4%, and Gan 2.4%. (Tsao: 333) It’s not difficult to imagine or understand that with this ethnic and linguistic diversity in China that any kind of unity would have been possible.
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The KMT promoted Mandarin as the national language of Taiwan or the guoyou much like it had been promoted in China prior to the KMT arriving in Taiwan. The KMT implemented Mandarin as the lingua franca of China and was to intend to act as a means of communication for all the different speakers of the various dialects in China. Prior to the arrival of the KMT to Taiwan the local Taiwanese population was not familiar with Mandarin at all, and the KMT used this against the local Taiwanese and made being able to speak Mandarin as a tool for gaining employment.
The Taiwanese were not able to speak Mandarin at first and this placed them at a disadvantage were mainlanders occupied all the senior posts in the government and bureaucracy. The KMT justified their language policy on the basis that as Taiwan was now once again part of China Mandarin must become the national language in all public spheres.
By the end of the Ching Dynasty its rulers realized that if China was to be a strong country it needed a unified national language and mass literacy if the country was to become strong. The lack of any real national language proved to be a barrier to any sense of national unity and acted as a barrier to political, economic and social development of the county. The situation became so bad that after a while the officials of these provinces had to be sent to special schools to teach them Mandarin. Even up to the late 1950s up to one half or perhaps two thirds of the population were thought to be functionally illiterate. Figures were even higher twenty or thirty years prior to that.
To solve the pressing issues of unification and literacy important questions had to be answered.
The first question that needed answering was which dialect was to be chosen and how should it be written so that the population could learn it as quickly as possible and in the shortest amount of time. Mandarin was by far the largest dialect accounting for 70% of the population and its four
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major sub-dialects were seen as mutually intelligible. The national language that was eventually chosen was an artificial form of Mandarin that contained the maximum distinctions found in the four major dialects.
The second question that needed answering was that of which writing system was to be chosen as the national language. During the latter part of the Ching Dynasty there were serious arguments as to whether Chinese characters that were in use at the time were suitable as a writing system for all Chinese. The main problem with Chinese characters was that they were too complex to be learnt by many people within a short period of time. There were different proposals that were put forth at the time, the characters should remain the same, but they were to be supplemented with an auxiliary system for transcription that indicated pronunciation and replacing them with simplified characters and finally a Romanized spelling system was introduced.
The national language that the new government eventually selected turned out to be an artificial form of Mandarin that contained the maximum distinction found in all the major distinctions, that is, the entering tone, the Jian-tuan distinction, and two mid vowel phonemes [0] and [e]. The choice for a national language turned out to be a relatively easy one for the new government, unlike the situation that emerged in India and Sri Lanka when Hindi and Sinhalese were eventually chosen as the national languages of these countries. Another important factor that led to the smooth choice for a national language is that elites at the time were concerned that inter lingual and inter dialect communication be as effective as possible.
At the end of the Second World War Japan effectively surrendered its control of Taiwan to the Republic of China in 1945, and Taiwan was returned to Chinese rule at the end of the war.
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In 1945, The Taiwan Provisional Government was established with Chen Yi as the administrator. The Nationalist government it turned out was not prepared to take over the control of the island, but by the end of the war in 1945, it seemed all but inevitable that the Nationalist government would take over the island. The decision to appoint Chen seemed at the time to be ill considered and a poor decision on the part of Chiang to appoint Chen as the governor of the island.
Chen it turned out was not prepared to become the administrator of the island. Chen was not prepared to rule millions of Taiwanese who spoke Southern Min, Hakka and Austronesian languages. Many Taiwanese had received at least some Japanese language education and some even spoke Japanese as a high language. With Chen’s experience of governor of Fujian, he thought he was prepared to implement a national language policy in Taiwan and that he could do this all within four years. Little is known of what he accomplished in Fujian. There is little doubt that he was not in fact prepared to carry out any of his plans or goals on the island. Chen also advocated that strict measures be used in promoting a national language on the island.
The situation that Chen found himself was difficult at best. There were effectively two distinct groups on the island. There was the ruling elite who came from the mainland who spoke at least some form of Mandarin and another group consisting of the main population who spoke Southern Min, Hakka and the Austronesian languages found on the island. There was no real way for the two distinct groups to communicate with each other than through translation. Chen banned the use of Japanese on the island within the first year of his administration. Although the policy may have had its merits at some level the planning and timing were poor, and the effects of his policy and the outcomes could not have been predicted by Chen. As already mentioned Chen did institute strict measures, one of which was the banning of Japanese on the island. Japanese was a high language used by many elites on the island, and by banning its use Chen effectively took away
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their voice in the public domain. Many intellectuals were against this sudden banning of Japanese and were against this new policy.
Hsiau (1997) writes about the current language problem that Taiwan is facing today, and in his essay, he gives an historical outline of how Mandarin language policy developed in Taiwan after the arrival of the KMT in 1945. In his paper he describes the current situation that Tai-yu (or Southern Min, Taiwan Mandarin, etc. Taiwanese goes by several names which only it seems to make the current issue more complicated than it need be) faces in Taiwan today. He argues that tying Taiwanese perseverance is a part of local identity awareness and an important part of Taiwanese ethnic politics. In 1988 Lee became the first native born Taiwanese to become the leader of the KMT which had previously been dominated by the so-called mainlanders or as the local population called them” wai-sheng-gen” or people from the other provinces. For more than 50 years the KMT has dominated politics and most other aspects of life on the island. The mainlanders are the minority ethnic group in the country and yet have managed to remain in control for over 50 years and have recently won another election to keep themselves in government for another 4 years. The wai-sheng-gen speak several different languages (Hsiao: 303), and for the most part have lost their speech community because most of them have dispersed over the entire country and many of them speak different dialects of Cantonese as well. When they do speak Cantonese or whatever language they use it is mainly to family and friends and have difficulty speaking with the majority population that speaks Taiwanese, and when they do speak they have to use Mandarin to communicate to others outside their language community. Mandarin is the official language of the country and is tied to KMT language policy on the island, and the mainlanders are firmly tied to this use of language. Mandarin is the only official language as
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defined by the KMT and it alone has legitimacy as the official language on the island. On the other side Tai-yu use is seen as a challenge to the KMT’s legitimacy on the island.
By 1944 the KMT government in China realized that a victory over the Japanese was at hand and they started their takeover of the island on Taiwan soon after. The Japanese had done a great deal on the island and had contributed to its economic development in a great way, so much so that the new government may have had trouble taking over where the Japanese had left off. (Hsiau: 305).
There was the problem of language that needed immediate attention when the KMT first arrived on the island. A large proportion of Chinese children (up to 70 percent of them) had attended the free but compulsory Japanese educational system. The Japanese had gone a long way in educating the Taiwanese. In fact, educational and literacy levels were much higher in Taiwan then they were on the mainland due to the long and drawn out war on the mainland. The KMT soon realized this situation and the depth of Japanese indoctrination on the island and saw the importance of educating the population as a means of re socializing them. The new government set out immediately to reeducate the population as soon as possible. The government started with teaching Mandarin as the national language and teaching Chinese history as a means of re-sinizing the population. Promoting Mandarin was to be an important element in this new plan to re-educate the Taiwanese population.
The National Language Movement was imitated in 1946 just one year after the war had ended.
The major force behind this new movement was the Taiwan Provincial Committee for the Promotion and Propagation of the National Language. The committee had two major goals before it. One was to recover the Taiwanese dialect so that the Taiwanese might compare it to the new
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national language and to rid the Taiwanese of any Japanese speech as it pertained to daily life and the like.
After 1949 the situation between the mainlanders and the Taiwanese only worsened as up to 1.5 million soldiers and administrators came to the island after the defeat of the KMT government in China. The use of Mandarin as the official National Language in Taiwan was at first used to promote national unity and as a means of destroying the Communists on the mainland. Because of all this only Mandarin was considered a language, all other languages on the island including Taiwanese (Tai yu, Hakka, and the many aboriginal languages were demoted to dialects or fang-yen).