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During the martial law period in Taiwan, a Mandarin monolingual policy was implemented in Taiwan by the Kuomintang. [1] The policy was formulated as a political goal to unite the island. [2] However, the demotion of prior local languages into "dialects" across cultural and educational landscapes resulted in a pushback of the policy and eventually rescinded as Taiwan democratized. [3]
Prior to the martial law, Taiwan was ruled as a Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945. During the rule, the Japanese colonizers imposed a policy of Japanization, including a monolingual policy. [4] The policy was initially nonmandatory, but quickly escalated towards the end of World War II in order to turn Taiwan into a military base. [4] However, the ban of native languages in the Japanese monolingual policy lasted for only a few years within the war period. Most of the native population had not been significantly affected and were still bilingual. [4]
Among the native population during the Japanese occupation, the native Taiwanese population consisted of indigenous people, the Hoklo, and the Hakka. [5]
After Japan's defeat in World War II, Taiwan was surrendered to the Chinese government, specifically the KMT-administered regime. [7] However, four years later, the KMT lost the civil war to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and fled to Taiwan for refuge. [7] A large number of Chinese immigrants who spoke Mandarin became the administrators and policymakers of the island. [4] However, most of the Taiwanese who resided in Taiwan prior to the KMT-rule do not understand standard Mandarin due to the "Japanization" during the Japanese colonial rule. [4] A language difference was apparent between the political elites and the mass public. [4] Furthermore, with the lack of historical experiences, tensions were very high between the native Taiwanese people and the Mandarin-speaking people. [4]
The KMT's goal of the monolingual policy was for de-Japanization and national unity. [6] For the KMT, any previous local elites were excluded from power because of the KMT's distrust of "Japanized" elites. [6] Especially after fifty years of Japanese colonization and the experience of war, the native Taiwanese, especially the younger generation, had gained more Japanese cultural characteristics. However, the KMT and mainlanders had experienced war against the Japanese, making them hostile to any Japanese influences. [6] Under the policy, Japanese, local, and indigenous languages were deemed illegal in the public sector. [6] Mandarin was instead promoted as the new, national language. Mandarin promotion groups were created to teach the indigenous people as they were considered "primitive." [6] Language workshops, educational reforms, and the standardization of traditional Chinese characters were created to support the monolingual policy. [6] In schools, students were fined, hit, or forced to wear a placard if caught speaking a "local dialect". [1] When television was introduced, any airing using native language was strictly prohibited or framed as a language to ridicule. [8]
Any other languages other than Mandarin were demoted as "dialects" and socially labeled as unpatriotic to the greater public. [6] Although the different dialects may not be as visible as the Minnan, Hakkas, and the Mainlanders were ethnically Han Chinese, the language, self-identity, and interpretations of history has created invisible ethnic cleavages. [8] Mainlanders were initially discriminated against by the native Taiwanese in fear of the political elites taking over business ownership and were reluctant to hire Mainlanders. [8] Such discrimination was primarily perpetuated by requiring job applicants to speak proficient Minnan. [8] The linguistic separation became more divided when Mainlanders were less willing to learn the local languages due to residential segregation and a lack of practical opportunities to use the language. [8] By speaking Mandarin, the KMT government was attempting to unite the cleavages under a mutual language. [8] The policy was a plan to encourage and promote mutual understandings between the Mainlanders and the local Taiwanese population. [8] Moreover, the KMT had a greater ambition to display patriotism through standardizing Mandarin as a means to prove that the newly established Republic of China is more superior and united than the People's Republic of China. [6]
The demarcation of prior languages as inferior dialects heavily stirred anti-KMT sentiments among the local population. [8] By wielding military power, political domination, and cultural hegemony, the KMT helped solidify the indigenous, Hokkien, and Minnan native identity, which led to anti-Mainlander ethnic nationalism. [8] Without any formal course or opportunity to speak local languages, many speakers of the local languages began to degenerate across the younger generations. However, because income inequality forced many of the Native populations to work in labor without much job mobility, many Minnan and Hokkien speakers were still able to communicate in their mother tongue. [9] Pockets began to develop among the Hakka, Minna, and indigenous groups where they would hold secret meetings to practice and teach themselves their own languages. [6] Hence, rather than building mutual trust, the demolition of various group's mother tongues increased the tensions between the Mainlanders and the local groups. [8] Through both political and cultural movements, the KMT then began to lift the language bans. [2]
After 1987, the KMT began to change the island's political landscape by transitioning away from martial law to a full democracy. [9] As a democratic institution, politicians were compelled and incentivized to reach out to the local populations in order to gain votes. [9] During Taiwan's first democratic presidential election, Lee Teng-hui spoke Minnan during his presidential campaign in 1996. [9] Not only was Lee a native Taiwanese, but as the successor of the KMT he also promoted more native Taiwanese technocrats into high government positions traditionally reserved for Mainlanders. [8] Especially with the Minnan and the Hokkien making up a strong majority of the Taiwanese population, embracing local languages became a political strategy in election campaigns to attract Native voters. [9] Laws and regulations began to gradually lift the monolingual policy as the island began to transition towards a democracy. For example, in November 1987, three government-controlled television stations began to broadcast news in Minnan. [2]
As politicians began to use languages in campaign speeches and loosen up the language policies, the cultural view towards language began to change too. [6] Being multilingual became a celebration of diversity and framed as resources that reflect a Taiwanese cultural identity. [6] The shift in attitude has been referred to as a time of "Taiwanisation" as it attempts to rectify the wrongdoings of the past. Furthermore, in 1993, the Interior Ministry apologized for repressive language policy of the past and declared that it had been a mistake. [2] A language equity law was passed to create a legal foundation of equal treatment of languages and nativist languages are transitioning into schools. Efforts in validating the Minnan, Hakka, and indigenous identity in the public sphere is still an ongoing process through education outreaches. [10]
In Taiwan, the movement towards adopting Mandarin as the lingua franca language is still apparent. The conflict in KMT Chinese nationalism and Taiwanese nationalism remains because of the irreversibility of the assimilation police. [3] Presently, people have accepted the results of the national language policy as the remnant of a colonial language. Especially with Taiwan's current ambiguous national status, people are uncertain on the course of reversing the 50 years of acquired Modern Written Chinese and Han characters. [3]
Standard Chinese is a modern standard form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the republican era (1912‒1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is largely based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon. Hong Kong written Chinese, used for formal written communication in Hong Kong and Macau, is a form of Standard Chinese that is read aloud with the Cantonese reading of characters.
Taiwanese Hokkien, or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taiuanoe, Taigi, Taigu, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.
Southern Min, Minnan or Banlam, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian, most of Taiwan, Eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and Southern Zhejiang. Southern Min dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Southern and Central Vietnam, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. Minnan is the most widely-spoken branch of Min, with approximately 48 million speakers as of 2017–2018.
Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community shifts to a different language, usually over an extended period of time. Often, languages that are perceived to be higher-status stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be lower-status. An example is the shift from Gaulish to Latin during the time of the Roman Empire.
The culture of Taiwan is a blend of Han Chinese and indigenous Taiwanese cultures. Despite the overwhelming Chinese cultural influence and minority indigenous Taiwanese cultural influence, Japanese culture has significantly influenced Taiwanese culture as well. The common socio-political experience in Taiwan gradually developed into a sense of Taiwanese cultural identity and a feeling of Taiwanese cultural awareness, which has been widely debated domestically.
The Hoklo people are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, and known by various related terms such as Banlam people, Minnan people, or more commonly in Southeast Asia as the Hokkien people. The Hokkien people are found in significant numbers in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, and the United States. The Hokkien people have a distinct culture and architecture, including Hokkien shrines and temples with tilted sharp eaves, high and slanted top roofs, and finely detailed decorative inlays of wood and porcelain. The Hokkien language, which includes Taiwanese Hokkien, is the mainstream Southern Min, which is partially mutually intelligible to the Teochew language, Hainanese, Leizhou Min, and Haklau Min.
The Han Chinese people can be defined into subgroups based on linguistic, cultural, ethnic, genetic, and regional features. The terminology used in Mandarin to describe the groups is: "minxi", used in mainland China or "zuqun", used in Taiwan. No Han subgroup is recognized as one of People's Republic of China's 56 official ethnic groups, in Taiwan only three subgroups, Hoklo, Hakka and Waishengren are recognized.
Taiwanese nationalism is a nationalist ideology asserting that the Taiwanese people are a nation and Taiwan is a sovereign country. Due to the political status of Taiwan and Han origin of most Taiwanese today, it is strongly linked to the Taiwan independence movement in promoting de-Sinicization to seek a national identity separate from China.
Taiwanese Mandarin, frequently referred to as Guoyu or Huayu, is the variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Taiwan. A large majority of the Taiwanese population is fluent in Mandarin, though many also speak a variety of Min Chinese known as Taiwanese Hokkien, which has had a significant influence on the Mandarin spoken on the island.
Taiwanese people are the citizens and nationals of the Republic of China (ROC) and those who reside in an overseas diaspora from the entire Taiwan Area. The term also refers to natives or inhabitants of the island of Taiwan and its associated islands. The term generally applies to inhabitants on the island of Taiwan who share a common culture, ancestry and speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka, or indigenous Taiwanese languages as a mother tongue. After the ROC government's retreat to Taiwan in 1949, the actual-controlled territories of the government were limited to the main island of Taiwan and Penghu, whose administration were transferred from Japan in 1945, along with a few outlying islands in Fujian Province which include Kinmen and Matsu Islands. Nowadays, Taiwanese people as a demonym may broadly refer to the indigenous peoples of Kinmen and Matsu as they share the same national identity with people of Taiwan. However, the islanders of Kinmen and the Matsu may not consider the "Taiwanese" label to be accurate as they were traditionally a part of Fujian and not Taiwan, maintaining a distinctive identity from that of the Taiwanese.
The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Owing to the wide internal variety of the Formosan languages, research on historical linguistics recognizes Taiwan as the Urheimat (homeland) of the whole Austronesian languages family. In the last 400 years, several waves of Han emigrations brought several different Sinitic languages into Taiwan. These languages include Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, which have become the major languages spoken in present-day Taiwan.
There are many romanization systems used in Taiwan. The first Chinese language romanization system in Taiwan, Pe̍h-ōe-jī, was developed for Taiwanese by Presbyterian missionaries and has been promoted by the indigenous Presbyterian Churches since the 19th century. Pe̍h-ōe-jī is also the first written system of Taiwanese Hokkien; a similar system for Hakka was also developed at that time. During the period of Japanese rule, the promotion of roman writing systems was suppressed under the Dōka and Kōminka policy. After World War II, Taiwan was handed over from Japan to the Republic of China in 1945. The romanization of Mandarin Chinese was also introduced to Taiwan as official or semi-official standard.
Taiwanese Australians are Australian citizens or permanent residents who carry full or partial ancestry from the East Asian island country of Taiwan or from preceding Taiwanese regimes.
Benshengren are ethnic Hoklo or Hakka Taiwanese nationals who settled on the island prior to or during the Japanese colonization of Taiwan. Its usage is to differentiate the different culture, customs, and political sentiments within contemporary Taiwan between those who lived through World War II on the island and later migrants from Mainland China, who are known as waishengren. Hoklo and Hakka people who migrated to Taiwan after 1945, especially those who migrated with the retreat of the Nationalist-Led Chinese Government to Taiwan in 1949 are not included in this term.
Huan-a is a Hokkien-language term used by Hokkien speakers in multiple countries, namely mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. The word itself when dissected means 番; hoan; 'foreign', + 仔; á; 'diminutive noun suffix', but to the ethnic Chinese that settled overseas in Taiwan and Maritime Southeast Asia, it soon came to refer to native Southeast Asians and Taiwanese aborigines.
Han Taiwanese, Taiwanese Han, Taiwanese Han Chinese, or Han Chinese are Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Han ancestry. According to the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, they comprise 95 to 97 percent of the Taiwanese population, which also includes Austronesians and other non-Han people. Major waves of Han immigration occurred since the 17th century to the end of Chinese Civil War in 1949, with the exception of the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). Han Taiwanese mainly speak three languages of Chinese: Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka.
Taiwanese Hakka is a language group consisting of Hakka dialects spoken in Taiwan, and mainly used by people of Hakka ancestry. Taiwanese Hakka is divided into five main dialects: Sixian, Hailu, Dabu, Raoping, and Zhao'an. The most widely spoken of the five Hakka dialects in Taiwan are Sixian and Hailu. The former, possessing 6 tones, originates from Meizhou, Guangdong, and is mainly spoken in Miaoli, Pingtung and Kaohsiung, while the latter, possessing 7 tones, originates from Haifeng and Lufeng, Guangdong, and is concentrated around Hsinchu. Taiwanese Hakka is also officially listed as one of the national languages of Taiwan. In addition to the five main dialects, there are the northern Xihai dialect and the patchily-distributed Yongding, Fengshun, Wuping, Wuhua, and Jiexi dialects.
The usage of Chinese by the Chinese diaspora and their descendants has been determined by a large number of factors, including their ancestry, their migrant ancestors' "regime of origin", assimilation through generational changes, and official policies of their country of residence. The general trend is that more established Chinese populations in the Western world and in many regions of Asia have Cantonese as either the dominant variety or as a common community vernacular, while Mandarin is much more prevalent among new arrivals, making it increasingly common in many Chinatowns, though still not dominant.
Hokkien, Hoklo (Holo), and Minnan people are found in the United States. The Hoklo people are a Han Chinese subgroup with ancestral roots in Southern Fujian and Eastern Guangdong, particularly around the modern prefecture-level cities of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, and Xiamen, along with the Chaoshan region. They are also known by various endonyms, or other related terms such as Hoklo people (河洛儂), Banlam (Minnan) people, Hokkien people or Teochew people (潮州人;Tiê-tsiu-lâng). These people usually also have roots in the Hokkien diaspora in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
Protection of the varieties of Chinese refers to efforts to protect the continued existence of the varieties of Chinese in mainland China and other Sinophone regions, amid pressure to abandon their use, usually in favor of Standard Chinese. The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has proclaimed to be taking active measures to protect ten varieties of Chinese. However, a large majority of the citizens of China speak a dialect of Mandarin Chinese, a standardized form of which has been enforced and promoted by the government of China for the last sixty years. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China calls on the government to promote Standard Chinese as the common tongue of the nation, but this policy has caused conflict to a certain extent with plans to preserve local varieties of Chinese. Education and media programming in varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin have been discouraged by the governments of the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Taiwan. Teaching the varieties of Chinese to non-native speakers is discouraged by the laws of the People's Republic of China in favor of Putonghua. The Guangdong National Language Regulations were passed by the Guangdong provincial government in 2012 to promote the use of Standard Chinese in broadcast and print media at the expense of the local standard Cantonese and other related dialects. It has been labelled "pro-Mandarin, anti-Yue" legislation.
