Taiwanese languages
Authors sought to gain acceptance for the Taiwanese Hokkien language along with other languages encountered on the island (aboriginal languages and Hakka). These, the mother tongues of the majority of the island's natives, became in their hands the vehicles for serious literature, including essays, plays, and epic poetry. They made the island itself the center of their perspective on history and looked to local traditions and lore as fuel for creative ideas.
An example may be seen in the 1994 poem "If You Would Ask" by Lee Min-yung. The poem adopts the point of view of a Taiwan aborigine speaking to all the island's newer residents.
If you ask
Who is the father of the island of Taiwan
I will tell you
The sky is the father of the island of Taiwan
If you ask
Who is the mother of the island of Taiwan
I will tell you
The ocean is the mother of the island of Taiwan
If you ask
What is the past of the island of Taiwan
I will tell you
Blood and tears drop on the feet of the history of Taiwan
If you ask
What is the present of the island of Taiwan
I will tell you
Corruption in power is eroding the Taiwanese soul
If you ask
What is the future of the island of Taiwan
I will tell you
Step out on your feet, the road is open to you.
(Translation: Joyce Hwang) [5]
Native sources and unacknowledged island history were not the only influences. Authors drew inspiration from a number of literary figures abroad: Poland's Zbigniew Herbert and Czesław Miłosz; Czech poets Jaroslav Seifert, Antonín Bartušek [ cs ] and Miroslav Holub; Russia's Joseph Brodsky; France's André Gide and Paul Valéry; Turkey's Nazim Hikmet, Japan's Tamura Ryuichi.
The Taiwanese literature movement inspired a flowering of books, songs, and theater pieces using Taiwanese, Hakka and Taiwan aboriginal forms of expression that continues today. Taiwan's universities today offer recognize the languages and works championed by the movement as major fields of study.
Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as Taigi/Taigu, Taiwanese, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by about 70%+ of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of Taiwanese people descended from immigrants of southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.
The Hoklo people or Hokkien people are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian, China and known by various endonyms or other related terms such as Banlam (Minnan) people or Hokkien people. There are significant overseas populations in Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Americas.
Taiwanese literature refers to the literature written by Taiwanese in any language ever used in Taiwan, including Japanese, Taiwanese Han and Austronesian languages.
Chung Chao-cheng was a Taiwanese Hakka writer.
Pe̍h-ōe-jī, also sometimes known as the Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Southern Min Chinese, particularly Taiwanese Hokkien and Amoy Hokkien.
Taiwanese people may be generally considered the people of Taiwan who share a common culture, ancestry and speak Taiwanese Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka or indigenous Taiwanese languages as a mother tongue. Taiwanese people may also refer to the indigenous peoples of the areas under the control of the Government of the Republic of China since 1945, including Penghu as well as Kinmen and Matsu Islands that collectively form its streamlined Fujian Province. However, the inhabitants of Kinmen and the Matsu themselves may not consider the "Taiwanese" label to be accurate as they are a part of Fujian and not Taiwan. They have a distinctive identity from that of the Taiwanese; viewing themselves as Kinmenese or Matsunese, respectively, or as simply Chinese.
The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a 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.
Loa Ho was a Taiwanese poet who was born in Changhua County, Taiwan Prefecture, Fujian-Taiwan Province, Qing dynasty. He was a medical doctor but had enormous fame in literature. His poetry works were especially praised, and Lai was commonly known as one of Taiwan's most representative poets. He is also hailed as the "Father of Modern Taiwanese Literature".
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 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 China in 1945. The romanization of Mandarin Chinese was also introduced to Taiwan as official or semi-official standard.
Articles related to Taiwan include:
The Hokkien variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in Taiwan, and it is also widely spoken within the Chinese diaspora in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia; and by other overseas Chinese beyond Asia and all over the world. The Hokkien 'dialects' are not all mutually intelligible, but they are held together by ethnolinguistic identity. Taiwanese Hokkien is, however, mutually intelligible with the 2 to 3 million speakers in Xiamen and Singapore.
Ilha Formosa: Requiem for Formosa's Martyrs (2001) is a composition by Taiwanese composer Tyzen Hsiao for solo soprano, solo baritone, chorus and orchestra. The composition is based on a 1994 poem in Taiwanese Hokkien by Lee Min-yung.
Jiadong Township is a rural township in Pingtung County, Taiwan.
Differing literary and colloquial readings for certain Chinese characters are a common feature of many Chinese varieties, and the reading distinctions for these linguistic doublets often typify a dialect group. Literary readings are usually used in loanwords, names, literary works, and in formal settings, while colloquial/vernacular readings are usually used in everyday vernacular speech.
Taiwan nativist literature. Xiangtu (鄉土), literally meaning the hometown soil, symbolizes nativism; and Wenxue (文學) is literature. It is a genre of Taiwanese literature derived from the New Literature Movement (台灣新文學運動) under the Japanese rule in the 1920s. The movement died down after 1937 when the Japanese government strengthened its colonial policy, but regained public attention in the 1970s. Taiwan nativist literature uses literary realism as its main narrative to depict people, events and subjects that happen in Taiwan, aiming at reflecting the particularity of the local society. The nativist novels usually depict the struggles for existence and predicaments of identity of the Taiwanese people with a humanistic tone. They tend to base on the life experiences of their authors, and reflect their worldviews.
Plains indigenous peoples, previously called plain aborigines, are Taiwanese indigenous peoples originally residing in lowland regions, as opposed to Highland indigenous peoples. Plains indigenous peoples consist of anywhere from eight to twelve individual groups, or tribes, rather than being a single ethnic group. They are part of the Austronesian family. Beginning in the 17th century, plains indigenous peoples have been heavily influenced by external forces from Dutch, Spanish, and Han Chinese immigration to Taiwan. This ethnic group has since been extensively assimilated with Han Chinese language and culture; they have lost their cultural identity and it is almost impossible without careful inspection to distinguish plains indigenous peoples from Taiwanese Han people.
Han Taiwanese, Taiwanese Han, Taiwanese Han Chinese, or Han Chinese are Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Han descent. 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.
Wang Jinping or Wang Chin-ping was a scholar and president of the "China Union for Unification". He was a noted activist of the Tangwai movement in touch with many writers of the Taiwan Nativist Literature movement since the mid1970s. He was also, together with Liang Jingfeng and a few others on the Tamkang campus in Tamsui, a key mover of a new political direction in native folk music.
Protection of the varieties of Chinese refers to efforts to protect the continued existence of the varieties of Chinese in Mainland China and other places against pressure to abandon these languages and use 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 communist government of China for the last sixty years. The Constitution of the People's Republic of China calls on the government to promote Putonghua 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 are a set of laws enacted by the Guangdong provincial government in the People's Republic of China in 2012 to promote the use of Standard Mandarin Chinese in broadcast and print media at the expense of the local standard Cantonese and other related dialects. It has also been labelled a "pro-Mandarin, anti-Yue" legislation.
Chang Kuei-hsing is a Taiwanese author, novelist and educator. Born in North Borneo (Sarawak), Malaysia in a Hakka family, "growing up in a state of Sarawak amidst a racially mixed Chinese and native communities".
