Preservation of Ancient Languages in Taiwan

There are often news stories about languages in far out places being in decline, sometimes this is because of a more dominant language, as is the case with Welsh and Cornish in the UK. And sometimes there are geographical reasons, highlighted recently in Taiwan. Taiwan is considered by a number of anthropologists to be the source of Austronesian languages, and it is here that some of the indigenous languages are in danger of fading away altogether.

There are fourteen indigenous languages in Taiwan and seven of them are on Unesco’s critical list. Chang Shin-liang, head of the language and culture department of the government's Council of Indigenous Peoples has reasoned that this is mainly because the current younger generation’s parents cannot speak their ancient language. Their grandparents can, but as Chinese has slowly become the dominant culture this has taken over with the modern generation.

"We're facing a dangerous situation for indigenous languages. Seven out of 14 indigenous languages here are listed by Unesco as critically endangered," said Mr Chang.

"Many people in their 40s and 50s can't speak their mother-tongue, so they can't teach it to the younger generation. The younger people also think 'I'm fine if I can speak Mandarin and English; learning indigenous languages doesn't help me increase my competitiveness'."

Indeed this may be the very crux of the matter. What incentive is there for the younger person to want to learn the language? There is certainly no inherent need for them to do so. Likely the only method may be to get them interested in history and their lineage, perhaps they will never become fluent but maybe this is better than the language being forever consigned to the history books.

It is along these lines of incentivising the young that summers camps are being set up in Taiwan by the government. These are designed to teach children about ancestral worshipping rituals, storytelling and music etc in a hope to get them interested and along the way teach them the languages of their forbears. Although not everyone agrees with this method it certainly shows that the government is willing to do something in order to preserve these languages. It can be very easy for a government to not do anything. After all, there is no pure monetary reason for them to do so. It does show however that within an ancient language there can be a lot to learn about past culture.