Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese, part 2
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"Taigi a political question of identity", By Hugo Tseng, Taipei Times (7/27/24)
The issue of whether to call the language spoken in Taiwan “Minnanese” (閩南語) or “Taigi” (台語, taiyu, also called Hoklo or Taiwanese) has long been a subject of debate. On the surface, it seems to be a simple question about language, but in essence it is a political question of identity.
Perhaps we could gain some inspiration from the duality of English as a language. English was, at its earliest, the language of the Angles — the Germanic people from the German-Danish border who invaded and settled in what is now known as England, whose name meant the “Land of the Angles.”
Through colonization and the spread of the language across the world, English — even as it melded with and adopted local characteristics and traits from other languages — remained essentially the same. In the US, Australia and other Anglophone countries, English is the name of the language, but the name is appended with a qualifier — the name of the country where it is used — such as American English or Australian English.
There is another aspect to the name English. England being the “Land of the Angles” has led to a linguistic “representation” that eclipses the languages of the original Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles and the Germanic Saxons who later invaded and settled in England from continental Europe. This is also a display of linguistic force, and it is a reality that cannot be anything but accepted.
What, no British English? But the greatest impact of all on the development of the English language was brought about by the Norman Conquest. And who were the Normans? Vikings / Norsemen who had originally spoken Old Norse, but who soon switched to Old French after they had settled in northern France. It was they who brought massive amounts of French linguistic influence to the British Isles after their conquest of 1066. I mention this only because the linguistic transformations that have occurred in East Asia, including Taiwan (originally peopled by Austronesian speakers, some of whom still survive there), are equally profound and pervasive, lest we ever entertain the mistaken notion that Chinese / Sinitic / Han, or any of its daughter languages, has "indisputably" (wú kě zhēngyì dì 無可爭議地) been the language of East Asia or any of its parts "since time immemorial" (zìgǔ yǐlái 自古以來).
From a linguistic standpoint, the origins of Taigi come from the convergence of the two parent branches of Tsuan-tsiu-ue (泉州話) and Tsang-tsiu-ue (漳州話). The first speakers of this language in Taiwan sailed across the “Black Ditch” — or the Taiwan Strait — to set down roots in Taiwan. All said, Taigi is a localized amalgamation that historically adopted influences from Dutch, Taiwanese indigenous languages, Japanese and Beijing-based Mandarin Chinese, gradually forming the Taigi spoken today.
If we are to split languages based on their linguistic branching, “Minnanese” is an umbrella term, but as a semantic hypernym, Minnanese has broader connotations and scope. Taigi is more specific, as a hyponym, with narrower connotations and scope, putting it on the same hierarchical level as the Amoy (廈門話) spoken in Xiamen, China, Tsang-tsiu-ue spoken in Zhangzhou, China, and Tsuan-tsiu-ue spoken in Quanzhou, China — all distinct languages in their own right.
People should remember, though, that there is a language in southwestern China and among several groups within Southeast Asia called “Tai” (also written as 台語 in Chinese), of which Thai from Thailand is a major language.
Some claim that using Taiwanese (台語) to refer to “Taiwanese Minnanese” is a form of Hoklo chauvinism and that using the name “Taiwanese” is unfair to other linguistic groups and ethnic groups who have also settled for a long time in Taiwan. How does one ethnic group take hold of the name “Taiwan” and not afford other groups the ability to use the name either?
Circling back to the start, language is power. This is a reality. Groups that are large have more influence and languages naturally coalesce toward power and prestige. The name “Chinese” refers to the spoken word and written script of the official language used in China, but China is also composed of several ethnic groups and peoples.
Using “Chinese” to refer to all languages and scripts spoken and written by ethnic Han people is Han chauvinism, and this is no less unjust toward non-Han peoples.
Taigi falls under the Min language umbrella, just as Mandarin is a part of the Sinitic language umbrella. Linguists emphasize that all languages are equal — that no language is inferior to another or lacking in refinement or sophistication — but power dynamics has always differed greatly from this linguistic principle. Renaming “Taiwanese Minnanese” as “Taigi” is closely related to Taiwan’s self-identity. It is a political question.
Languages are productions based on customs, conventions and the ideas of a population. Languages progress and names evolve. From “Minnanese” to “Taiwan Minnanese” to “Tai-uan-ue” and “Taigi,” the adoption and dropping of names involve the majority of the populace that speaks the language.
Sound changes as studied in Comparative Historical Linguistics may be characterized as governed by phonological laws, but what sets these transformations in motion (migrations, disasters, wars, pathbreaking inventions, etc.) is very much aleatory in nature. We know what Minnanese is now, but we have not yet fully discovered and described its origins and evolution. All the less can we predict what it will be half a century, a century, or two centuries from now.
Selected readings
- "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese" (7/22/24)
- "The classification of [nan] Chinese (Min Nan)" (7/27/24)
[Thanks to June Teufel Dreyer]
Fpyd said,
July 27, 2024 @ 7:16 pm
Hakka speakers and scholars express their discontent about Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese:
https://n.yam.com/Article/20240728538142
KIRINPUTRA said,
July 28, 2024 @ 2:02 am
Wow. This is an impressive (if well-meaning) collection of clichés & trite half-truths.
There is always something off about overlooking, overriding or overwriting history. The TAYWAN set of names (to use the Amis spelling) being used to refer to That Language & its speakers … was not a political thing from the start. The TAYWAN set of names (e.g. 臺灣) didn’t chiefly refer to Formosa as a whole till the 1880s at the earliest. (On point: “Multiple names for one thing or one name for multiple things is a linguistic norm.”) The idea that using the TAYWAN terms on That Language is prejudicial to Hakka, Amis & Atayal … only goes back to the 1990s, when repressive Chinese (R.O.C.) nationalism deftly gave way to progressive (?) Chinese nationalism. And much of the air in the modern controversy comes from the dictatorship having renamed Formosa “Taiwan” in English.
Putting “Taigi … on the same hierarchical level as the Amoy (廈門話) spoken in Xiamen, China, Tsang-tsiu-ue spoken in Zhangzhou, China, and Tsuan-tsiu-ue spoken in Quanzhou, China — all distinct languages in their own right” is Confucian nonsense from start to finish.
“From ‘Minnanese’ to ‘Taiwan Minnanese’ to ‘Tai-uan-ue’ and ‘Taigi’” is misleading or misled. The TAYWAN terms are older (in being used to mean That Language) and less motivated. (Not as old as the HOKLO terms, of course.) Any narrative casting the TAYWAN terms as a power play is ahistorical, and open to unpredictable future abuses.
Philip Anderson said,
July 28, 2024 @ 4:20 am
There seems to have been no significant difference between the language of the Angles in England and that of the Saxons, so the emergence of one name was arbitrary; indeed, the Welsh still call the English ‘Saeson’ and the language ‘Saesneg’, and to the Scots we are Sassenachs. Even after Wales emerged as a distinct country, ‘British’ could be used for the Welsh language, recognising it as the indigenous language.
Most speakers of English just call it that, with qualifiers used only when necessary; American and Australian are sometimes used (humorously) as shorthand, although that could be viewed as disrespectful to speakers of the native languages, while using British to mean British English would definitely be.
The languages I can think of that have separated from their parent and adopted a local toponym are Afrikaans (which is hardly the only African language) and Scots (where there is no ambiguity with Gaelic).
David Marjanović said,
July 28, 2024 @ 7:51 am
Sound changes are sometimes set in motion by contact (i.e. bilingual speakers partially or entirely equating their two sound systems with each other, or simply loanwords bringing in new phonemes), but the other stuff isn't likely to. Like all other changes in language, sound changes are fashions; fashions might have an easier time going on when there are other upheavals in society at the same time, but this hasn't been studied well and of course is hard to study. It is definitely not the case, however, that the languages of stable societies don't change; counterexamples are numerous. This applies to sounds, sound systems, vocabulary and grammar all alike.
Victor Mair said,
July 28, 2024 @ 7:59 am
I should have added "fashions" to my long list.
Coby said,
July 28, 2024 @ 8:48 am
There are other example of islanders referring to their language(s) by the name of the island, regardless of whether the language in question is simply a variant of one shared with other lands. The people of the Balearic Islands, for example, call their versions of Catalan mallorquí, menorquí, eivissenc. Conversely, while in Sardinia three of four very different language varieties are spoken, they are generally referred to as Sardinian unless a specific variety is meant.
This happens even when the territory is not a literal island but is politically or culturally isolated from its surroundings. When the duchy of Béarn, a remnant of the kingdom of Navarre, had juridical autonomy in southern France, it used literary Occitan (the language of the troubadours) as its legal language, but it was called Béarnese (though it was fairly distinct from the actual dialects spoken there).
Similarly, while the people of the Biblical kingdom of Judah (whose insularity was due to its distinct religion) spoke Canaanite (now known as Hebrew) like their neighbors, they called it yehudith (Judahite or Judean).
So it seems quite consistent for the Taiwanese to call their principal language by the name of their island, whatever language classifiers may think.
Jerry Packard said,
July 28, 2024 @ 11:22 am
Whoever listed Hugo Tseng in that article as a PhD candidate got it wrong; he received his PhD in Linguistics at UIUC in the 1990s.
Victor Mair said,
July 28, 2024 @ 12:34 pm
Thanks for catching and correcting that, Jerry. I thought it sounded suspicious.