Biblical and Budai Taiwanese: vernacular, literary; oral, written
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[This is a guest post by Denis Mair]
Cai Xutie was a Taiwanese woman who ran a family farm with her husband in a village near Jiayi in central Taiwan. She was a rice farmer and had never attended a public school. After her husband died in middle age, she sold some of the land, moved to Taipei with her children, and bought a modest apartment. Because of economic pressure, she helped to set up a number of revolving credit pools, which were used by economically disadvantaged people in the 1950s and 60s to obtain credit when they couldn't get it from banks.
In her fifties, she was still functionally illiterate. She joined a Taiwanese Presbyterian church, mainly to cope with her sadness after her husband's death. Her pastor invited her to join a bible study group. She learned to read the bible in Taiwanese romanization by attending the bible class. She began reading the Bible on her own for a few hours each morning. She was intensely motivated and she mastered its content. When I met her in her late Fifties/ early Sixties, her romanized bible was almost worn out. The family told me that the bible had been translated into Taiwanese by Presbyterian missionaries stationed in Taiwan during the Japanese occupation. That was the only missionary group that was allowed to remain in Taiwan during the occupation. The family told me that the Taiwanese bible contained elegant expressions (yǎyán 雅音) belonging to old Minnan dialect, not found in common spoken Taiwanese, and not in other Chinese versions of the Bible.
Cai Xutie had been a fan of Budai Opera* in her dialect, and she used to attend as many performances as she could in the vicinity of the village. Many arias in Budai operas had lyrics in old Minnan dialect**. Also, her husband had supplemented his farming income by teaching people to read the Analects in Taiwanese pronunciation. He was a part time schoolmaster of classical Chinese. This was the only kind of Chinese-language education which was allowed (but only informally) by the Japanese occupiers. Cai Xuetie may have picked up some literary expressions by listening to her husband teach. Because of this background, Cai Xutie knew some of the literary expressions in the Taiwanese bible and was able to read it.
*Budai opera is a traditional puppet opera that originated with the people and is considered to be a quintessential example of the common people's culture. During its peak in Taiwan, there were over 900 Budai opera troupes, making it the most important puppet opera in the country.
bùdài 布袋
(AIO)
**language; topolect
After reading the Bible for a few years, she received a gift of the Bible in Chinese characters from her pastor. Because she was already fully familiar with the content, she could read the characters without much trouble. I assume that the first Chinese character version she read was a version of the Taiwanese Bible, but I am not sure.
The church expanded its Bible study program to a Bible college for seniors. Cai Xuetie attended classes for years. Aside from classes taught by the pastor, there were guest speakers who had expert knowledge of the Bible. She got to the point that she could read the standard Chinese-character version of the Bible, which was not translated for Minnan dialect speakers.
Selected readings
- "How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language", Pīnyīn.info
- "Written Hokkien", Wikipedia
- "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese" (7/22/24)
- "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese, part 2" (7/27/24)
- "Taiwan(ese) Taiwanese, part 3" (8/16/24)
- "The classification of [nan] Chinese (Min Nan)" (7/27/24)
Brandon Seah said,
November 11, 2024 @ 1:38 am
It may have been this version:
https://bible.fhl.net/ob/ro.php?book=54&procb=3
Article on Minnan Wikipedia: https://zh-min-nan.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin-k%C5%AB-iok_%C3%AA_S%C3%A8ng-keng
Transcription on Wikisource (searchable): https://zh-min-nan.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Sin-k%C5%AB-iok_%C3%AA_S%C3%A8ng-keng/Chh%C3%B2ng-s%C3%A8-k%C3%AC
There are some differences between the scan and the wikisource versions, perhaps different editions were used, which other commenters might be able to clarify.