Reward for learning Hakka

December 31, 2025 @ 6:28 pm · Filed by under Language and education, Language teaching and learning

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From AntC:  "Following the thread on South Korea’s English exam, here’s New Taipei promoting topolect diversity. “the goal is to encourage more people to learn Hakka and use the language in daily life.”

New Taipei to reward Hakka test passes with cash
City residents can earn up to NT$4,000 for certified exam passes
Reagan Lai, Taiwan News (Dec. 25, 2025)

The article states:

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — New Taipei City will reward registered residents with up to NT$4,000 (US$125) for passing the Hakka language proficiency exam next year, in an effort to encourage more people to learn and use Hakka.

CNA reported Thursday that anyone registered in the city who passes the exam next year can apply for the reward. Officials said the goal is to encourage more people to learn Hakka and use the language in daily life.

Under the plan, people who pass the basic level can receive NT$500, while those who pass the beginner level can receive NT$1,000. Rewards rise with each level, reaching NT$4,000 for those who pass the advanced test.

The city’s Hakka affairs department said language education is key to keeping culture alive. It said the program is open to all age groups and aims to encourage families and communities to use Hakka more often.

The department added that New Taipei is also promoting Hakka learning in schools and libraries. Free preparation classes for the beginner test will be offered from time to time, and exam dates will follow announcements by the Hakka Affairs Council.

This is one way to encourage people not to forget their Mother Tongue.

Selected readings

December 31, 2025 @ 6:28 pm · Filed by under Language and education, Language teaching and learning


12 Comments

  1. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 1:32 pm

    Also encouraging Hakka in Taiwan is the Golden Melody Awards, which has a Best Hakka Album category (along with Mandarin, Hokkien, and indigenous categories).

    One example of a Hakka singer is Yachun Asta Tzeng, and I recommend giving her a listen.

    But yes, $500NT (about $16USD) to $4000NT (about $127USD) is a meaningful, if not particularly lucrative investment.

    OTOH, a sentence on the Taiwan government website, while acknowledging Ms. Tzeng, had the odd wording "In spite of that, Tzeng maintains an insistence in creating works in the Hakka; she rejected a contract offer from a big firm simply because the company requested she released a Chinese-language album first." ¿Hakka is not Chinese? Very Mandarin-chauvinist of them.

  2. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 1:37 pm

    Your blog software is inexplicably wrapping my currency in math markup.

    Let's try that again with spaces:

    But yes, 500 NT (about $16 USD) to 4,000 NT (about $127 USD) is a meaningful, if not particularly lucrative investment.

  3. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 1:38 pm

    Nope, it's still doing it. Not sure how to prevent it.

  4. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 1:40 pm

    Wait, I could swear I added dollar signs to ($16 USD) and ($127 USD). Definitely added them here.

  5. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 1:43 pm

    ¡Confirmed! It is stripping the dollar signs and adding math markup when I enclose the text in parentheses. ¿What is the software that does your blog? I love to report bugs like this.

    Test without parentheses (and I'll be quiet now):

    $16 USD and $127 USD

  6. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 1:53 pm

    Sorry, one last post. I think I've got it. Any content with two dollar signs in the same paragraph gets math markup. Not sure about separate paragraphs.

    Same paragraph:

    Typed: [dollar sign]16 USD to [dollar sign]127 USD

    Rendered: $16 USD to $127 USD (I'm expecting the 16 through "to" will get the math markup)

    With escapes (backslash) immediately before the dollar sign: \$16 USD to \$127 USD

    If the version with escapes works, I'd expect the behavior to be the reverse, math markup with the escape, normal text without.

    Two paragraphs:

    Typed: [dollar sign]16 USD

    to [dollar sign]127 USD

    Rendered: $16 USD

    to $127 USD

    Not sure about this one.

  7. Nat said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 4:06 pm

    All I know is that in LaTeX dollar signs indicate ‘math mode’. Dollar signs just *are* the symbol for math markup. If you’re composing in LaTeX and you want to to actually display a dollar sign you have to ‘escape’ it by typing a backslash in front of the dollar sign.

  8. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 9:09 pm

    @Nat: Thank you. Guess I need to learn LaTeX in order to do a better job of interacting with this blog. However, I wasn't intentionally composing in LaTeX. If the blog assumes all content is in LaTeX, it would be good for the comment field to have a link immediately below it to LaTeX help.

    That said, I found the LaTeX documentation rather opaque. I searched <a href="https://www.latex-project.org/help/documentation/"LaTeX documentation and, while I could find explanations of math formatting that enclosed the math in dollar signs, I was unable to find the documentation that said that putting two dollar signs in the same paragraph put LaTeX into math mode and that to avoid going into math mode you had to escape the dollar signs.

    And alas, this is far off the topic of Hakka. My point was, the amount of the compensation would be unlikely to encourage me to learn Hakka, so to me it is merely a nice gesture on the part of the city's government. Not that there's anything wrong with nice gestures.

  9. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 9:10 pm

    Urk, and forgot the closing tag on the LaTeX documentation link. <a href="https://www.latex-project.org/help/documentation/"LaTeX

  10. Chas Belov said,

    January 2, 2026 @ 9:11 pm

    LaTeX

    Sorry, one more try.

  11. Philip Taylor said,

    January 3, 2026 @ 10:58 am

    I don't think it "assumes all content is in LaTeX" qua LaTeX, Chas, but rather integrates (or implements) "MathJax". Both are, of course, based on Knuth's TeX. See https://wordpress.com/plugins/browse/mathjax.

    When I wrote (in an earlier thread) about the formula $x = {-b ± \sqrt {b^2-4ac} \over 2a}$, I expressed myself in plain TeX (with which I am very familiar) rather than LaTeX (which I never use),

  12. Chas Belov said,

    January 5, 2026 @ 6:31 pm

    Sorry for the continued off-topic but this math incursion has given me such a pain. I set a line height in my CSS (1.3 if anyone cares) and that winds up clipping the math at the top and bottom. I had to add the following CSS to keep it from clipping:

    mjx-container {
    display: block !important;
    height: auto !important;
    margin-top: 1rem !important;
    margin-bottom: 1rem !important;
    line-height: normal !important;
    }

    mjx-math {
    line-height: normal !important;
    }

    Back on topic, here is my original comment, hopefully with the math incursion removed:

    Also encouraging Hakka in Taiwan is the Golden Melody Awards, which has a Best Hakka Album category (along with Mandarin, Hokkien, and indigenous categories).

    One example of a Hakka singer is Yachun Asta Tzeng, and I recommend giving her a listen.

    But yes, \$500⁢NT (about \$16USD) to \$4000⁢NT (about \$127USD) is a meaningful, if not particularly lucrative investment.

    OTOH, a sentence on the Taiwan government website, while acknowledging Ms. Tzeng, had the odd wording "In spite of that, Tzeng maintains an insistence in creating works in the Hakka; she rejected a contract offer from a big firm simply because the company requested she released a Chinese-language album first." ¿Hakka is not Chinese? Very Mandarin-chauvinist of them.

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