Taiwan seeks to save indigenous languages

A propósito da luta contra a dissolução cultural, aqui fica uma pequena citação de alguns pontos do artigo original:

Citação :

The island is considered by many anthropologists to be the source of Austronesian languages; all but one of the four primary branches are found here.

It is believed that Austronesians migrated from mainland Asia and Taiwan to South East Asia, the Pacific islands, East Timor and Madagascar thousands of years ago.

But of the world's estimated 300 million Austronesians - including New Zealand's Maori and Hawaii's Polynesians - few can speak their language, and many languages now face extinction.


Culture eroded

In Taiwan, only about 35% of the 500,000 Austronesian indigenous people can speak their tribal language, said Chang Shin-liang, head of the language and culture department of the government's Council of Indigenous Peoples.

"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'."

The decline of the languages of the island's more than 14 tribes did not happen by accident.

The first large wave of Han Chinese to Taiwan, which started in the 17th Century, consisted of mostly men. They inter-married with indigenous people, with the Chinese culture becoming dominant.

Previous governments' oppressive policies also had destructive effects.

Under Japanese occupation (1895-1945), Taiwanese people were forced to learn and speak Japanese.

The Kuomintang party, which took power in 1945, was responsible for years of harsh suppression of native Taiwanese languages and dialects.

The Kuomintang was trying to promote Mandarin as the national language to consolidate its power, in the face of resistance over its sudden takeover of the island after it lost a civil war to China's Communist party.

"The Japanese and Kuomintang governments' combined 100-year policy of forbidding us from speaking our languages did a lot of damage. It affected three generations," said Mr Chang.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10602697