From: [mailto:]On Behalf Of taiwanesefirst
[Simon Cheng] Recent study on Taiwanese job market shows that more than 30% of the job vacancies requires Holo Taiwanese proficiency. Liongkng
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2001 9:36 PM
To: allcom
Cc:
Subject: linguistic diversity is NOT a problem!

Dear scholars, Linguistic diversity is NOT a problem; the problem comes only when people are trying to set up an official language and force everyone to follow it. Linguistic diversity is the treasure of human being; People have the right to use their endangered languages as well as the endangered Loah-poe (é»é¢çµé·º), tigers, elephantsand whales have their right to survive in the world. I wonder how many of you were forced to present/write your papers in TAIWANESE? As far as I know, there were only four presenters used to voluntarily present/write papers in Taiwanese since 1997. They were KhinhoaN, Phoehun, Saki (the Japanese guy), and me;and all the papers were presented in the sociolinguistic panpel. Thus, is Taiwanese the dominant language in NATSC? NO!instead, most of the NATSC papers were presented in either Mandarin or English. Why you only blame the minority presenters for choosing Taiwanese as the presentation language? Through the discussions on language issue in NATSC, it reminds me a peculiar sociolinguistic phenomenon in Taiwan: People always feel sorry when they cannot speak English or any other so-called international langages, and they will try very hard to learn for it; However, they reject to learn the Taiwanese language(s), and do not even show any respect to the languge(s). They get angry like a pig, and balme the Taiwanese speakers when they cannot understand the language. As a linguist and a member of Taiwanese promoters, I would like to remind you that we have no intentionto force you to present/write you paper in Taiwanese. Instead, we respect your decision of chhoosing the English/Mandarin as your presentation tool. The only thing we demand and insist is that people have the right to use their Taiwanese mother tongue(s) in a Taiwan study conference such as NATSC. For those Taiwanese who still think Mandarin/English is a commnication tool, I would like to remind you that whenever you write your papers in Mandarin/English, you are expanding the amount of legacies for Mandarin/English speakers. The more legacies Mandarin/English has, the more likely your next generations are to abandon their Taiwanese language since there are very limited amount of legacies in their mother tongue. For those international scholars who still think they can get first hand materials and do excellent research on Taiwanese society without any knowledge of the Taiwanese languages, I am afarid that it is nearly impossible to do so. Please remember that you are doing research on the vivid people in Taiwan, rather than on physics or math. Whithout any knowledge of the languages people are using in their daily life, how could you get close to them? Please let me know if you have any "pih-koat" (knack) to success! so I do not have to study Vietnameses language while I am doing comparative study of Vietnam and Taiwan. I think our colleagues Ann Heylen (from Belgium) and Saki Toru (from Japan), who can speak both Holo Taiwanese and Mandarin will identify my words; and I believe that they can touch the heart of the Taiwanese people in depth easier than the scholars who speak only Mandarin/English. Isiong, Best, --Uibun from Hanoi, Vietnam ************
Taiffalo's Eco-linguisticsof Society
http://ling.uta.edu/~taiffalo Language and Nationalism in Asia
http://home.kimo.com.tw/de-han
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