mini传媒

Published on October 2, 2024
Job titles and other details are as of the time of publication.
(The interview was conducted in Japanese and was thereafter translated into English.)

Taiwanese and Taiwanese Mandarin: a greater linguistic divide than among Japanese dialects

I specialize in sociolinguistics with a particular focus on Taiwanese (Southern Min). My research interests lie in issues concerning the revitalization of minority languages and the use of their written forms. Recently, I have primarily employed qualitative methods, conducting interviews and questionnaires in person or via Zoom. My research centers on exploring people’s attitudes towards language underlying linguistic phenomena.

The annotation of “Southern Min” is intentional. In Japan, there is often confusion between Taiwanese and Taiwanese Mandarin. Taiwanese, also known as Taiwanese Hokkien, is derived from Southern Min, a language spoken by the Han Chinese who migrated from the southern part of Fujian Province in China. The other widely spoken language in Taiwan is Taiwanese Mandarin, which refers to Mandarin Chinese as spoken in Taiwan. The differences between these two languages are so pronounced that their speakers cannot communicate with each other, making them considerably more distinct than the differences among Japanese dialects. A closer comparison might be between English and German.

My primary research focus is on Taiwanese, currently spoken mainly by people aged 50 and older in Taiwan. Many in the younger generations understand Taiwanese but generally speak Taiwanese Mandarin in daily life, using Taiwanese only when visiting their parents. There is also a growing number who can understand Taiwanese but feel less comfortable speaking it. My current research investigates the causes of this interruption in language transmission and its implications for both individual speakers and Taiwanese society at large. To this end, I have recently been conducting surveys of relatively younger speakers of Taiwanese.

A sense of discomfort about the standard language leading to the self-study of a second foreign language during my high school years

Before studying Taiwanese, I had developed an interest in Chinese during my high school years. Since junior high school, I had begun questioning why we learn only English as a foreign language. I believe this feeling of unease stemmed from my upbringing, where I felt uncomfortable with the very idea of a common or standard language.

I was born and raised in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but I often visited my father’s parents’ home in Hachinohe City in Aomori Prefecture during summer vacations and other holidays. As I watched my father speak in dialect with my grandmother and relatives, I began using dialectal expressions myself, which I later learned from my parents. Looking back, although I did not consciously use the dialect, I may have felt somewhat uncomfortable using standard Japanese in Hachinohe.

Given this natural inclination, I felt uneasy about being made to study only English as the “global standard language.” At the very least, I wanted to study another language. This led to my interest in Chinese, which uses the same characters (kanji) as Japanese. I began by transcribing the katakana pronunciations of Chinese place names from maps and phrases in travel guides. I found it fascinating that, despite sharing characters with Japanese, Chinese features different grammatical structures, and I could sense the rich history of cultural exchange across East Asia behind it. To pursue this interest further, I enrolled at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, majoring in Chinese.

My concerns about Taiwanese in decline went beyond the scope of descriptive linguistics

In university, my primary focus was on descriptive linguistics, which involves identifying and describing the rules of grammar and phonology. I also had the opportunity to learn about Taiwan. Under Kuomintang rule, Chinese (specifically, the Taiwanese Mandarin I mentioned above) was the dominant language, but the democratization of society in the 1990s led to the revival of indigenous languages, including Taiwanese. As I listened to lectures and read books on this topic, I found myself eager to study not only Chinese but Taiwanese as well. To collect data for my graduation thesis, I went to Taiwan as an exchange student. However, I discovered that while Taiwanese was spoken by my parents’ generation and older, people of my own generation rarely used it in daily life.

My graduation thesis focused on the relationship between grammar and pronunciation in Taiwanese, but my area of interest shifted more to the gradual decline of the language itself than to the descriptive linguistic approach. I wondered why this was happening and whether something could be done about it. However, this was not an area to be addressed directly by descriptive linguistics, so I decided it might be better to keep my interest in language as a personal passion than to pursue it as a career, and I chose to join a Japanese shipping company instead.

My assignment in Singapore became the catalyst for pursuing research in Taiwanese

A turning point came in my third year at the company when I was assigned to Singapore, where the parent company’s core functions were based. Given Singapore’s large ethnic Chinese population, I assume my language skills were part of the reason for the assignment. In fact, although English is a common language there, being able to incorporate some Chinese into conversations proved a valuable asset.

Although unrelated to my main work, another significant experience was the opportunity to use Taiwanese (Southern Min). Singapore is home to many ethnic Chinese whose families originally came from Fujian Province, and the local language, called Hokkien, is mutually intelligible with Taiwanese. Speaking Taiwanese with these descendants brought them genuine joy. I found it deeply moving to communicate in Taiwanese with local Chinese in Singapore, a place so far from Japan. In Singapore, however, Hokkien is gradually fading under the dominance of the official languages of English and Chinese. Even Chinese is being increasingly overshadowed by English as the common language, and some young people are beginning to struggle with it. When I learned of this situation, I thought, “It’s the same as in Taiwan,” and once again felt the lingering question, “Why does it have to be this way?” As I approached thirty and began to rethink my life, I realized I could not ignore these thoughts. This led me to pursue a research career, and I enrolled in the master’s program at Hitotsubashi University Graduate School of Language and Society.

Sociolinguistics: embracing human attitudes and values without disregarding them as noise

In pursuing a career in research, I decided to approach my research themes through sociolinguistics. Sociolinguistics holds that, because people use language, it cannot be discussed without considering human attitudes, ideologies, or policies. Setting aside these factors would leave many real-world linguistic phenomena unexplained. The approach I am interested in is to re-examine the historical processes by which certain ways of speaking have come to be regarded as “natural,” and to reconsider human attitudes and value judgments as essential influences on language itself, rather than disregarding them as noise.

The gradual fading and absorption of minority languages, Taiwanese for example, into dominant languages does not feel “natural” to me. I consider sociolinguistics a field that allows me to delve deeper into my research by asking such questions as “Is it truly natural” and “Can we simply label it as natural and move on?”

The research topics of the students attending my seminar are truly diverse, so their areas of interest and research methods do not always align with mine, and very few focus on Taiwanese as a research subject. As a result, I often find myself learning from them as they do from me. That said, there is one thing we all seem to share—a curiosity about language that goes beyond simply studying language itself.

Shifts in linguistic attitudes and behavior

The movement to revitalize the Taiwanese language is currently thriving in Taiwan. As part of this movement, an event called the Taiwanese Camp is organized, where participants gather for several days during holidays to spend time speaking Taiwanese as much as possible. I took part in this event as part of my master’s research, documenting and analyzing what unfolded through the research method known as participant observation.

On another note, I encountered some memorable responses in my current interview surveys. One respondent mentioned that although she was little interested in Taiwanese as a child, she realized as an adult that it was important. When I asked what led to this shift, the respondent shared that she had taken her son from Taipei, where they currently live, to southern Taiwan, where there are more Taiwanese speakers. While speaking with the locals in Taiwanese, her son had asked, “What did you just say? Was that Japanese?” Her son’s words made her realize the extent to which the intergenerational transmission of the language was being lost. Since then, she has gradually begun speaking Taiwanese to her child and has asked her own parents to speak Taiwanese with their grandchild.

In this way, each person’s attitudes towards language shifts uniquely, sometimes sparking changes in behavior. This is the true appeal of studying sociolinguistics, and I feel a strong sense of fulfillment in engaging in an actual discipline that fosters gradual transformations within people and society.