Taiwan is a Pacific island with a complex, but at the same time interesting history. The population of Taiwan for 2017 is estimated at approximately twenty-four million people.
At the moment, Taiwan is one of the countries with advanced economies and developed infrastructure. When planning to visit this island or move there for permanent residence, you need to find out what language is spoken in Taiwan, because, as you know, the island is part of China, and earlier it was part of Japan.
Chinese language features
Ninety-eight percent of Taiwan's population is Chinese by nationality (the people’s self-designation is Han). To understand what the Taiwanese language is, it is necessary to proceed from a huge number of Chinese dialects.
When people pronounce the phrase “Chinese,” they usually mean the North Chinese dialect. This is the official standard in both China and Taiwan.
Most Chinese dialects are almost incomprehensible to the speaker. Thus, “Chinese” is really a family of languages, for example, as a Romance language family (which includes French, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian). There are several languages within this "Chinese family" , some scholars claim to be eight or nine, and some that are much more. Inside these languages there are real dialects, as well as linguistic dialects, which differ from each other, but for the most part are understandable to each other.
What languages are spoken in Taiwan
For Taiwan, the situation is relatively simple: there are three Chinese dialects. Mandarin (North Chinese) is the official national language, and it is spoken by almost all residents. The second dialect, often referred to as the Taiwanese language, is widespread, especially outside of Taipei, the island's capital. The third dialect, hakka, is owned by a separate population group (also called hakka), who live mainly around Hsinchu, Taoyuan County and the Kaohsiung countryside. The vast majority of Taiwanese communicate in their daily lives in Taiwanese and Hakka.
Taiwan script
It is important to note that Taiwanese use traditional Chinese characters, unlike mainland China, where a simplified system for writing hieroglyphs is common. Many Chinese people believe that the common writing system is quite difficult to use. Traditional hieroglyphics are used outside of China, mainly in Taiwan, Singapore, Macau and other overseas communities. It is known that the Chinese language has more than three thousand different characters.
Austronesian languages
If one wonders which language is the most ancient in Taiwan, then this is certainly a group of languages of Taiwanese aborigines. Two percent of Taiwan's population is the indigenous indigenous population of the island. Their native languages are many dialects belonging to the Austronesian language family. Aborigines lived in Taiwan, perhaps 10,000 years ago. While the Chinese just started to arrive in large numbers one hundred years ago. Today, indigenous people constitute a minority of the population, and their languages are in danger of extinction.
The natives of the east coast of the island are widely known as "Gao Shan", they make up the majority of the indigenous population. In some cases, only a few native speakers are left, and even the most common local dialects are at risk of extinction unless steps are taken to encourage young people to learn them. The languages of the people of Taiwan, which belong to the Austronesian language family, are gradually becoming obsolete and do not have state support.
Taiwanese language
Sometimes the dialect of most Taiwanese is also called Minnan, Hokkien, Fujian, Hoklo. In addition, Taiwanese is the mother tongue of Holo, a group of Han Chinese who make up about 70% of Taiwan's population. In most of the island, it is the language of everyday communication, commerce, home and hearth. This is the language of friendship and struggle of the inhabitants of this mysterious island.
Hoklo has no official status. On it are written some ads in the metro. Non-state newspapers, online publications are published, books are published. Both traditional Chinese characters are used, as well as scripts developed by Western scholars based on the Latin alphabet.
Hakka tongue
Hakka is a clan group of Chinese whose name translates as “guest”. The long journeys from their native home in northern China, caused by hostility from other groups, turned them into hardy and arrogant people. Their language also differs from standard Chinese, although to a casual listener it may seem a bit like Cantonese. While there are still several million speakers of this dialect of Chinese, however, there is a threat that the hakka will become just a village dialect and disappear from the pages of magazines, books and television. At the moment, there is only one television channel that broadcasts in this dialect.
Official Chinese (Mandarin)
In 1945, after the end of World War II, standard Chinese (Mandarin) was introduced as an official language and became compulsory in schools. Until 1945, Japanese was the official language and was taught in schools.
Since then, the Mandarin dialect has been used as a lingua franca among various population groups in Taiwan, that is, a language understood by the majority of the population. Thus, the Mandarin dialect is the basis of understanding for:
- Most native speakers of the Taiwanese language (or, as it is also called, Hoklos (Hokkien)).
- Groups of Chinese speaking the Hakka dialect.
- Visitors from mainland China, whose mother tongue can be any Chinese dialect.
- Aboriginal speakers of the gashoa group.
Official Chinese influence
Almost the entire Taiwanese population is fluent in the Mandarin dialect, with the exception of some older people educated under Japanese rule. In Taipei, where there is a high concentration of visiting Chinese, whose native language is not Taiwanese, official Chinese is used more often than in southern Taiwan and in rural areas where there are fewer visitors. Many of them, especially those under the age of 45, speak Mandarin better than hakka or hokien. Taiwanese mandarin is spoken at different levels in accordance with social status and situation. Formal occasions require a high level of proficiency in standard Chinese speakers. Less formal situations may allow communication at a basic level, which has more unique Taiwanese features.
Bilingual Taiwanese residents can switch from one language to another during a conversation, sometimes in the same sentence. By the unique tonality of each Chinese dialect, you can immediately guess which ethnic group a person belongs to and on which speaks the language. In Taiwan, great importance is attached to the study of the official language.
Conclusion
Answering the question what languages are spoken in Taiwan, we can briefly say that the vast majority of the population speaks different versions of the Chinese language.
Scientists are still arguing whether these dialects are independent languages or just dialects.