TAIWAN AND VIETNAM: LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND NATIONALISM Wi-vun T. CHIUNG (GS. TS. Tưởng Vi Văn) TAIWAN AND VIETNAM: LANGUAGE, LITERACY AND NATIONALISM First published in July 2020 Published by Asian A-tsiu International http://www.atsiu.com/ & Center for Vietnamese Studies, NCKU http://cvs.twl.ncku.edu.tw/ Copyright © 2020 by Wi-vun T. CHIUNG All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts therefore, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. ISBN 978-986-98887-0-7 (hardcover) Printed in Taiwan CONTENTS Foreword 1 iv Foreword 2 vi Foreword 3 vii Preface ix 01 Features and prospects in comparative studies of Vietnam and Taiwan 10 02 Language, literacy, and nationalism: Taiwan’s orthographic transition from the perspective of Han sphere 24 03 Road to orthographic Romanization: Vietnam and Taiwan 42 04 Sound and writing systems in Taiwanese, Chinese and Vietnamese 78 05 Learning efficiencies for Han characters and Vietnamese Roman scripts 110 06 Impact of monolingual policy on language and ethnic identity: a case study of Taiwan 136 07 Romanization and language planning in Taiwan 160 08 Pe̍ h-ōe-jī as intangible cultural heritage of Taiwan 184 09 Taiwanese or Southern Min? On the controversy of ethnolinguistic names in Taiwan 204 10 Language attitudes toward written Taiwanese 230 11 Development of the Taiwanese proficiency test 260 Index 277 iii FOREWORD 1 Dr. NGUYỄN Văn Hiệp Director, Institute of Linguistics Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences, VIETNAM This book of professor Wi-vun CHIUNG could be regarded as a chronicle of Taiwan, the island state that has special relations with Mainland China and has suffered vicissitudes in history, as it used to happen in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. This book provides many scientific information on Taiwanese language, literature and culture, especially the revitalization and Romanization of Taiwanese language, which is linguistically different from Mandarin Chinese. The author has portrayed a colorful picture of the island Taiwan. He compared Taiwan with Japan, Korea and Vietnam with regard to the preservation and development of language, literature and culture. The author has pointed out that the KMT regime considered Taiwan as a Chinese territory divided by geography, so KMT adopted wrong and cruel policy on Taiwan’s languages, literature and culture to prevent Taiwanese people from being identify themselves as Taiwanese. The author also surveyed the efforts of Taiwanese people to preserve and develop their language and literature in order to retain their national identity. For example, the efforts on Romanization movement, which is still on the half way to success. Or the successful reforms on politics and education in recent decades, which have promoted Taiwan to a modern society with its unique features in the globalization era. The cultural and economic exchanges between Taiwan and Vietnam have significantly increased in recent decades, this book thus provides valuable references for Taiwanese and Vietnamese people to understand each other better and further to share their experiences in maintaining their own cultural characteristics. This book also provides valuable knowledge about Taiwanese and Vietnamese from the perspectives of linguistics and orthographies. They are helpful for learning Vietnamese and Taiwanese languages. iv Professor Wi-vun CHIUNG is not only a prestigious scholar, but also an enthusiastic patriot. In addition to academic research, he promotes Taiwanese language and literature in order to remain national identity of Taiwan. He also promotes academic exchange between Vietnamese and Taiwanese scholars through many practical events such as international conferences or workshops held by Center for Vietnamese Studies at National Cheng Kung University. In short, I appreciate and admire what Professor Wi-vun CHIUNG has done so far. I sincerely introduce this book to readers, especially those in Vietnam. v FOREWORD 2 Professor NGÔ Văn Lệ Former president University of Social Sciences & Humanities-TPHCM, VIETNAM Taiwan and Vietnam have had strong relationships in the field of economy and culture for more than 30 years. Taiwanese enterprises have constantly invested in Vietnam, particularly in Ho Chi Minh metropolitan areas over decades. However, mutual understanding regarding history, language, literature and culture between Vietnam and Taiwan is still very limited. The author Wi-vun CHIUNG is a Taiwanese researcher with many in-depth research results about Vietnam in the fields of language, culture and history. With over 20 years of research on Vietnam, professor Chiung has great contributions to introducing Vietnam to Taiwanese readers. In particular, his former book entitled “Vietnamese Spirit: Language, Orthography and Anti-hegemony” published in Taiwanese and Chinese provide readers a comprehensive understanding of Vietnam. This new book “Taiwan and Vietnam: Language, Literacy and Nationalism” in English is an overall survey of Vietnam and Taiwan from a perspective of comparative studies. In addition, this book also introduces and compares the history of language, orthography and literature in the Hanji cultural sphere, such as Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. This book can be considered one of the rare publications introducing the history of language and literature of Taiwan to Vietnamese readers. I sincerely introduce this book to readers as a valuable resource to learn about the historical development of language, literature and nationalism in Taiwan! vi FOREWORD 3 Dr. Binh NGO Director of the Vietnamese Language Program Harvard University, USA Prof. Wi-vun T. CHIUNG (Chiúⁿ Ûi-bûn / 蔣為文) is a distinguished scholar in the field of Taiwanese and Vietnamese studies. His new book Taiwan and Vietnam: language, literacy and nationalism is an insightful and original work on comparative study of Taiwan and Vietnam in many areas, including history, linguistics and sociolinguistics. This book is divided into eleven chapters. The first chapter introduces the history of Vietnamese-Taiwanese economic and cultural ties, Vietnamese studies in Vietnam and Taiwan, and Taiwanese studies in Taiwan and Vietnam, as well as how they were established and developed. This chapter also points out the importance of the comparative studies of Vietnam and Taiwan. Chapter two discusses the historical background of Chinese character usage in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan and the creation of each country’s own writing systems at different periods of time in the past. The passage which deals with the Mandarin Chinese used in Taiwan and the romanized Taiwanese writing system from the perspective of the Taiwanese is exceptionally informative. The third chapter is a continuation of the second, with a focus on romanized writing systems in Vietnam and Taiwan. The author argues that romanized Taiwanese script, along with Chinese characters, should be adopted as Taiwan’s national writing system. Chapter four compares the phonetic and writing systems of Chinese, Vietnamese and Taiwanese, which is invaluable from the standpoint of both contrastive analysis and language pedagogy. Chapter five deals with the difficulties that learners of Chinese characters encounter, and with the advantages of a romanized Vietnamese writing system. The sixth chapter introduces the diverse ethnic and linguistic history of Taiwan, including how and when different immigrant groups arrived from vii mainland China, resulting in the complex ethnic relations we see in Taiwan today. The author also examines the relationship between the mother tongue and ethnic identity of different groups in Taiwan based on survey data. Chapter seven covers the origin and the eventual romanization of Taiwan’s writing system, which leads into the author’s proposed plan for language learning in Taiwan. In chapter eight, the author argues that romanized Taiwanese script should be regarded as part of the intangible cultural heritage of Taiwan based on its linguistic and sociolinguistic origins. In chapter nine, Chiung addresses the controversy over the terms Taiwanese (language) versus Southern Min (dialect). The author proposes that the term Lán- lâng-ōe (咱人語) be used for the dialect spoken in Southeastern China, Taiwan and several Southeast Asian countries, and that a prefix indicating the region where the respective version of the dialect is spoken be added when relevant. The tenth chapter introduces different ways of writing Taiwanese. Based on the statistical results of the survey, the author concludes that most Taiwanese people who write using Chinese characters do not consider it necessary to learn an additional writing system. However, the author believes romanized Taiwanese script should be adopted due to its being easy to learn. The last chapter delves into which criteria should be considered for proficiency tests in Taiwanese. This is very helpful from the perspective of Taiwanese language teaching methodology. Professor Chiung’s book is well structured and covers a wide variety of topics within Vietnamese and Taiwanese studies with a focus on linguistic issues. Many chapters contain appendices that will prove extremely useful to those interested in learning about a particular aspect of Vietnamese or Taiwanese linguistic, historical and social studies. The book makes a significant contribution to the field. viii PREFACE Why Taiwan and Vietnam? Most works of my research are related to comparative studies of Taiwan and Vietnam. Someone may be curious to know