Will vietnamese language be maintained in taiwan language use and attitude of vietnamese new immigrants in taiwan

The purpose o f this study is to investigate language use and language attitude o f the Vietnamese female immigrants in the Ka-tiann ^íĩsễ and Oo-lai Districts o f Kaohsiung city in Taiw

W I L L VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE M AINTA INED

IN TAIWAN? LANGUAGE USE AND A T T IT U D E

O F VIETNAMESE NEW IMMIGRANTS IN TAIWAN

Wi-vun Chiung (Tưởng Vi Văny

Thai Thị Thanh Thủy

1 In tro d u ctio n

Marriages between persons from different countries have become more and more common in the globalization area Taiwan is no exception to this phenomenon According to the statistics o f Taiw an’s National Immigration Agency, M inistry o f Interior, foreign spouses in Taiwan numbered 459,390 in D ecem ber 20 1 11 These foreign nationals account for 1.98% o f Taiwan’s total population2 Among the foreign spouses, many were from China (308,535), followed by Vietnam (86,249), then Indonesia (27,261), Thailand (8,262), Philippines (7,184), Cambodia (4,299), Japan (3,677), Korea (1,085) and other countries together (12,838) In general, about 1/5 o f marriage number is contributed by the foreign spouses in Taiwan’s recent decade3 Among the Southeast Asian countries Vietnam is the major source country o f foreign spouses Among the Vietnamese spouses, m ost o f them are female, and only 0.34% or 292 persons are male

In addition to the international marriages between Taiwanese and Vietnamese citizens, economic and educational exchanges between the two countries have also significantly increased in the two recent decades In D ecem ber 1986, the Communist Party o f Vietnam approved the Economic Renovation Policy (Đổi mới), which was followed by a series o f attractive economic open policies for foreign investors Taiwanese businessmen were some o f the earliest foreign investors to come right after Vietnam's economic renovation policy (Shiu 2003: 124-127) A few

* Center for Vietnamese Studies & Department o f Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University.

1 Available at < http://www.immigration.gov.tw/pubIic/Attachmenty21201621235.xls >.

2 By the end o f year 2010, the amount o f Taiw an’s total population is 23,162,123 according to Taiw an’s recent updated Statistical Yearbook o f Interior, available at <http://sowf.moi gov.tw/staưyear/y02-01 xls>.

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years later, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) was established in Hanoi, Vietnam, in N ovem ber 1992 to promote a mutual cooperation between the two countries Thereafter, economic activities between Taiwan and Vietnam have flourished tremendously Soon Taiwan became one o f the top three investors in Vietnam

Taiwan and Vietnam share a similar cultural and historical background Allegedly, Taiwan and Vietnam are both descendants o f the Hundred Viet tribes in ancient time During the period o f Chinese occupation, both Vietnam and Taiwan were greatly influenced by the Chinese culture For exam ple, Han characters and Confucianism were exported to Vietnam and Taiwan Lunar New Y ear festival is kept and considered the biggest festival in Vietnam and Taiwan Due to close cultural relationship, Taiwanese people are more likely to choose Vietnam rather than other countries

Language use and attitude are usually the key points in determ ining whether language shift and death will occur or not The purpose o f this study is to investigate language use and language attitude o f the Vietnamese female immigrants in the Ka-tiann (^íĩsễ) and Oo-lai Districts o f Kaohsiung city in Taiwan Based onthe findings, we would be able to predict whether Vietnam ese language will be inherited in Taiwan or not

2 Socio-linguistic background

Taiwan is a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic society Traditionally, it is divided into four primary ethnic groups Because nation-wide linguistic census have not been conducted in recent decades, no accurate ethnolinguistic demographics are available However, according to frequently cited data, the speakers o f each ethnic group were estimated as follows: indigenous (1.7%), Hakka (12% ), Taigi or Taiwanese (73.3%), and Chinese Mainlanders (13%) (H uang 1993: 21) In addition

to the traditional ethnic groups, international marriages have become more common since the 1990s Thus, the foreign spouses, or new immigrants are the fifth ethnic group in Taiwan

In addition to being a multi-ethnic society, Taiwan has been colonized by several foreign regimes since the seventeenth century Two centuries later, the sovereignty o f Taiwan was transfeưed from China to Japan in 1895 as a consequence o f the Sino-Japanese War At the end o f the World War II, Japanese forces surrendered to the Allied Forces Chiang Kai-shek, the leader o f the Chinese Nationalist (KMT or Kuomintang) took over Taiwan and northern Vietnam on behalf o f the Allied Powers under General Order N o.l o f September 2, 1945 (Peng

WILL VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED IN TAIWAN?.

1995: 60-61) At the time, Chiang Kai-shek was fighting against the Chinese Communist Party in Mainland o f China In 1949, Chiang’s troops were completely defeated and then pursued by the Chinese Communists At that time, Taiw an’s national status was supposed to be dealt with a peace treaty am ong the fighting nations However, because o f Chiang’s defeat in China, Chiang decided to occupy Taiwan as a base from which he would fight back and retake M ainland China (Kerr 1992; Ong 1993; Peng 1995; Su 1980) Consequently, Chiang’s political regime the Republic o f China (R.O.C) was relocated and resurrected in Taiwan and has remained there since 1949 During the Chinese KMT era, Taiwan was under the control o f martial law from 1949 to 1987

The National Language Policy, or monolingual policy, was adopted during the Chinese KM T occupation o f Taiwan In the case o f the KM T’s monolingual policy, the Taiwanese people were not allowed to speak their vernaculars in school and in public Moreover, they were forced to learn Mandarin Chinese and to identify themselves as Chinese through the national education system (Cheng 1996; Tiun, 1996) As Hsiau (1997: 307) has pointed out, “the usage o f M andarin as a national language becomes a testimony o f the Chineseness o f the KM T state.” Consequently, the younger generations are severely loosing their language ability in ethnic mother tongue This phenomenon is more apparent in the northern areas than the southern areas o f Taiwan Researches such as Chan (1994) and Young (1988) have revealed that a language shift toward Mandarin is in progress Huang (1993: 160) goes so far

as to suggest that the indigenous languages o f Taiwan are all endangered

Mother tongue education was not implemented nation-wide until 2001, the year after the KM T lost the ROC presidential election for the first time in Taiwan Since then, all elementary school classes are required to have a class called “local language,” ( ^ ± f p 1 a o r ; f c d : f § l f ) lasting 40 minutes, once a week in school The schools may choose which local language would be taught in accordance with the demands o f the students In addition, more multi-lingual policies were adopted However, many policies have been changed since 2008, the year Chinese KMT won the presidential election and re-took the regime o f ROC, In short, Mandarin Chinese has become the dominant language in Taiwan This is the major reason why most new immigrants choose Mandarin Chinese as their first language to learn in Taiwan.Vietnam is a country' with a rich diversity o f ethnicities, including such

l anguage groups as Austro-Asiatic (94% o f total population), Daic (3.7%), Miao- Yao (1.1%), Austronesian (0.8%) and Tibeto-Burman It is reported that there are

54 official ethnic groups, 106 living languages, and 1 extinct language (Lewis 2Ơ09: 537; Dang 2000: 1; Tổng cục Thống kê 2010) Among the ethnic groups, Việt or

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Kinh is the majority, and it accounts for 85.7% o f V ietnam ’s total population, which was reported to be 85.8 million in V ietnam ’s 2009 census (Tổng cục Thống kê 2010) The mother tongue o f ethnicity Viet is called the Vietnam ese language The Vietnamese language is known to its native speakers as Tieng Viet Vietnamese is currently the official language o f Vietnam

Vietnamese is an isolating language, that is, one in w hich the words are mostly monosyllables, there is no overt morphological alternation, and syntactic relationships are shown by word order, just as in the cases o f Taiwanese and Chinese Traditionally, Vietnamese was regarded as monosyllabic because m ost o f V ietnam ese words consist o f single syllables However, recent statistical studies have shown that there

is a clear tendency toward poly-syllabicity in m odem Vietnam ese (Nguyen 1997: 35) In addition, Vietnamese is a tonal language M odem V ietnam ese possesses six tones, which distinguish different lexical meanings o f words Tone sandhi in Vietnamese is neither as substantial nor as rich as in Taiwanese Various foreign influences have influenced the development o f the Vietnam ese language because o f the contacts in the past between the Vietnamese and other peoples A m ong them, Chinese is probably the strongest and most lasting one donor language (Nguyen 1971: 153)

The modem Vietnamese language is based on the varieties spoken in Vietnam ’s capital city o f H à Nội and surround Red R iver basin Traditionally, Vietnamese vernacular types were proposed by Henri M aspero (1912) dividing the language into two main groups: 1) the Haut-Annam group, which comprehended numerous local speech types o f the small villages stretching from the north o f Nghệ

An province to the south o f Thừa Thiên province, and 2) Tonkinese-Cochinchinese, which covers all the rem aining territory (Thompson 1987: 78) Generally speaking, Vietnamese variation forms a continuum from north to south, each pattern somewhat is different from a neighboring one on either side Hà Nội, Hue, and Sài Gòn (nowadays Ho Chi M inh city), located respectively in north, central, and south parts, represent three m ajor remarkable dialects in Vietnam (Nguyen 1997: 10) Most Vietnamese immigrants in Taiwan are from the M ekong delta, so they mainly speak southern dialect

Since the 1990s, more and more Vietnamese women have married Taiwanese man Most o f the Vietnamese women were from countryside o f the Mekong delta areas, where have poor living conditions Many o f them m arried foreign husband in search o f econemic improvement for household

Language and living skill couses are usually offered for free by local governments or non-profit organizations for the new immigrants Among the language

WILL VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED IN TAIWAN?.

courses, mostly arc Mandarin Chinese, and only a few courses are Taiwanese or Hakka language

3 M ethodology and conducting procedure

This research plan was conducted through questionnaire, in-depth interview, and observation o f Vietnamese immigrants’ daily life Due to time limit, subjects were limited to immigrants living in Ka-tiann and Oo-lai districts o f Kaohsiung city

in southern Taiwan were interviewed A total o f 64 subjects (38 from Ka-tiann and

26 from Oo-lai) were interv iewed during the period o f D ecem ber 2010 and March

2011 Most subjects were former classmates or friends o f the female researcher Thai Thi Thanh Thuy, who is a Vietnamese immigrant too, and has been living in Taiwan for over fifteen years Immigrants’ language ability, use and attitude were surveyed primarily based on their self-report on written questionnaire The ratings were based on semantic differential scales, ranging from the lowest 1 to the highest

5 For example, concerning language ability, 1 means “alm ost unintelligible,” 3 means “general or so so,” and 5 means “like a native speaker.” Questionnaire and interviews were given in Vietnamese and were conducted by the female researcher Background information on the 64 interviewed Vietnamese immigrants was listed

in Table 1 for readers

Ka-tiann and Oo-lai are two neighboring districts beside the border o f Tainan city and Kaohsiung city In general, Ka-tiann is a fishing village nearby Taiwan Strait It comprises 30,987 residents by January 2012 A m ong the residents, 193 are female and 1 male o f Vietnamese immigrants Oo-lai is a village o f both agriculture and aquaculture oriented There are 28,825 residents by January 2012 Among them, 136 are all female Vietnamese immigrants.1 Both Ka-tiann and Oo-lai are traditionally Taiwanese-speaking communities However, due to M andarin Chinese policy by the KMT, people in these two districts are currently bilingual in both Mandarin and Taiwanese

Table 1 B ackground inform ation on the interview ed V ietnam ese im m ig ran ts

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WILL VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED IN TAIWAN?

total number: 64

4 Results and discussions

4.1 Language abilities o f the immigrants

In average, the 64 immigrants have been living in Taiwan for 8 years Based

on their self-report on the questionnaire, the time they have spent on learning Mandarin Chinese or Taiwanese are summarized and listed in Table 2 It shows that the average years they have spent on learning Mandarin is 8 years, and they spent1.5 hours per day in average As for learning Taiwanese, they have spent 6 years, and 1.3 hours per day It reflects that new immigrants have chosen M andarin as the first priority language to learn since Mandarin is regarded as the official language

by ROC

Table 2. Time spent on learning Mandarin and Taiwanese.

Mandarin per day 1

VIỆT NAM HỌC - KỶ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ LÀN THỨ T ư

in Table 3 through Table 10.

The results have shown that the overall language abilities o f the immigrants are Vietnamese, M andarin, Taiwanese to English, in descending degree Vietnamese language is the mother tongue o f the immigrants; no doubt, it is the most fluent language As for the other languages, it seem s that the im m igrants’ performance o f the languages is reflecting Taiw an’s current sociolinguistic facts Among the four language skills, listening and speaking skills are more fluent than reading and writing skills

Table 3. Listening abilities of the immigrants

WILL VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED IN TAIWAN?.

Table 4. Listening abilities of the im m igrants by scores

-x \ level like native fluent general not fluent almost none

* She used to be the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam

Table 6. S p eak in g abilities o f th e im m ig r a n ts b y sco res

like native fluent general not fluent almost none

VIỆT NAM HỌC - KỶ YẾU HỘI THẢO QUỐC TẾ LẰN THỨ T ư

Table 8 Reading abilities of the immigrants by scores

Table 9 W ritin g abilities o f th e im m ig ran ts

Nv level like native fluent general not fluent almost none

Table 10 W ritin g abilities o f the immigrants by scores.

4.2 Vietnamese ability o f the immigrants’ husband and children

In addition to im m igrants’ language abilities, Vietnamese ability o f the immigrants’ husband and children were also surveyed and sum m arized in Table 11 and Table 12 It reveals that Vietnamese language is almost com pletely unintelligible to most o f the immigrants’ husband (67.2%), and only 32.8 % o f the husbands could speak a few sentences in Vietnamese

WILL VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED IN TAIWAN?.

Table 11. Vietnamese ability of the im m igran ts’ husband.

Table 12. Vietnamese ability of the immigrants’ children

skilllevel \

4.3 Language use o f the immigrants

Table 13. Language use of Mandarin with different targets

xi'requency

target

husband’s

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WILL VIETNAMESE LANGUAGE BE MAINTAINED IN TAIWAN?

Table 14. Mean score of language use of Mandarin with different targets