Nisatul Afifah
Hi this is my first post. Im from Indonesia, im interested to learn Mandarin and Japanese, and im about to start.. Besides learning im also watching some chinese or japanese movie to know more about the language. Today i had a question after watching Taiwan movie. There in Taiwan, mandarin course are very popular, i mean mandarin is their mother of tongue isn’t it..but why they learn mandarin ? It is very interesting and make me curious about it, they also focusing to learn mandarin idiom and that’s so cool, some of my friend from Chinese are always using idioms too in their day to day life, I don’t know if its most of Chinese people always using idiom or just some of my friends. But they’re cool. Why people need to learn more about their mother of tongue? I hope someone would let me know about my curiosity
Sep 25, 2024 11:23 PM
Answers · 2
Around 70% of Taiwan's population belong to the Hoklo ethnic group and are native speakers of Taiwanese Hokkien.
September 27, 2024
Every country has classes for people to learn more about their native tongue. Kids improve their grasp of their native language in schools, then adults improve more in University, for example. The spoken language doesn't so much need to be taught to adults - literature is usually the focus instead. In advanced English classes for native English adults, Shakespeare is a popular topic. Taiwan is quite unique in how they Speak Mandarin but write with traditional characters - elsewhere in China, people whose local dialects have been replaced with state-enforced Mandarin, tend to learn only simplified characters. Some people believe this is a form of cultural genocide, since the simplified characters don't contain so much information about the origin of the characters - they're so far removed from the original pictographs. In an effort to combat this threat, some people study their language extra hard, learning ancient literature and character etymology as best they can. Some people believe Taiwan is a hotbed of people with this sentiment, hence why they favour traditional characters even when their local dialects are mostly replaced with Mandarin.
September 26, 2024
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