Some More Taiwan Stories

I’m back from Taiwan and continuing my Korean language studies in Seoul. Did some reading, met some friends, and visited Jiufen.

Since she hasn’t blogged it herself, I’ll share a few things Sayaka has told me about living in Taiwan. She often visits a Korean restaurant near Taiwan Normal University. In many Korean restaurants you get free side dishes, including Kimchi. However, where Sayaka goes and a number of places I have been outside of Korea, they list these side dishes as “Kimchi” on the menu and charge money for it. Recently however, Sayaka visited the restaurant with a Korean and he asked, in Korean for Kimchi. The side dishes emerged and, of course, there was no charge for it…

One of the delightful things about Taiwan is its social and linguistic complexity. It isn’t unusual to be speaking with someone in Chinese and have them throw in some Taiwanese dialect (Minnanhua) or switch in and out of the dialect when they are speaking to someone else who understands it. It is fascinating also to see the different occasions and contexts in which each are or can be used. Here are two anecdotes along these lines:

1) While at the movie theater in Taipei, Sayaka recently saw the trailer for the Guoyu (Chinese) version of the children’s movie “Madagascar” She said that while the characters spoke mostly in Chinese, at certain points there would be phrases of Taiwanese that leaked into the dialogue (like “paise” for “excuse me”) – just as it might in daily conversations in Taiwan.

This kind of “language leakage” happens all over the world and indeed is a perfectly normal experience for hundreds of millions of people who live in environments where multiple languages are spoken. However, it also sits uneasy with various national attempts to create “pure” and “standard” languages for use. This is only one example of a phenomenon most of us have probably experienced if we think about it enough, but I think it is a very important one to emphasize. How would this movie, for example, fit in mainland China? It is the “Chinese language” version of the movie but highly customized for a Taiwan market. Of course, Chinese viewers are already more than used to a similar sort of thing, and not just when they watch Taiwanese movies. For example, the Chinese language subtitles of Hong Kong movies can often be found with all sorts of strange expressions. Some even in Taiwan might complain that the use of Taiwanese in the movie is inappropriate. From the opposite perspective though, it might be equally, if not more unnatural to use forced phrasings in dialogue in order to make it fit with “standard Chinese” when the children watching would find such use of language unfamiliar. This is not to say that there is a right or wrong way of doing this – just that it works both ways..

Of course, as I think many of my friends can guess, my own personal preference is heavily on the side of mixing, matching, and even erring on the side of outright language chaos. Sayaka and I speak to each other in a mix of languages, and I feel most comfortable with people where two or more languages are mixed to a certain degree. Granted, my own case is somewhat unusual. However, beyond my own comfort, I do honestly believe that the discomfort we feel in an environment were not everything we hear and read is completely familiar can as often as not be a positive and productive experience. I have begun to distance myself from my undergraduate studies in analytic philosophy where pursuing complete clarity in language is a virtue and I growingly view language puritanism in all forms (most of all English language purists) with an emotion bordering on disgust.

In practical terms, one way I have found to reform some of my older habits is to appreciate the many real life examples where imperfection, mixing, and “language leakage” takes place regularly. Daily life in Taiwan is just one of the many places where this is happening on a massive scale. Just off the top of my head, and though I have never been, I suspect India would be another great example of this kind of environment.

2) Sayaka’s Japanese friend Rumi recently told her an interesting story of a trip to Tainan city. Apparently there is a tourist attraction there which involves going through a long cave in a boat. In the cave there is a recreation of some kind of an esoteric Buddhist cosmos, including portrayals of heaven and hell. However, Rumi made an interesting observation: While traveling through hell, apparently the terrifying demons spoke in Taiwanese, a language she doesn’t understand. However, as the boat moved into heaven, the language switched into Mandarin Chinese.

Has anyone else been to Tainan and been on this ride? What message might the visitor come away with here?

UPDATE: My friend back on vacation in Singapore warns of some of the difficulties of multilingual society.