Protestors decry discrimination against Taiwanese language (fwd link)

[William J Poser]

Just as a clarification, the "Taiwanese" in question here is not one of the
aboriginal languages of Taiwan. The true aboriginal languages are the various
Austronesian languages. Then there is a layer of varieties of Chinese
spoken by the earlier Chinese colonists. The majority of the early layer
of Chinese colonists spoke a Southern Min variety of Chinese (Min Nan in
Mandarin Chinese). That is what is here referred to as "Taiwanese". The
most recent layer in the Taiwanese cake is Mandarin Chinese, imposed as
the official language by the losers of the Chinese Civil War who took
control of Taiwan at the end of WWII. Without implying any value judgment,
this is a conflict between earlier and later colonial languages, in some ways
comparable to conflicts between Spanish and English in the Southwestern
US.

Bill