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Updated Monday, October 26, 2009 10:21 am TWN, By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post New law ensures equality for HakkasA new law is going to deliver Taiwan from that bias. The draft Hakka Basic Law, adopted at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, will assure the Hakka of equality in Taiwan's language and multicultural policy as well as public service. One stipulation in the government-sponsored bill, which is expected to be passed by the Legislative Yuan before its current session is over, requires Hakka-related subjects to be tested in the civil service examination. Government efforts have to be redoubled to preserve Hakka culture, not just for the minority of six million on Taiwan, but for those in China and elsewhere across the world as well. As a matter of fact, Taiwan will be made the world's research center of Hakka culture. Culturally, Hakka on Taiwan have made more than substantial contributions to literature and music. Lai He (賴和), the father of modern Taiwan literature, was Hakka. He started Taiwan's nativist literary movement. His first novel, Chit-ki chinna (一枝稱仔) or “A Lever Scale,” was serialized in the Minpao (民報) in 1926. The Minpao was a newspaper with pages published in Chinese. It describes a pathetic protest by a local vegetable vender, whose lever scale, on which he relied for weighing the sales of his produce to make a living, was broken in two by a Japanese policeman. It is protest literature, just like Ajia-no-koji (亞細亞的孤兒) or “An Orphan of Asia” by another Hakka writer Wu Chuo-liu or Go Dakuryu (吳濁流). Wu wrote it in Japanese. Another Hakka, Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), began Taiwan's first popular song boom with his classic Woo Ya Hue (雨夜花) or “A Flower in a Raining Night” and Bang chun-hong (望春風) or “Looking Forward to Spring Wind” in 1935. Both were sung in Hoklo, however. Lyrics were simple and the theme was pathetic. Melodies, a combination of Hoklo folksong tunes with a touch of Negro spirituals, rang out a sorrowful charm uniquely Taiwanese. They all contributed to a change in the Hoklo's stereotyped image of Hakka bumpkins, whose womenfolk had to work in the field and do hard work like men with their feet unbound. Unlike practically all other Han Chinese, the Hakka girls never had their feet bound in pre-modern China. That was one main reason why there were few intermarriages between the Hakka and Hoklo on Taiwan, making assimilation all but next to impossible prior to the island being ceded to Japan in 1895. Comments October 28, 2009 hft33362003@ Reference jakob.dempsey above. Between American James Michener and Jerry Norman who is more authoritative/authentic or for that matter who has the better facts. Joe Hung quoted Michener and you read Norman 1988 book. Don't tell you read better books than Joe Hung. Book written in 1988 does not give Norman better insight into the history of Hakka. Right? I speak Hakka, Cantonese, understand Hoklo, Teochew, Guangxi and Hainanese dialects. Besides the dialect Hakka which in most sounding and pronunciation similar to that of Mandarin I find that no other later mentioned dialects come near to Mandarin pronunciation. Joe Hung may have quoted and read the right facts. |
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I wonder who told you that the Hakka language belonged in the Mandarin group? Perhaps some half-educated Hakka who wanted to drive home the notion that Hakkas come from Northern China?
Why don't we look at the words of a linguist instead, i.e. Jerry Norman in his 1988 book "Chinese" which is widely used around the world. cf. p.210-214,221--: Hakka derives from Old Southern Chinese, just like Min & Cantonese.