vusam: Saviki / Betelnut

"Articles Written in Indigenous Languages for Reading Competition: Southern Paiwan"  by Ministry of Education Taiwan.


Saviki 

ta sicuayan(misspelling; lack punctuation) izua ti satjukutjuku(capital T),(wrong punctuation) na mapu(misspelling: na is a prefix) tua dripupun(?)  atua(misspelling) aluvetjuljatan, sa vaik a sema tjatjan(misspelling: sema is a prefix).

vusam: Pronouns (II-Two Texts)

Indigenous Language Textbook in Nine Levels: Southern Paiwan published by Council of Indigenous Peoples in Taiwan and uploaded by Digital Center of Taiwan Formosan Languages Production on the website of klokah.

Level 1-Lesson 1

nanguanguaq sun, sinsi?
uii(misspelling), nanguanguaq a en(misspelling), a tism(misspelling).(wrong punctuation) 
nanguanguaq a en(misspelling) uta,(wrong punctuation) masalu. 

Problems: Misspell pronouns a’en and tisun. 

vusam: Pronouns (I-Rule)

Collecting and collating pronouns used by Southern Paiwan speakers in Chunre, Shizi, and Mudan townships, at the same time borrowing from Linguist Chang, Hsiou-Chuan's study of Tjinalja’avusan Paiwan of Laiyi Township, the township of Central Paiwan just to the north of Chunre, I made the following table of Pronouns: 

Pronouns (Southern Paiwan)			Normative	Genitive	Oblique	Neutral
Singular	1st Person		aken a’en -en	niaken nia’en ku ’u	tjanua’en	tiaken tia’en
	2nd Person		sun	nisun su	tjanusun	tisun
	3rd Person		timadju	nimadju	tjaimadju	timadju
Plural	1st Person	Inclusive	itjen -tjen titjen timitja	nimitja tja-	tjainuitjen
		Exclusive	amen -men	niamen nia nimitja	(tjanuamen)	tiamen
	2nd Person		-mun	nimun nu	tjanumun	timun
	3rd Person		tiamadju	niamadju	tjaimadju	tiamadju

Source: klokah; Table of Thousand Words in Southern Paiwan; those in brackets are from Introduction to Paiwan Grammar by Chang, Hsiou-Chuan (Taipei: CIP, 2016), pp. 52-53.

Here are some examples from klokah (pronouns are underlined):

1. su sinsi timadju? -- Is he your teacher?  

2.  mapida mun a taqumaqanan? -- How many people do you have in the family?

3. izua u zidinsiya. -- I have a bike.  

4. timitja a se paiwan... --we, the people of Paiwan...
5. palayulayuin a keman ta kudamunu, metarivak a tja lingalingaw. --Eat fruit often, so our body will become healthy. 

vusam: Theorize Writing Good Paiwan

(Source: Sinkan Manuscript)

Indigenous societies are known as societies without a writing tradition, hence indigenous peoples, the peoples without a history since history bases itself on the study of written sources.

Nevertheless, for centuries across the globe there have been many efforts of creating literacy for oral-based communities.

In Formosa Taiwan, the earliest record of such efforts was found in the 1630s when Dutch predikants introduced Roman letters and taught their Formosan students (of Siraya and Favorlang peoples at least) to spell out their verbal communication in words. Thus, for the first time the world saw Formosan languages in a written form.

Gateway: Three Rukai Villages in Maolin, Kaohsiung

Gateway project completed 11.26% (84 out of 746).

726 is the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 until 2015. Entrances is a personal project to visit every village on the list.

Maolin District of Kaohsiung City borders Sandimen Township / Wutai Township of Pingtung County in the south, Yanping Township of Taitung County in the east, Taoyuan District of the same Kaohsiung City in the north, and Liouguei District in the west.  Surrounded by Paiwan and Bunun villages are a piece of Rukai Arcadia spread along Kaohsiung City Highway 132: (from west to east) Teldreka, 'Oponoho, and Kungadavane.

Gateway: Six Paiwan Villages in Chunre, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 10.86 % (81 out of 746).

746 is the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 until 2015. Gateway is a personal project for me to visit every village on the list.

Chunre is the last piece of puzzle to the completion of my visit to the nine indigenous townships in Pingtung.

Gateway: Ten Paiwan Villages in Laiyi, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 10.05% (75 out of 746).

746 is the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 until 2015. Gateway is a personal project, a reason to take me every village on the list.

Laiyi Township is quintessentially Paiwan due to its geography and population. It sits in the center of the nine indigenous townships of Pingtung County; its Paiwan population is 7,643 strong with five villages claiming over 1,000 residents. In total, there are ten Paiwan villages under seven tsuns (state administration unit). The artery linking these villages is the Pingtung County Highway 185.

Gateway: Nine Paiwan Villages in Taiwu, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 8.71% (65 out of 746).

746 is the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 until 2015. Entrances is a personal project that allows me to visit every village on the list.

In Taiwu Township, there are nine Paiwan villages under six tsuns (state administration unit). All of them can be reached by Pingtung County Highway 185 (aka Highway Along the Foothills); only Puljetji deep in the mountains needs another connection with Pingtung County Highway 106. The current Paiwan population in Taiwu is 5,654 according to the CIP ratification list.

Gateway: Twelve Paiwan Villages in Sandimen, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 7.51% (56 out of 746).

746 refers to the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 until 2015. Entrances is a personal project for me to visit every village on the list.

There are eight indigenous townships in Pingtung County. Sandimen sits at the northernmost corner bordering Maolin District Kaohsiung City. In Sandimen, twelve indigenous villages under ten tsuns (state administration unit) are ratified; ten of them are Paiwan with a  number of  6,875 residents and two are predominantly Rukai with a number of 860 residents. Most villages are reachable via Pingtung County Highway 185 (better known as Highway Along the Foothills), but those closer to the offshoots of Central Mount Range require a route combination of Provincial Highway 24 (also known as Wutai Highway) and Pingtung County Highway 31.

Gateway: Ten Paiwan Villages in Majia, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 5.9% (44 out of 746).

746 is the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 until 2015. Entrances is a personal project which brings me to every village on the ratification list.

On the map, Majia Township is  the smallest among the eight indigenous townships in Pingtung Taiwan. Yet, it is home to big state projects including Taiwan Indigenous Culture Park and Rinari Permanent Housing Program as well as a large Paiwan population at the number of 7,138 residents living in ten Paiwan villages under six tsuns (administration unit). 

Gateway: Eight Rukai Villages in Wutai, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 4.56% (34 out of 746).

746 is the number of indigenous villages officially ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) from 2010 unil 2015. Entrances is a personal project by which I hope to visit every village on the ratification list. 

Wutai is the only non-Paiwan dominant township in Pingtung Taiwan. The eight indigenous villages under six tsuns (administration unit) are home to Rukai, a group that was once considered a sub-tribe of Paiwan in the 19th century. According to CIP ratification list, there are totally 1,046 Rukai families and 3,448 residents in these villages, equivalent to roughly 26% of the total Rukai population (13,340) on the island. 

Edward H. House’s Formosans in 1874

(Source: Stone Gate in Mudan Township Pingtung Taiwan)

"The Formosa enterprise", says Edward Howard House (1836-1901), a journalist covering Japan for New York Tribune in the 1870s,  "was prompted by a fine impulse of humanity, and was carried through with unvarying resolution, spirit, and, at the proper moment, calm discretion".

And the world owes thanks to the young nation Japan for demonstrating "excellent qualities of diplomatic capacity and statesmanship", and for "performing a signal service to the community of nations...[by ridding] the Pacific Ocean of a scourge which threatened the safety of mariners" (The Expedition to Formosa, 224 &212; my italics).

What is this Formosa enterprise? What is the scourge to be chastised and rid off by Japan?

Red Ink (2012)

Lopenzina, Drew. Red Ink: Native Americans Picking up the Pen in the Colonial Period. SUNY, 2012. 

Are indigenous peoples, Native Americans included, peoples without literary traditions? This is the drift of the book. And the answer it provides is an exact no.

Not because "in all Mayan languages there is no linguistic or semantic differentiation among the words for painting, drawing, and writing" (p. 43), indicating a history of writing without words; nor because indigenous penmanship is too small to be significant; but because in history colonists often deliberately 'unwitnessed' - "the largely passive decision to maintain a particular narrative structure by keeping undesirable aspects of cultural memory repressed or inactive" (p. 9) - indigenous achievements in order to legitimize conquer and conquest.

"Natives had, in fact, picked up the pen in America for nearly two hundred years" (p. 6).

If 'unscript' is an indigenous way to deconstruct colonialism in Sarah Rivett's Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation (2017), 'unwitness' in Lopenzina's Red Ink (2012) refers to one colonial strategy that contains indigenous presence by

* destroying every aspect of Native civilization that affronted them (Spanish) (p. 39);

* considering Native writing to be grotesque, devilish script (French) (p. 39);

* acknowledging Native inscriptions as the remnant of a loss civilization rooted in Western systems of knowledge (English) (p. 40).

Interracial Marriages in 1650-1661

(Source: Marriage of Aboriginal Natives, Corranderk, by Frederick Grosse (1828-1894))

This wood graving is borrowed to usher us into a similar scenario on Taiwan/Formosa between 1650 and 1661. At this time, the island was under the Dutch East India Company (better known as VOC, Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), which had been ruling it for entrepot trade since 1624.

The Council of Matrimonial Affairs with four elected commissioners was entrusted regulating marriages between couples on the island. To become officially married, couples must:

(1) apply for 'marriage banns' at the Council with two or more relatives or friends;

(2) pass the interviews/investigations by commissioners to be qualified;

(3) have the banns put up in a church for three consecutive Sundays to see if there was objection;

(4) become officially married.

The Silk Roads (2015)

Frankopan, Peter. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. New York: Vintage, 2017. (Hardcover published by Bloomsbury London in 2015.)

"[Pulling] multiple strands together in a single work", Frankopan's The Silk Roads "spans centuries, continents and cultures" ( "Acknowledgements", pp. 508-509). Indeed, very ambitious.

Very solid too, supported by the sheer range of secondary and primary references listed in "Notes" (pp. 511-625): English, German, Russian, Dutch, Italian, French, Persian, Latin, Spanish, Scandinavian, and some more. Plus memorable historical events delivered in an accessible language; there is little wonder about the numerous praises heaped upon the work, such as

"This is deeply researched popular history at its most invigorating, primed to dislodge routine preconceptions and to pour in other light."- New York Review of Books

Remembering Sapiens (2011) and Homo Deus (2013) published just a few years before by another Oxford trained historian, Yuval Noah Harari, I couldn't help but second Oxford may very well be the best place to study and write history, especially the kind of history that encompasses a whole lot.

Unscripted America (2017)

Rivett, Sarah. Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation. Oxford, 2017. 

"The untranslatable aspects of indigenous languages have a disruptive impact on universal truths of either Scripture or Enlightened taxonomies...I refer to this disruptive impact as a process of unscripting." (Rivett, p. 11)

On the whole, this research speaks more about non-indigenous missionaries, fathers, philosophers, scientists and writers than about indigenous peoples. In the first six chapters, it traces chronologically the efforts of Anglo-Protestant missionaries and French Jesuits harvesting souls from their own fields in North America; in the last two chapters, President Thomas Jefferson's indigenous language project and Author James Fenimore Cooper's literary creation about Native Americans feature as themes.

Perhaps that's why the book is labeled 'literary criticism', and I felt I was back at the Department of Foreign Language and Literature when reading it.

Having said so, what's there for a reader like me looking for specific publication about indigenous peoples?

Gateway: Fifteen Paiwan Villages in Shizi, Pingtung

Gateway project completed 3.49% (26 out of 746).

746 is the number of indigenous villages ratified by Council of Indigenous Peoples Taiwan from  2010 until 2015. A complete list of all villages can be downloaded from the CIP website.

Gateway is a personal project by which I hope to visit these villages and take back as witness a photo either of the arch gateway or of any decorated monument at the village's entrance.

After Sinevaudjan and Manju, I moved on Wednesday, July 11, 2018 northwards towards Sisetu Township.  A large part of Sisetu marks the traditional territory of a powerful Paiwan chiefdom Tjakuvukuvulj since the Dutch Period until Japanese Occupation. Among the current seven administration areas, Paiwan inhabitants of the region can at least recognize (and have the government ratified) fifteen traditional villages. In total, Shizi is now home to 15 Paiwan villages, 1,721 households and 5,348 inhabitants.

Seven Books on the English Language

I know the title sounds ambitious. As I practice to write in good English, the English language inevitably draws me to itself per se. I wonder about its history; I am curious to know its lexicon; and I desire to acquire  or develop a good style. So, I gorged on the following seven books about English on my shelf, and here are some of the things I learned.

Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. Haper Perennial: 2001.

First published in 1990, my copy was a reissue by HaperCollins ten years afterwards. A sign of the book's longevity.

Bryson is very prolific; The Mother Tongue is only one of his three books on the English language. Consulting  at least 112 pieces of publication, he dabs by chapter on the history, vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation, style, lexicography, variety, status and future of the English language. Every chapter  can be (and has been) blown into a big volume by different authors, which renders Bryson's quite fit for a beginner on the subject matter. I picked up this copy at the airport and read it on the plane.

As Bryson explains, the English language is "order out of chaos", whose felicities include fusion (like trusteeship consists of  a Nordic stem trust, a French affix ee and an Old English root ship), democracy (common usage is preferred to authoritative dictate) and global presence empowered by entertainment, business, tourism and so on. Guess what language does the Belgium National Football Team use in the dressing room? English.

Gateway: Eleven Paiwan Villages in Mudan & Manju, Pingtung

On Saturday 30th of June I took a road trip to visit the indigenous villages in my hometown Sinevaudjan Township and the neighboring Manju Township, Pingtung County. 

The purpose of my trip is to initiate a personal project 'Gateway', in which I hope to visit the 746 indigenous villages of Taiwan in person, and take a photo of the gateway to each village as my witness. 

This region, better known as Lonckjouw in the early modern period, is home to indigenous peoples such as Paiwan, Amis, Makatao and Sqaro (the so-called Paiwanized Pinuyumayan). Nowadays, visitors can easily reach every village by following the loop sign put up by Kenting National Park. 

Sapiens (2015) and Homo Deus (2017)

(IBM's Watson)

Originally published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011 and 2013, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (HaperCollins, 2015) and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (HaperCollins, 2017) by Oxford-trained historian Yuval Noah Harari (b. 1976) have since publication received global attention and praises. 

Continuing a personal quest after the birth of universe and living beings, I too picked these tomes up and journeyed through the evolution of humankind, which historian Harari explains case by case in a familiar and accessible style. 

The Greatest Show on Earth: Two Books on History of Science

Honestly, my math is poor; lab quotient almost nil; stargazing restricted only to appreciation of nature's wonder. Except for getting good grades at school geology and biology examinations,  there was nothing really scientifically smart in me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed these two books so much that I regretted why I had voluntarily stopped myself at science's door.

They are Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything (Black Swan, 2003) and William Bynum's A Little History of Science (Yale, 2013).

Taiwan National Highway No. 61

On Friday May 25th 2018, Eleng and I took Taiwan National Highway No. 61, also known as West Coast Highway or Poor People's Highway (meaning 'toll-free'), southbound, all the way from the head to the tail of this island.

Officially in statistics, the length of Taiwan National Highway No. 61 reaches 351.4 km (195.98 mi). It begins at Bali District New Taipei City and ends at Qigu District Tainan City.

With speed limits ranging between 90 km/hr and 30 km/hr, this Highway offers itself as the third north-south corridor in the west in addition to National Highway No. 1 (Sun Yat-sen Freeway, completed in 1978) and National Highway No. 3 (Formosa Freeway, completed in 2004).

Our trip, however, took 525 km in 7 hours in total.

Life on High Waters: Two History Books

My stepfather spent some of his teen years working on a fishing boat. Destined for inshore waters such as East China Sea and Taiwan Strait, their boat would leave Keelung Harbor once in three to six months, so its young crew could hunt white pomfrets day and night until the fridge was full and the captain called home.

Before returning to the harbor, my stepfather knew his parents would come to collect most of his salary, leaving him with only a few thousands. Yet for the value of currency then in early 1960s, that amount was more than enough for a young man to enjoy beyond his imagination on the coast among alcohol, women and films. When every dollar was gone, he would also be ready for another journey. But for an unfortunate event of attack on their boat, I guess he might not have wanted to end this life that soon. 

How weird is this feeling of deja vu between a piece of life I heard in the 21st century and history books on life lived at least four hundred years ago in the 16th and 17th centuries! The utterly adventurous but reckless lifestyle on both sea and shore; the unpredictable and intransigent turn of fate on board; the insanely lucrative but very short career span. Whether it is a fishing boat, a pirate vessel or a slave ship, similar fates lead these lives on high waters.

Loaded Words: A Few Comments on the Publication of Dictionaries of Indigenous Languages

Published in Publication and Reading in Taiwan《臺灣出版與閱讀》（前為《全國新書資訊月刊》）Taipei: National Central Library (March 2018): 154-157.