What is it about?
Fewer Indigenous people in Taiwan speak their native languages. This is because families use them less at home and in the community. Moving, intermarriage, and religious change make it harder to keep the languages alive.
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Photo by Lisanto 李奕良 on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Since the 1960s, Taiwan has undergone major social changes that negatively impacted the learning environment for Indigenous heritage languages. As a result, many Indigenous people have lost proficiency in their heritage language. This study uses data to explore the urgent need for deeper understanding of how sociocultural factors and the amount of HL exposure contribute to the decline of Formosan language skills.
Perspectives
This article is the result of years of teamwork on Taiwanese Indigenous languages. Our research team, mainly including two linguists, a sociologist, and a geo-statistician from Academia Sinica of Taiwan, came together a decade ago because we were deeply concerned about the future of these Indigenous heritage languages. Since then, our focus has been on uncovering the key factors behind their decline. We hope that our findings can be of some help in revitalizing these endangered Indigenous heritage languages.
Dorinda Liu
Shih Hsin University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Unraveling the impact of sociocultural factors on Indigenous heritage language proficiency in Taiwan, Language Problems & Language Planning, June 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/lplp.00127.liu.
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