MOE replaces Guoyu with Huayu

The Ministry of Education announced the day before yesterday that it will no longer use the phrase National Language (國語 guoyu) when refering to Standard Chinese or Mandarin Chinese, and instead will use the word 華語 huayu, which can more or less be fairly translated as Chinese Language (the word 華 hua in this context is a geographic reference to the central plains of China -- the same meaning we see in the ROC 中華民國 and PRC 中華人民共和國. You can see hua is now defined as just meaning 'Chinese' in most dictionaries).

Replacing 國語 with 華語 will not be done on elementary school textbooks, though, the place where most kids are first introduced to this phrase by the government.

The MOE will also use 漢字 in place of 中國文字 when refering to Chinese characters.

Now I worked with scholar Robert Cheng when he was chair of the Mandarin Promotion Council. At that time, his group was planning (1) government publication of a new dictionary with Mandarin, Hakka and Holo Taiwanese readings (this project has now been split into various dictionaries as far as I can tell) (2) a draft law to give all of Taiwan's languages protection -- not just Mandarin, Hakka, Holo and the various aboriginal languages, but also those other Chinese languages living on in old military neighborhoods and even the languages of Taiwan's newer immigrant communities.

Key to part (2) was a language equality law which would define the rights of communities to protect their language and give them some resources to do so. The draft law I was discussing with Cheng back in 2002-2003 was innovative in two key respects -- it declined to label any language as 國語, or the national language, and also declined to label any language as 台語, or Taiwanese. Instead, 華語 was used in the draft I translated because it is already a widely used and acceptable term for Mandarin, while 河洛(語) Holo Language -- or was it 福佬 (語)? -- was used for the language commonly used to refer to Taiwanese. This was specifically done to prevent any official termonology from implying that one language represented the country, or that one specific language represented Taiwan.

Also note that this draft bill -- still behing held up by the KMT legislature -- called every language XX語 and not XX話 -- giving all of them the status of a language and none the status of a dialect or vernacular.

I really agreed with these changes, and so I'm not the least bit surprised by the MOE's move. But man, did it ever piss off the UDN, which ran stories about it on page one explaining it and framing it as a De-Sinofication move; a page three lead, saying how pissed the Mandarin teachers are; another page three story about how scholars think it's a dumb move; and an editorial slamming the Ministry of Education. The sister paper, the China Post, was hardly kinder, leading with the headline DPP moves to 'rectify' Chinese language.

These changes will be incorporated into school courses starting from 2010.

But MOE officials said the official subject name of the "national language course" (國語課) in all elementary school curricula will remain unchanged to avoid drastic changes that could be controversial.

But the plan has already invited strong protest from many teachers of the Chinese language. They claimed this was another attempt by the pro-independence DPP to mix education with political ideologies.

MOE officials clarified that these decisions were made by a panel of scholars and experts on Chinese language and literature.

The panel's decision was later endorsed and approved unanimously by a curricula screening committee comprising 47 members, including professors, teachers, and representatives of parents' associations....

Yet most scholars in humanities, including Chinese literature, said "Hua language" is a term used by foreigners referring to the Chinese language used by residents living in Taiwan.

It is unnecessary for residents here to adopt a term used by foreigners, they said.

Wow , I didn't realise the China Post interviewed most scholars in humanities about this topic.

The Liberty Times carried a few articles too, and generally portrayed the DPP move as anti-ideological and in line with globalized trends.

I applaud the MOE's decision, but note they can't do much but change their own use of terminology. It may be some time before the use in social circles changes.

Note: Tim Maddog already covered this topic, specifically the Reuters treatement of it.