Nationally Recognized
102-465: Locally recognized Unrecognized Plains indigenous peoples , also known as Pingpu people ( Chinese : 平埔族群 ; pinyin : Píngpu zúqún ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī : Pêⁿ-po͘-cho̍k-kûn ) and previously as plain aborigines , are Taiwanese indigenous peoples originally residing in lowland regions, as opposed to Highland indigenous peoples. Plains indigenous peoples consist of anywhere from eight to twelve individual groups, or tribes, rather than being
204-547: A family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
306-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
408-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
510-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
612-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
714-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
816-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
918-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1020-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1122-483: A political agenda by claiming indigenous status. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of
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#17327647260501224-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
1326-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
1428-423: A single boy was in love with a girl, he would play his harmonica day and night in front of the girl's house. If the girl also liked the boy, they would have a date, giving each other engagement gifts. As Han culture slowly infiltrated, customs of Plains indigenous peoples transitioned to more typical forms. Although women had higher status in the clans , in the tribal system men were superior. Tribes were treated as
1530-605: A single ethnic group. They are part of the Austronesian family. Beginning in the 17th century, plains indigenous peoples have been heavily influenced by external forces from Dutch , Spanish , and Han Chinese colonization of Taiwan. This ethnic group has since been extensively assimilated with Han Chinese language and culture; they have lost their cultural identity , and it is almost impossible without careful inspection to distinguish plains indigenous peoples from Taiwanese Han people. Plains indigenous peoples are recognized by
1632-461: A singular, collective unit. Leaders of the tribes were chosen based on seniority : the oldest member of the tribe became the leader. The elders were responsible for attending community meetings, at which a community chief was chosen to lead. The elders were also responsible for solving internal and external disputes. Plains indigenous peoples held ritual ceremonies several times a year, to worship natural and ancestral spirits. They strongly believed in
1734-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
1836-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
1938-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
2040-883: Is a strong possibility that over 85% of Taiwanese have Plains indigenous bloodlines. Lin's research was based on the study of human tissue antigens ( HLA ) of Hoklo, Hakka, and Plains indigenous peoples. It was claimed that through hundreds of years of assimilation and intermarriage between Han Chinese and Plains indigenous peoples, there was a high possibility that genetically, the Hoklo and Hakka bloodlines in Taiwan have been fused with Plains indigenous bloodlines. Not long after Lin's 2008 publication, several academics pointed out errors in Lin's statistical analysis, and questioned why some of her numbers contradict each another. Subsequent full genome studies using large sample sizes and comparing thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms have come to
2142-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
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#17327647260502244-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
2346-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
2448-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
2550-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
2652-544: Is the reason that many Taiwanese people today are unaware that they could be descendants of Plains indigenous peoples. Several theories have been proposed during the 2000s to suggest that a large majority of Hoklo and Hakka Taiwanese could have Plains indigenous lineage in their bloodline. An increasing number of Taiwanese people are starting to search for their Plains indigenous roots and claim their status as Plains indigenous peoples. After centuries of acculturation , Plains indigenous peoples are almost completely sinicized . It
2754-423: Is the soft, pliable, porous preserved hide of an animal – usually deer – tanned in the same way as deerskin clothing worn by Native Americans . Some leather sold as "buckskin" may now be sheepskin tanned with modern chromate tanning chemicals and dyed to resemble real buckskin. Traditionally, Native American Indians would scrape away the excessive fat clinging to the hide, and this would be followed by working
2856-457: Is thought to be preferable to vegetable tanning methods where tannins are exclusively used. The finished product resembles chamois leather , but is stronger. Smoking gives to the leather its durability, and although Buckskin may become slightly stiff when it dries after being wet, it quickly restores itself to its former soft-state by rubbing it with the hands. The application of wood smoke also deters insects from devouring it. Unsmoked buckskin
2958-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
3060-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
3162-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
Plains Indigenous peoples - Misplaced Pages Continue
3264-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
3366-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
3468-626: The Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in
3570-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
3672-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
3774-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
3876-707: The Tsai Ing-wen administration promised to grant official recognition to the Plains indigenous peoples, and a draft bill is being reviewed by the Legislative Yuan as of June 2018. As of 2012 there were 80,000 people indentified as Plains Indigenous people in Taiwan and an estimated 200,000 people are descendants of the Plains Indigenous Peoples. In The Island of Formosa (1903), former US Consul to Formosa James W. Davidson presented
3978-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
4080-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
4182-681: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Deerskin Buckskin
Plains Indigenous peoples - Misplaced Pages Continue
4284-559: The 1990s, and a "Plains Aborigine Name Correction Movement" (Plains Indigenous Peoples Recognition Movement) emerged. Several protests occurred in 2001 and 2010, and a formal complaint was sent to the United Nations in 2010, demanding that the ROC government formally recognize Plains indigenous peoples. Descendants of these groups today continue to fight for the official recognition of their status as Taiwanese indigenous peoples. Through
4386-486: The Formosan Plains Austronesians shared a common geopolitical culture in the seventeenth century. This culture manifested itself most materially in the physical structure of Formosan villages, which were protected by plant defenses of bamboo or wooden walls. Such defenses could be elaborate. In 1630, for example, inhabitants of the village of Mattau built "a sturdy double wall around their village,
4488-496: The Kaohsiung City government has opened registration but who haven't yet been recognized as of 2017, are as follows: Plains indigenous peoples have been classified under different systems throughout history. The Dutch separated them by regions and differentiated them by communities (社名). Huang Shujing , during Qing rule , categorised all Taiwanese indigenous peoples into thirteen groups, based on geographic location. It
4590-870: The Kavalan tribe moved southward to Hualien County and Taitung County; and the Siraya tribe moved to Taitung. However, relocation could not prevent the Plains indigenous peoples from being assimilated. After the Qing Empire had officially taken over Taiwan, the Plains indigenous peoples were rapidly sinicized as a result of advocacy for their "civilising". They were forced to dress in Han clothes, change their names, and receive Han customs. Plains indigenous peoples began to adopt aspects of Chinese culture , values , and language . Most importantly, intermarriage between Chinese and Plains indigenous peoples increased rapidly, leading to
4692-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
4794-597: The Pepo lived in the western plains, where they remained to compete with the Chinese settlers (the Puyuma and Amis inhabited the eastern plains). The term Pepo ( Chinese : 平埔 ; pinyin : píngpǔ ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī : pêⁿ-po͘ ; lit. 'flat plain') referred to indigenous peoples that resided in the Formosan plains, rather than the highland mountainous regions. Plains indigenous peoples mainly settled in
4896-585: The Pepo were those Plains indigenous peoples who could still be easily distinguished from the Chinese, whereas the Sek-hoan had already thoroughly adopted Chinese customs, thus exhibiting no trace of their "ancient life". The Dutch, who had ruled Taiwan for 38 years, have left an imprint on the Plains indigenous people. The Sinkang manuscripts , which are bilingual land contracts written in Romanised letters, have become important historical documents for studying
4998-583: The Plains indigenous people. This Romanised tribal language was instructed by the Dutch commissaries in order to teach Christianity. Nevertheless, the Dutch influence on the Plains indigenous people has been limited to language and religion, reaching merely around the Tainan area. Only the influence of the Han Chinese has been far and long-standing. In the 17th century, Plains indigenous peoples were involved in
5100-424: The Plains indigenous peoples gradually become the farmlands of the Han Chinese, which caused major changes in their economic life and social system. Those who refused to migrate were slowly assimilated into Han society, and those who relocated could not avoid the oppression from the Han people or other indigenous people and had to move again. Now, the Plains indigenous peoples are mostly sinicized. They speak fluently
5202-532: The Plains indigenous peoples. Even though there was a lack of attention and interest in the history of Plains indigenous peoples until the mid-1980s, through the works of scholars, folklorists, anthropologists, historians, and remaining descendants of these groups, there has been a gradual restoration of Plains indigenous culture, history, identity, and language. For example, a descendant of Plains indigenous peoples in Hualien , Chieh Wan-lai, still insists on teaching
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#17327647260505304-502: The Qing period, numerous coastal Chinese of the mainland risked their lives to sail to Taiwan for the sake of survival, regardless of the sea prohibition policy of the Qing government. At that time, most Plains indigenous peoples were assimilated. Their villages mingled with villages of the Han Chinese, resulting in land loss. At first, the Han Chinese still paid the land rent, but as they gained more power, they stopped to pay or even bought off
5406-512: The Taiwan government as "Pingpu Indigenous People". However, only the Kavalan sub-group has been given full rights and privileges. It was not until the mid-1980s that Plains indigenous peoples started gaining interest from historians and anthropologists , leading to increased public attention to this group. These indigenous groups are currently continuing to fight for their identity, rights, and recognition as Taiwanese indigenous peoples. In 2016,
5508-578: The Yilan County Government to organise a campaign for the Kavalan to search for their roots, and in 1993, they held a Kavalan Harvest Festival. In addition, the Ketagalan tribe in the north has held several cultural activities in 1994 and 1996. Moreover, the descendants of Siraya, Taokas, and Pazeh have also tried to re-establish and pass on their traditions and cultures. In spite of their considerable cultural and linguistic differences,
5610-410: The acculturation of the two groups. Many of the early Chinese settlers in Taiwan were not permitted to bring women with them; hence, they married Plains indigenous women out of necessity. This is the origin of the common saying "there are mainland grandfathers, but no mainland grandmothers" ( Chinese : 有唐山公，無唐山媽 ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī : Ū Tn̂g-soaⁿ kong, bô Tn̂g-soaⁿ má ). This extensive intermarriage
5712-625: The arrival of immigrants, Plains indigenous peoples lived a lifestyle based on agriculture , fishing , and hunting . They produced just enough for their needs. Taros and yams were important in their diets. They used simple tools such as sticks and spades for growing food; to hunt, they used traps, spears, and arrows; to fish, they used nets, baskets, and arrows. Men were usually in charge of fishing and hunting, while women were responsible for farming roles. Their hunting targets were mainly deer and wild boars. There were regular seasons for hunting deer and they refrained from hunting young deer to maintain
5814-423: The conclusion that Taiwanese Han people are primarily of Mainland Chinese descent and have only very limited genetic mixture with the indigenous population. Thereafter, Lin herself coauthored a paper with similar conclusions. Nevertheless, Lin's research has been continuously used by many Taiwanese independence activists to build a Taiwanese identity based on ethnicity. Activists have used Lin's findings to argue
5916-755: The current Republic of China administration. The representatives of the complainants demanded for the groups to be recognised formally as Taiwanese Indigenous People and Austronesian . The complaint was rejected by the United Nations. As a result, a dedicated committee under the name "Pingpu Affairs Task Force" (平埔族群事務推動小組) has been created by the Executive Yuan to deal with Plains indigenous issues. Genetic studies conducted by Marie Lin [ zh ] of Mackay Memorial Hospital in 2001, 2008, and 2010 concluded that despite only 1.5 percent of Taiwanese people being registered as indigenous, there
6018-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
6120-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
6222-642: The early Qing period. Plains indigenous peoples were based around a matriarchal society : women were often the head of the family and in charge of important household affairs. Men usually lived with their wives after marriage, serving the wife's family in the form of physical labour. Females inherited property and passed on lineage. Women were usually in charge of religious issues and men were responsible for political issues. In Plains indigenous traditions, singles were free to choose their spouses. There were special parties where young singles could choose their lovers freely, or they could date individually in private. When
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#17327647260506324-547: The ecological balance. The Plains indigenous peoples once used extensive land for agriculture and hunting. They solved their disputes by means of betel-nut treats, apologies, or fights. They led a life of self-sufficiency without restriction and suppression from outside regulations or foreign armies. Before the arrival of the Han Chinese, the Plains indigenous peoples only used simple agricultural tools, such as sticks and spades, to plant millet, taro, and yam. Without knowledge of fertiliser, they found new lands to plant when farmed land
6426-783: The efforts of indigenous people, Tainan County became the first local government to recognize Siraya people as county-level indigenous people in 2005, followed by the recognition of local Taivoan , Makatao , and Siraya people by the Fuli Township government in 2013. In 2016, the Pingtung County government announced the recognition of local Makatao. Plains indigenous peoples have been allowed to register in Kaohsiung City since 2013 but have not yet been recognized as city-level indigenous peoples. The number of people who have successfully registered, as well as ones to whom
6528-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
6630-484: The first English-language account of the indigenous peoples of the whole island, which was almost entirely based on the comprehensive work collected over several years of study by Ino Kanori , the foremost authority on the topic at the time. In Ino's eight-group classification, the Pepo, Puyuma , and Amis groups were known as "domesticated savages" ( Japanese : 熟番 , Hepburn : jukuban ) , primarily due to their abandonment of ancient customs. Of these three groups, only
6732-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
6834-669: The flourishing deerskin export market. Plains indigenous hunters often supplied deerskin to the Qing and Dutch regimes, in exchange for cash to trade for other goods and also to pay for taxes enforced under the new regimes. By the 18th century, the deerskin industry had diminished due to overhunting, and the inflow of Chinese immigrants began to take up much of the grazing land. Therefore, Plains indigenous peoples increasingly relied on plow agriculture and land rent from indigenous land reclaimed by Han settlers. Han settlers initially implemented policies that favoured Plains indigenous peoples. This
6936-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
7038-618: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
7140-456: The growing Chinese population that flooded into Taiwan. Han policies in favour of Plains indigenous peoples began to disappear. Han settlers started to remove many of the Plains indigenous peoples from their original villages. It is within these "political and economic frameworks" that the Plains indigenous peoples gradually became sinicized. In the course of their interaction with the Han Chinese, some Plains indigenous peoples moved to Puli Basin;
7242-444: The inside filled with clay, as well as a moat and many demi-lunes." Surnames were an integral part of Plains indigenous culture. Through the process of acculturation, Plains indigenous peoples gave up their naming systems and original surnames in favour of adopting Chinese surnames . In the process, several unique surnames were created in conjunction with indigenous influences; these differed from Hoklo and Hakka surnames. Some of
7344-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
7446-743: The languages of the Han people. The early Han Chinese that came to Taiwan were mostly single males, who usually took aboriginal wives. Since the 1990s, as the ethno-political activities and the Nativist Cultural Movement have flourished on the island, descendants of the Plains indigenous peoples have also started to demand name correction and joined the Alliance of Taiwan Aboriginal Constitution Movement. Kavalan descendants, such as Chieh Wan-lai, have endeavoured to teach traditional language and culture in Hualien; in 1991, they worked with
7548-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
7650-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
7752-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
7854-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
7956-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
8058-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
8160-424: The raw hide with the brain tissue of an animal. Afterwards, the raw hide is made to envelope a fire that emits wood smoke , and where the smoke is mostly trapped inside the raw hide for many hours. The combined application of brain tissue and smoke produces soft and pliable buckskin leather, with a dark honey color. This treatment differs from the traditional tanning methods used in other societies and cultures and
8262-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
8364-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
8466-428: The rights. Moreover, the Han Chinese were good at plundering lands from the indigenous people by purchase, alliance, marriage, forced occupation, or exchange of irrigation sources. Sometimes, they even took advantage of the indigenous people's drinking habits and cheated on the contracts. The Plains indigenous peoples thus yielded their living space and scattered elsewhere. Since 1701, the fallow lands and hunting places of
8568-453: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
8670-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
8772-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
8874-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
8976-618: The traditional language and culture of his ethnic group. More educational pamphlets are emerging to teach Taiwanese people about the existence of Plains indigenous peoples. Furthermore, a campaign was started in Yilan County for descendants of the Kavalan to find their roots. Many Plains indigenous ceremonies have been revitalized around Taiwan, and these have been opened up to the public and to people who have recently discovered their status as Plains indigenous peoples. Ethno-political activities and Nativist Cultural Movements flourished after
9078-500: The unique surnames include 月, 邦, 宜, 機, 翼, 力, 卯, 茆, 同, 念, 東, 岩, 哀, 曷, 埕, 買, 猴, 標, 紅, 雙, 角, 楓, 詩, 樟, 墜, 雛, 乃, 味, 毒, 陣, 盂, 解, 棹, 永, 湖, 振, 偕, 嘪, 掌, 奚, 詠, 倚, 竭, 北, 六, 水, 麗, 崗, 崑, 桌, 牙, 陀, 秘, 烏, 新, 糠, 長, 萇, and 霜. In 2010, representatives of Plains indigenous peoples in Taiwan sent an official complaint to the United Nations in Geneva ; the complaint outlined the unfairness caused by Plains indigenous peoples not being formally recognised under
9180-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
9282-548: The view that the majority of Taiwanese who did not descend from migrants from the Chinese Civil War are not descendants of Han Chinese but rather descendants of Plains indigenous peoples; and therefore Taiwan should not be considered as part of a Chinese state . However, this position has faced political strain. Taiwanese Plains indigenous people who have suffered racial and cultural assimilation often despise these so called "blood nationalists", whom they view as pushing
9384-492: The west and central mountain regions of Taiwan. The term Sek-hoan ( 熟番 ; shúfān ; se̍k-hoan ; 'well-cooked/familiar savages') was also used to describe Plains indigenous peoples because they often lived closer to the coast and had more interaction with Dutch and Han Chinese colonizers, hence were more assimilated and civilised than highland indigenous peoples. Mention of Plains indigenous peoples have appeared in Qing texts dating back as early as 1764. In summary,
9486-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
9588-424: The worshiping of ancestors. Whenever a ceremony was held, the people would gather in the political centre of the tribe, called kunghsieh , and they would drink, sing, dance, and celebrate. Their ballads were mostly merry melodies until the mass invasion of the Han Chinese and their culture was on the verge of diminishing, and then they started to create elegies to express the sadness of a disadvantaged people. During
9690-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
9792-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
9894-542: Was already noted in the early 20th century that careful observation was required to detect their deeper eyes as compared to the Chinese; also, the women did not practice foot binding . It is now nearly impossible to distinguish Plains indigenous peoples without careful inspection. Through the process of acculturation, much of the language, culture, and identity of Plains indigenous peoples have become nonexistent in modern Taiwanese society. The Republic of China government currently only officially recognises one ( Kavalan ) of all
9996-472: Was because Han officials feared a revolt against Chinese immigrants, and also because Plains indigenous peoples were tax-paying citizens and could be used as military sources. Furthermore, the Chinese government initially viewed their expansion as a disruption to the indigenous people status quo, hence they introduced policies to favour Plains indigenous peoples. However, Plains indigenous peoples were increasingly not able to compete economically and ethnically with
10098-486: Was exhausted. When the Dutch occupied Taiwan, they taught the Plains indigenous peoples farming skills and administered a policy of breeding farm cattle. They indirectly ruled the indigenous people and managed land cultivation. After their improvement of farming skills, the Plains indigenous peoples changed their staple crop to rice. This happened more obviously to the southern tribes that had earlier contact with foreigners. The northern tribes still mostly planted millet until
10200-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
10302-437: Was not until Japanese rule that proper anthropological and ethnographic classification systems of Plains indigenous peoples were formed. The Japanese studies revealed that Plains indigenous peoples were not one culture, but in fact consisted of various ethnicities, languages, and cultures. The Japanese extensively studied Taiwanese indigenous peoples in order to classify, locate, and "civilize" them. Ethnographer Ino Kanori
10404-553: Was the first to create the modern ethnological classification of Plains indigenous peoples, consisting of the following groups: Makattao, Siraya, Loa, Poavasa, Arikun, Vupuran, Pazehhe, and Kuvarawan. Since then, other scholars such as Shigeru Tsuchida, Utsurikawa Nenozo, Mabuchi Toichi, and Ogawa Naoyoshi have presented various classification systems for Plains indigenous peoples. There is still no full consensus over whether there are eight, nine, ten, or twelve groups of Plains indigenous peoples. The major disputes consist of: 1991 Before
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