Policy on the selection and implementation of a standard language as a source of conflict in Taiwan

According to the latest census in 1998, Taiwan has a population of 21.9 million. Of the various Chinese dialects and aboriginal languages spoken on the island, the Southern Min dialect, also known as Taiwanese, is the largest, with native speakers comprising 72 per cent of the population. 12 per cent of the population speak Hakka, and 14 per cent speak other Chinese dialects as their first language. Aboriginals account for about 2 per cent of the population, speaking more than a dozen Malayo-Polynesian languages. As a result of effective promotion by the government, Modern Standard Chinese based upon Northern Mandarin, called guoyu ʼnational language’, is also extensively popularized, with 95 per cent of the population speaking it in varying degrees of proficiency (Chen 1999). Taiwan is thus a bilingual society, as are mainland China and Hong Kong. According to the statistics in Huang (1993), 82.5 per cent of native speakers of Southern Min are bilingual in Southern Min and guoyu, and 88 per cent of native speakers of other Chinese dialects and aboriginal languages are bilingual in guoyu and their native tongue