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( Taiwanese aborigine)
Recognized Amis
Atayal
Bunun
Kavalan
Paiwan
Puyuma
Rukai
Saisiyat
Sakizaya
Seediq
Tao
Thao
Tsou
Truku
&_160;Unrecognized &_160;Babuza
&_160;Basay
&_160;Hoanya
&_160;Ketagalan
&_160;Luilang
&_160;Pazeh/Kaxabu
&_160;Popora
&_160;Qauqaut
&_160;Siraya
&_160;Taokas
&_160;Trobiawan
For centuries, Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples experienced economic competition and military conflict with a series of colonizing peoples. Centralized government policies designed to foster language shift and cultural assimilation, as well as continued contact with the colonizers through trade, intermarriage and other dispassionate intercultural processes, have resulted in varying degrees of language death and loss of original cultural identity. For example, of the approximately 26 known languages of the Taiwanese Aborigines (collectively referred to as the Formosan languages), at least ten are extinct, five are moribund (Zeitoun & Yu 2005167) and several are to some degree endangered. These languages are of unique historical significance, since most historical linguists consider Taiwan to be the original homeland of the Austronesian language family (Blust 1999). Taiwan’s Austronesian speakers were formerly distributed over much of the island’s rugged central mountain range and were concentrated in villages along the alluvial plains. As of January 2006, their total population is around 458,000 (approximately 2 percent of Taiwan’s population). The bulk of contemporary Taiwanese Aborigines reside in the mountains and the cities (CIP 2006).
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Taiwanese aborigine Subcategories
Taiwanese aborigine Articles
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