Time: 2021/11/19 14:00-16:00
Speaker: Claire Hsun-huei Chang (Retired Associate Professor, Department of English, National Chengchi University)
Location: Conference room on the 7th floor, College of Liberal Arts, National Cheng Kung University
Starting from the article "Taiwan's gift to the world" published by Jared Diamond in Nature, this speech is divided into two parts. The first part introduces the distribution of the Austronesian peoples and the characteristics of the language. The second part discusses the importance of the Austronesian language in Taiwan, focusing in particular on the Tao language/ethnic group. They bring us three gifts: language, culture, marine nature and environmental wisdom.
Language is God's best gift to people. As a communication tool, language is also a manifestation of culture. We will explain the language features of Tao language from the creation of new words, the discussion of color words, kinship titles, name system, language taboos, and sentence expressions. At the cultural level, discuss the special food culture, flying fish season, and dance of the Tao people. In terms of environmental wisdom, the Tao people are different from other aborigines on Taiwan Island in that they belong to a marine nation and have special issues such as shipbuilding culture, environmental protection, and housing.