ABOUT TAO

The Yami (also known as Tao) is the only indigenous group living off the main island of Taiwan. The Yami people live on Lanyu (Orchid Island), or Betel Tobago, a small offshore island located in the Pacific Ocean 60 kilometers southeast of Taiwan (see Figure 1).

Yami is a Philippine Batanic language in the Austronesian family, and spoken by 3,942 residents (the Council of Indigenous Peoples, 2013). The local people on Orchid Island identify themselves as pongso no tao ‘people on the island’, and they speak circiring no tao ‘human speech’.

Figure 1:Orchid Island located in the Pacific Ocean 60 kilometers southeast of Taiwan (adapted from hhtp://google.earth.com)

Lanyu Island is about 45.7 km2. As shown in Figure 2, there are six tribes in four villages (administrations): Yayo, Iraralay, Imowrod (including Imowrod and Iratay tribes) and Iranomilek (including Iranomilek and Ivalino tribes) .

Near the Imowrod Administration are the post office, airport, and the hotel. At the Ivalino Administration is the Lanyu nuclear waste storage area. Every village has a primary school. The hotels at Yayo and Imowrod tribes provide more opportunities for contact with outsiders. In the northern part of Lanyu is the village of Iraralay.

Figure 2. Geographical description of Lanyu

TAO is an endangered langauge

Yami is part of the Philippine language family and is particularly related to Ivatan and Itbayat of Batanes. It is classified by Ethnologue (Gordon, 2005) as “Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Philippine, Bashiic, Yami”. However, Mandarin Chinese is also spoken on Orchid Island. In 1945 Mandarin Chinese became the national language while other languages and dialects were forbidden until 1987. The average age of fluent speakers of Yami is older than 60, and they have little or no comprehension of Mandarin Chinese. Based on a sociolinguistic survey by Rau (1995), Yami is gradually being replaced by Mandarin Chinese and Iraralay was the only village out of six on the island where children still used Yami in daily interaction. Compared with the language proficiency, language use and language attitude among three generations of Yami, Chen (1998) found there was a language shift to Mandarin and a decline of Yami language ability as age decreases. Recently, Lin (2007) reexamined language use and language ability among Yami teenagers. The results show that although Yami is still spoken in Iraralay, in the other five villages the use of Yami by teenagers with their parents continued to decline. Moreover, most of the teenagers preferred speaking Mandarin over Yami.

The TAO research team at Chung Cheng University, Taiwan

Ann Hui-Huan Chang