From: William J Poser (wjposer@ldc.upenn.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 25 2007 - 20:36:57 CST
As an example of the politics associated with writing
"dialects" other than Mandarin, many years ago, when
Taiwan was still a dictatorship, I went out in Tainan with
several physicians. After dinner, late at night, they took
me to the museum at the hospital there and showed me around.
This was only possible because one of them had a key: the
museum had been closed by the authorities. Why? Because
the reason there is a museum there is that it was the site of
the first western medical clinic in Taiwan, and among
the items on display, in addition to surgical instruments
and so forth, were books published by the missionaries in
romanized Taiwanese. The government considered these to be
dangerous symbols of Taiwanese nationalism and because of
them had closed the museum.
Bill
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