Taiwan’s Hakka Affairs Council hosted a national forum on Wednesday to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Hakka Language Restoration Movement.
Recent surveys show a rise in the number of people identifying as Hakka. But they also point to a drop in the ability to use the Hakka language among its communities. The council says the decrease is very concerning.
The council has commissioned the National Chengchi University to build a Taiwan Hakka Language Database in 2017. To date, documents totalling over 6 million words of the language have been digitized.
Council head Yang Chang-chen (楊長鎮) says the rise in recognition is natural since one is considered Hakka if there is Hakka heritage in their family. Yang says though the population has grown, people’s ability to use the language has decreased by eight percent in the past five years.
The council hopes to speed up making Hakka a mainstream language by ways of forums as well as collaboration with experts in interdisciplinary fields and local businesses.