Hakka people fight to save mother tongue for next generatio

In a countryside Hakka village in Miaoli, Xin De Elementary School (信德國小) is busily promoting the area’s native Hakka culture and mother tongue. Head teacher Mr. Huang realized that if the elderly Hakka generation fails to teach Hakka Chinese, the dialect faces the prospect of being lost to future generations.

As luck would have it the Hakka Affairs Council (客委會) had also become aware of this immanent crisis and is currently in the process of trying to bring Hakka language and culture back into everyday life. The previous difficulty was that customarily Hakka was only taught in schools; however, as the majority of parents speak Mandarin at home, as soon as the children arrived back home all the hard work of the school was lost and very little progress was made.

This was all before the new push to integrate Hakka language and culture into everyday life, incorporating more listening, more speaking, and more drama activities as well as engaging parents. Teachers have implemented a newly coordinated series of fun and interesting teaching methods to help dispel the children’s fear of learning their mother tongue and help them to instead view the learning process as fun.

This new Hakka culture and language initiative has not only given countless children easy access to learn basic Hakka skills and obtain certification, but parents have also come on board, themselves getting actively involved in the certification program - a development that has brought the generations closer together. The school walls are adorned with the famous sentence “The land of our ancestors can be sold, but their wise words cannot be forgotten,” reminding everyone of the importance of one’s language and roots. 

Hakka people fight to save mother tongue for next generation
URL:http://www.peopo.org/news/114223

(以下是中文對照)
寧賣祖宗田,莫忘祖宗言,母語生活代代傳承,我們是"客家人"

照片

在苗栗鄉下的一個客家庒，信德國小全校推動著母語文化，因為該校黃校長意識到身為客家人，如果連老一輩的都不教下一代母語，就怕會失傳，剛好客委會也察覺了這個危機，就大力的推動客語生活化，一開始推動的困難是，只有靠學校學習，回到家中和父母還是說國語，成效不大，於是推動客語生活化，多聽多講多演，再配合老師以帶動唱趣味的教學模式，讓孩子不害怕學習，把說母語當成是一種有趣的遊戲，不但學習快速也輕鬆獲得客語基礎認證，家長被學校影響，反而一起投入客語生活化，也來參加認證，和親子的互動關係更親密。在學校的牆壁上有著一句，「寧賣祖宗田，莫忘祖宗言」勉勵我們不能忘記祖宗傳承下來的語言，人不能忘本。