Mother tongues are a vanguardBy Liou Uie-liang 劉威良At the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) New Generation National Strategic Talent Empowerment Workshop in Taipei from Thursday to Sunday last week, DPP Secretary-General Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said that Taiwanese society often uses terms originating from China in everyday life. Much like other multilingual countries like Canada, Taiwan should — in addition to using a commonly shared language — also release accurate information in Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese, or Tai-gi) or other local mother tongues as tools for verification and clarification. In other words, mother tongues are not merely a matter of culture, nor solely an issue of revitalization. In the face of a hostile China, whose native language is also Mandarin, the government and military should regard mother tongues as the most effective defensive language for winning the cognitive war. This would significantly raise the cost for China to disseminate disinformation, and mother tongues that were previously suppressed would serve as the vanguard in Taiwan’s modern cognitive defense.

Source: Taipei Times January 15, 2026 16:45 UTC