Written by Christopher Joby.
Image credit: author.
For centuries, Taiwan has stood at the crossroads of regional migration, trade, and cultural exchange connecting both East Asia and Southeast Asia. Successive waves of migration—including the arrival of Austronesian-speaking Indigenous peoples about 6,000 years ago, the settlement of Han Chinese communities from the mainland, which started less than 1,000 years ago, and the presence of European (particularly, Dutch and Spanish) and later Japanese colonial powers—have shaped the island into a diverse, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilinguistic society.
Contemporary Taiwan is home to a complex linguistic landscape, in which several Sinitic varieties coexist alongside—but not limited to—Indigenous languages (conventionally referred to as Formosan languages) belonging to the Austronesian language family. As a historically layered and socially dynamic country, Taiwan has undergone profound political and social transformations.
For over a century, Taiwan’s local and Indigenous languages were subjected to restrictive government policies, including the Japanese colonial project (1895-1945), which eventually imposed Japanese as the dominant language and the Kuomintang’s Mandarin-only policy (1947-1987). These policies caused significant intergenerational language shift and loss. As a result, the Formosan languages were heavily suppressed, and the cultural and linguistic diversity of Taiwan was threatened.
Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, the processes of legislation and democratisation have created opportunities to confront past injustices and advance social inclusion, especially through the recognition of historically marginalised Indigenous communities. Different social and political movements have played a key role in reshaping Taiwanese society. In the late 1980s, the Indigenous People’s Name Rectification movement paved the way for the recognition of Indigenous groups in 1994, thus replacing the earlier designations of “Mountainous compatriots” and “Plains compatriots”. Two years later, constitutional reforms led to the establishment of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, formerly known as the Council of Aboriginal Affairs.
Since 2000, and in response to social activism aimed at maintaining and revitalising the island’s linguistic and cultural heritage, Taiwan has taken significant steps to preserve its linguistic diversity through both legislative measures and language revitalisation initiatives. On the legislative level, several laws were passed, including the requirement in 2000 to have public transportation announcements delivered in Mandarin, Southern Min, Hakka, and Indigenous languages. This measure was followed by additional laws aimed at safeguarding linguistic diversity, above all the Indigenous Languages Development Act (2017), and the Hakka Basic Act (2018), culminating in the promulgation of the National Languages Development Act (2019). At the same time, while language proficiency testing was introduced from 2001 onwards, multi-year revitalisation programs—including language teaching, immersion programs, and master-apprentice initiatives—have helped to raise awareness of the importance of Indigenous languages. However, to date, these efforts have largely benefited only the sixteen officially recognised Indigenous languages (Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, Puyuma, Rukai, Tsou, Saisiyat, Yami, Thao, Kavalan, Truku, Sakizaya, Seediq, Hla’alua, and Kanakanavu), leaving other unrecognised languages with limited support.
Against this background, Siraya stands out in several respects. First, due to the long-term assimilation of Siraya society and culture by Han Chinese over several centuries, the Siraya language—historically spoken on Taiwan’s southwestern plains—gradually declined until it became extinct by the late 19th century. Since the end of the 20th century, however, it has undergone a process of language restoration alongside the revitalisation of Siraya cultural heritage. The language has been taught in elementary schools for about twenty years and is now taught in several junior high schools. Second, Siraya was recognised officially by Tainan City (then Tainan County) in 2005, this local recognition having gone hand in hand with broader processes of social justice, historical reckoning, and the affirmation of Siraya Indigenous identity. On October 23, 2025, the “Plains Indigenous Peoples Status Act” was officially passed into law by the President of the Republic of Taiwan. Following this new legislation, each Plains Indigenous ethnic group can now apply to the government for official recognition and registration. Nine groups have submitted applications, including the Siraya, the Kaxabu, the Pazeh, the Taokas, the Taivuan, the Papora, the Makatao, the Babuza, and the Ketagalan. Among them, the Siraya have taken the lead, and at the time of writing, official government news regarding their status is expected imminently.
In trying to trace the movement of the Dutch across national and international boundaries, my work has led me to do research in Japan, in Taiwan, and back to England. My research in Taiwan started with my discovery of a Siraya-Dutch version of the Gospel of St John in 2019, which provides both a linguistic resource and a historical reference point for language activists. This led me to examine in depth the texts written by Dutch missionaries and Indigenous informants. Here, I was able to build on the work of Austronesian linguists, above all Sander Adelaar, who published the definitive grammar of Siraya in 2011, and Paul J. Li. My work on these texts culminated in the publication of my book Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan: A Reception History of Texts, Beliefs, and Practices. After this, I turned my attention to Siraya revitalisation—a field that, to date, remains relatively under-researched.
Two studies can, however, be mentioned. Melissa Brown, in her 2004 monograph, examined the historical shift from Siraya to Southern Min during the Qing period (1683-1895) but also discussed the early stages of the revivalist movement. In his PhD thesis, Jimmy Huang—himself a Siraya—retraced the history of the Siraya revitalisation movement, in which he played a central role. However, his work did not provide a detailed comparison between 17th-century Siraya, as documented in the Dutch texts, and 21st-century Siraya, as it is currently being revitalised. The aim of my article was thus to examine how Siraya language activists drew on texts written by Dutch missionaries during the Dutch colonial period (1624-1662) to revitalise their language and fulfil legal requirements for preserving their language. I concentrated above all on the work on one leading activist, Edgar Macapili, whose writings and co-authored text(book)s have been widely used by learners of Siraya. I focused in particular on the phonemes revivalists have adopted, and their graphical representation, as well as the lexis. A distinctive feature of the Dutch missionary texts is that they were written in two dialects, so I also analysed which dialectal variants the revivalists have chosen and considered the possible reasons for these choices.
History is always on the move, and Siraya revitalisation is constantly changing. Whilst many of the Plains Indigenous ethnic groups have been assimilated in the past hundred years, the official recognition of their status as Indigenous represents a major political and cultural milestone.
Taken altogether, Taiwan’s long history of migration, colonisation, and language contact, combined with its recent legal, democratic, and transitional justice reforms, demonstrates how a society can confront its historical past—even one shaped by oppression—by fostering inclusivity, pluralism, and the active preservation of cultural diversity and linguistic heritage.
The revitalisation of Siraya exemplifies this process, showing how historical scholarship, social activism, and political recognition can converge to support the reclamation of identity and the restoration of both language and cultural visibility in a society committed to reconciliation and diversity.
Please read the full article in the International Journal of Taiwan Studies 9.1 (March 2026): https://brill.com/view/journals/ijts/9/1/ijts.9.issue-1.xml.
Christopher Joby, PhD, is a Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, University of London. He has published several articles on seventeenth-century Taiwan and six monographs on various themes, including ‘Christian Mission in Seventeenth-Century Taiwan’ (Brill, 2025). He is currently doing research on language practices in seventeenth-century Taiwan.
This article was published as part of the International Journal of Taiwan Studies-Taiwan Insight special issue on ‘Indigenous Language Policies in Taiwan and Beyond’.
Taiwan Insight 