Atayal
Language · official in 1 country
Two Atayal subdialects, Matuʼuwal and Paʼkualiʼ, keep separate vocabulary for men and women, a register split no other Atayal dialect has. The language of the Atayal people of Taiwan divides into Squliq and Cʼuliʼ, and it has had a standard Latin spelling set by the government since 2005.
The language on record
- Own name
- Atayal
- ISO 639-3
- TAY
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- Formosan (Atayalic)
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Atayal is official
The record lists Atayal for Taiwan alone, where the Council of Indigenous Peoples maintains the spelling of its Formosan languages.
Official beside Atayal
About Atayal
What happened to Atayal under the post-war government
Mandarin was imposed as the sole national language, and schools taught only in it. Families stopped passing Atayal to their children, though communities kept it in private and informal settings. After martial law was lifted in the 1980s, policy turned toward recognising indigenous languages, and the Council of Indigenous Peoples was established.
Writing has followed. Søren Egerod published an Atayal-English dictionary in 1980, a Bible translation was completed in 2003, and an Atayal Wikipedia opened in April 2020 after work by the Ministry of Education and National Chengchi University. Atayal is also one of the source languages of Yilan Creole Japanese.
Where the dialects are spoken
Goderich in 2020 counted seven dialects and reconstructed over 1,000 words of Proto-Atayal. Squliq is the prestige dialect and the widespread one. Sʼuli is spoken in Hsinchu County and along the Da'an River. The Klesan once lived around Mount Nanhu and were moved by the Japanese in the early 1900s to villages about 40 km to the north and east. Matuʼuwal is spoken in three villages on the Rinax River in Tai'an Township, Miaoli, and Plngawan in a single village of Ren'ai Township, Nantou, formed from three villages the Japanese relocated.
How the letters depart from IPA
In the 2005 spelling b is /β/, c is /ts/, g is /ɣ/, y is /j/ and z is /ʒ/. The apostrophe is the glottal stop. Some dialects drop the schwa in writing, which leaves long clusters on the page: pspngun for /pəsəpəŋun/. The velar fricative [x], never found at the start of a word, is a trademark of the Atayalic languages.
Common questions
Questions about Atayal
Do Atayal men and women use different words?
In Matuʼuwal and Paʼkualiʼ, yes. Both keep male and female registers in their vocabulary, and Mayrinax Atayal has a list of affixes used in male speech.
When did Atayal get its own Wikipedia?
In April 2020.
What is Yilan Creole Japanese?
A mixed language formed from Japanese and Atayal.