Saisiyat

Which neighbours shape Saisiyat

Hakka, Atayal and Saisiyat speakers live more or less together, and many Saisiyat speak all three, with Mandarin and sometimes Min Nan besides. Many young people now use Hakka or Atayal, and few children speak Saisiyat, so the language is endangered despite a relatively large number of speakers. The vocabulary shows Japanese from the colonial years and Mandarin from later government policy. Hakka influence varies widely: isolated dialects have almost none, and less isolated ones have a great deal.

How the dialects divide

There are two main dialects, Ta'ai, or North Saisiyat, spoken in Hsinchu, and Tungho, or South Saisiyat, in Miaoli. Kulon, an extinct Formosan language, was close to Saisiyat, but the Taiwanese linguist Paul Jen-kuei Li counts it as separate.

What the spelling adds for vowels

The orthography has letters for sounds many Formosan languages lack: ae for [æ] and oe for [œ]. E is the schwa, capital S is [ʃ], and a doubled vowel such as aa marks length. The grammar is in motion too. Saisiyat is shifting toward an accusative pattern while keeping many features of split ergativity, and its case markers distinguish personal from common nouns.