What are the characteristics of the Gaoshan people’s language and culture?

The language and culture of the Gaoshan people with unique national characteristics

Language is an important bridge of communication, and the Gaoshan people have a unique language and culture. The internal languages ??of the Gaoshan people are very different. There are more than ten branches of the Amis, Atayal, Paiwan, Bunun, etc., so this also leads to them having a very rich and special language, culture and art. Now, let us experience it together. Bar.

The Gaoshan people have their own national language, which belongs to the Austronesian language family, also known as the Indonesian language family of the Malayo-Polynesian language family. According to statistics, there are 22 languages ??in the world. In addition to the nearly extinct Pingpu language, there are still 15 languages. Based on differences in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammatical morphology, it can be roughly divided into three major language groups: Atayal, Cao, and Paiwan. Including Atayal, Seediq, Cao, Kanakanafu, Shah'alua, Amis, Bunun, Puinan, Saisiyat, Rukai, Yami, etc. Among them, Yami is close to the Bataan language of the Philippines.

Many Gaoshan compatriots can now speak Chinese, and the Gaoshan language has also absorbed many Chinese and Hokkien borrowed words. These terms are related to agricultural production and living utensils, reflecting the close cultural exchanges and trade relations between the Gaoshan people and the Han people in history.

The Gaoshan language, like the ancient Yue language, is also a polysyllabic agglutinative language, which is different from the isolated language in which Chinese characters have one character and one sound. For example, "boat" is "Kasu", "hunting" is "Kamaluku", etc. Scholars believe that there is also a certain homologous relationship between the Gaoshan language and the languages ??of the Zhuang-Dong language group, which originate from the ancient Yue people.

Although the Gaoshan people do not yet have a common national script, in recent years, the "painting boards" and "note boards" discovered in the Paiwan and Bunun areas reflect the prototype of the Gaoshan people's pictorial characters. . The "Painting Wooden Board" draws multiple images, which can be summarized into 14 kinds of understanding images, such as a child riding a horse, wearing a feather crown, holding a gun across the shoulder, advancing with a gun, holding an enemy's head, dancing, etc., with a deer in mind, and a hundred steps. Snakes, etc.; the "calendar board" is made of cypress wood and is engraved with various symbols with a single structure, such as ▲ for a day, q for cooking wine in a pan, and ■ (rectangle) for taboos on cutting firewood.

In addition, there are also symbols representing taro and millet in the basket, as well as symbols representing hunting, farming, deer hunting, raising, and entertainment. The images and symbols depicted on the "painting board" and "note board" have begun to take on the characteristics of budding events. It reflects the early farming and hunting primitive economic and cultural type of the Gaoshan people. It can be said to be a reflection of the Gaoshan people's own history.