http://yam.udn.com/yamnews/MEDIA/1135065-465758.jpg
原住民第12族？噶哈巫族昨天在埔里四庄歡度過年，族人在田裡起火「牽田」，一起吟唱紀念祖先、祈求平安。
圖片／噶哈巫文教協會提供

台南縣新化鎮口埤教會成立的台南縣平埔族西拉雅文化協會，昨天邀請荷蘭籍語言學家卡爾•亞歷山大，協助協會找回西拉雅語言。卡爾說，要讓幾乎消失四百多年的語言復活，不是容易的事，但只要有耐心及恆心，相信會成功。
協助口埤教會成立平埔族西拉雅文化協會的菲律賓籍人萬益嘉說，他和妻子萬淑娟花了相當時間，匯集早年拼音的西拉雅語聖經馬太福音、番仔契（早年契約）及荷蘭籍語言學者卡爾提供的西拉雅語言資料，再由新化國中學生胡惠鈞插圖，印製台灣第一本西拉雅語書－－挪亞方舟。

萬淑娟說，第一本西拉雅語語「挪亞方舟」，是從聖經故事改編，雖然書中拼音文字不多，總是個嘗試。萬淑娟說，西拉雅語言幾乎已是「死語」，多數內容消失四百多年，台灣多名學者專家都表示幾無復生可能性。但身為西拉雅族的後裔，應該找回西拉雅語言，才算找回真正的西拉雅文化。

萬淑娟說，平埔族西拉雅文化協會完成第一本西拉雅語書籍「挪亞方舟」，還編成劇本，請協會五十多名成員配合演出。「挪亞方舟」音樂劇已於二十七日晚上在新化國中演出，令協會成員深深感動。

台南縣平埔族西拉雅文化協會為進一步找回更多西拉雅語言，昨天邀請曾提供西拉雅語言資料的荷蘭籍學言學家卡爾•亞歷山大，與協會成員座談。卡爾稱許協會的用心，將全力協助協會找回西拉雅語言。卡爾說，西拉雅語言在荷蘭統治時，有些傳教士利用羅馬拼音記錄下來，也可從早年拼音的馬太福音、番仔契（早期契約）及荷蘭統治台灣時期的教科書，找到西拉雅語言。

以下是該報導文章，取自台北時報網站，網頁是：
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/archives/2002/07/19/0000148817

Keys to lost Siraya culture found by family descended from aborigines

HISTORY REVEALED: After having stumbled upon a 17th-century bible which once belonged to a Dutch missionary, Wan Cheng-hsiung, the descendent of aborigines, has begun to unravel the lost secrets of one of Taiwans greatest ethnic minorities, the Siraya

STAFF WRITER
Friday, Jul 19, 2002,Page 2
Thanks to the dedication of a few people, Taiwans national minorities may be on the crux of an adventurous search for their roots.

Wan Cheng-hsiung (萬正雄) and his family, all descendants of aborigines in Hsinhua Township (新化鎮), Tainan County, have spent the last ten months involved with an international effort to successfully reconstruct the language of the Siraya (西拉雅) tribe of aborigines which lived in Taiwan hundreds of years ago.

Now that the job is nearly don, Wan plans to teach the language to a smaller group of people in the hopes of bringing it back to life. He says that bringing the language back to its full flower is the key necessary to unlock the secrets of lost Siraya culture.

Beginning last year with the assistance of the Council for Cultural Affairs (文建會), Wan developed his plan to revive the all-but-dead language, which is where the term Taiwan comes from.

With the help of his daughter Wan Shu-chuen (萬淑娟) and his Philippino son-in-law Wan Yi-chia (萬益嘉), a bible once owned by a 17th-century Dutch missionary was found.

Inside the bible, the missionary had translated the Siraya language using Romanized characters. This opened the door to the language, which came back to life, word by word, sentence by sentence.

Due to difficulties understanding the 17th-century Dutch, the family has been aided by a Dutch linguist only known by his first name, Karl, who they managed to locate and contact with the help of the Internet.

Wan says that he will begin teaching the language later this year and will also arrange a class for children. He first wants each Siraya descendant to be given a name in Siraya and he has future plans to create a Siraya dictionary in cooperation with Academia Sinica.

In a related story from Hsinchu, Heitai Bayen (黑帶巴彥), who has studied the Atayal (泰雅) language for the last 30 years, recently completed a major work about Atayal life to be published by the Hsinchu Cultural Center (新竹文化中心).

Iban Nokan (伊凡諾幹) of the Examination Yuan has written the foreword where he praises Heitai as the founder of Atayal studies. Heitai, who has led a multi-fasceted life and worked in many trades, has spent much time carrying out his research among the Atayal minority, determined to restore the original concepts and appearance of Atayal culture.

這些可以作為復甦西拉雅語及其它台灣已經或正在消失的
語言作參考．運動者更可以和他們交流．

如果有好的律師作後盾的話，台灣語言復甦運動者，可以參考
以下這個很有名的例子，將這個問題告到最高法院和大法官
會議，以便確立台灣本地語言的地位．重點要抓在人權，和
人民以母語得到公共服務的權力．這一點，今年（２００２）
十二月三十日的台灣日報的社論也提出來了．台灣老一輩的
語言人權受的委屈實在是夠大的了．

以下這個例子在英國的原住民語言運動，幾乎是等於美國黑人
人權運動1956年的Rosa Parks事件（女性黑人，拒絕讓坐給
白種男人，引爆的美國現代的黑人解放運動．）

Trefor Beasley 的例子，得到很大的媒體關注，受到不少人
引用成功：

In 1952 Trefor Beasley and his wife bought a cottage at
Llangennech near Llanelli, an area where most of the
population could speak Welsh.

They received a letter in English with a demand for rates
(a local tax). Mrs Beasley wrote to the council and asked
to have the letter sent in Welsh, which the council refused.

The Beasleys then refused to pay their rates until they
received the demand in Welsh. The saga continued for
eight years, during which time the Beasleys were often
summoned to appear before a magistrates court and bailiffs
at various times removed their furniture.

Finally, in 1960, they received a bilingual note .

威爾斯語的復活也採用參考了希伯來語復活的經驗．西拉雅
語言復活運動者，應可和以色列人接觸，順便作國民外交．

以下這篇文章，是一個概述，提作參考：

Bringing a Language Back from the Dead

by Simon Griver
ISRAEL MAGAZINE － November 1997

Languages may disappear, but they are not necessarily dead.
From Azerbaijan to Wales and from Catalonia to New Zealand,
many of the worlds smaller nations are attempting to give
renewed life to languages which have seemingly been
abandoned due to time and circumstance.

In Israel, the phenomenon of resuscitating a language is far
from unknown. After all, Hebrew, the language of the Old
Testament, had not been used as a spoken tongue for nearly
two millennia before it was revived and transformed into the
language of both literature and everyday life.

Today, as other nations try to reclaim their lost languages,
the Israeli experience is found to be helpful. The Israeli
model of teaching the language is now being adopted in other
places around the world, and Israeli experts are consulted
by language revivalists from places as diverse as Wales and
Uzbekistan.

Welsh is the language most influenced by the Hebrew experience,
explains Amnon Schapiro, a researcher at the Academy of the
Hebrew Language. In the 1960s a national network of Welsh
language classes was set up based on the Hebrew model.

In fact, the Welsh even refer to a Welsh class as an ulpan,
taken from the Hebrew, meaning classes which are especially
designed for new immigrants to learn the language.

The Welsh are confronted by a different problem than Israel,
explains Schapiro. The number of native Welsh speakers was
eroded by the influence of English. With the help of ulpanim
the trend has been reversed.

Each nation must deal with the unique problems presented by
the language it wishes to restore. Hebrew, for example, posed
a particular challenge because of its non-Latin alphabet,
which, like Arabic, is written from right to left. Ultimately,
Israels great advantage has been that immigrants coming from
over 100 different countries found Hebrew to be the only
language that they could use to communicate. Immigrants thus
had no alternative but to learn and speak Hebrew. Elsewhere
in the world, whether in Wales or New Zealand, people do have
a common language even without their ancestral tongue, making
the revival of a language much more difficult.

In addition to the Welsh, the Academy has also had contact with
other Celtic cultures, though attempts to revive both Gaelic
in Scotland and Erse in Ireland have been less successful
than the Welsh experience. In the former Soviet Union, Jewish
Agency officials in such locations as Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan
and Georgia, who teach Hebrew to potential Jewish immigrants,
have helped advise these newly independent peoples on reviving
their national languages. Here the problem, observes Schapiro,
is not so much teaching the language. Many millions of people
are already fluent in it. But more effort must be given to
reviving the written language. In Azerbaijan people who only
read the Russian Cyrillic alphabet must learn the Latin alphabet.

There has also been a similar revival of local languages in Spain,
where Catalonian and Basque have made great inroads since the
death of Franco, who tried to suppress these languages. Catalonians
too visited Israel in the 1980s to learn from the Hebrew experience.
Dr. Gabriel Birnbaum, academic secretary of the Academy of the
Hebrew Language, recently met with a delegation from New Zealand
who are hoping to revive the Maori tongue.

How, then, does an ancient tongue become a modern spoken language?
Scholarly efforts such as the production of a modern dictionary
must be coupled with the schooling of the young exclusively in
the old/new language. Tremendous popular determination is also
required. Zionists in the early twentieth century would speak
to each other only in Hebrew, although they still found it necessary
to converse in Russian or Yiddish about crucial issues. Eliezer
Ben Yehuda, renowned as the man who dedicated himself to adapting
the biblical language for modern everyday use, insisted on speaking
to both his mother and his wife in Hebrew, even though neither
understood the language. In another place or another time, Ben
Yehuda would have been deemed mad; but perhaps a dose of madness
is required in order to revive a language.