Kinmen County Government New Immigrants Family Service Center invites new immigrants to learn the local “Kinmen dialect"

【Taiwan Immigrants’ Global News Network】Edited by Raymond Rodriguez

The Kinmen County Social Affairs Bureau New Immigrants’ Family Service Center (金門縣社會處新住民家庭服務中心) hosted the "Learn to Speak Kinmen Dialect in elementary school” (ㄅㄆㄇ小學堂暨逗陣來講金門話) for new immigrants. A total of 22 grade one students and 3 new residents attended to learn the Mandarin Phonetic Symbols (Zhuyin, 注音符號) from scratch, do creative arts and crafts and learn the local Hokkien dialect. At the end of the course, there will be a test to see what the students learned in the 9 days course. Finally, the students will receive a certificate of completion from Tung Shen (董燊), Director of the Social Affairs Bureau (社會處處長董燊).

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The Kinmen County Government invites new immigrants to "learn the local Kinmen dialect." Photo/Provided by Kinmen County Government

In 2021, because of the epidemic, the course will be launched on August 3. The classes will be held at the second meeting room of the Social Welfare Hall every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings. Lecturer Hsueh Yi-wen (薛憶雯) will teach the students to learn Zhuyin from scratch. In addition to the 22 grade one students, three new immigrants have joined to lay a solid foundation in learning Chinese. According to the organizers, Teacher Hsueh will instruct the students correct phonetic pronunciation, symbol recognition, correct pinyin, and pronunciation in the 9-day course, and use games and exercises to help students familiarize themselves with the actual use of the symbols.

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The Kinmen County Government invites new immigrants to "learn the local Kinmen dialect." Photo/Provided by Kinmen New Immigrants Family Service Center

The course is guided by the National Immigration Agency of the Ministry of the Interior (內政部移民署), hosted by the Social Affairs Bureau of Kinmen County and by the New Immigrants’ Family Service Center. After the 9-day course, the students will be tested to check their learning results. Afterwards, the Director of the Social Affairs Bureau Tung Shen will issue a certificate of completion to the 25 students.

The New Immigrants’ Family Service Center of the Social Affairs Bureau stated that the new immigrants and the children of new immigrants' study very seriously to learn the basic pronunciation, spelling, reading, and writing of phonetic symbols. Special thanks were given to the instructor and to the volunteers who helped with the classes. It is hoped that the students can apply what they have learned in the course to their future studies and proceed to learn the next stage of Chinese characters and adapt to life in Kinmen.