Abstract:
In this thesis, I will look at the nature of the encounter between two languages and their treasuries of human experience, as it occurred in Taiwan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The languages involved are English and the vernacular of the island,known as Taiwan Southern-Min. The chief actors in this encounter are specifically the missionaries of the English Presbyterian Mission (EPM) and the lower-socio-economic,generally illiterate, population of Southern Taiwan, especially around Tainan. [4], I have chosen the period between 1865, the year that James L. Maxwell arrived on Southern Taiwan as the first Protestant missionary on Taiwan since the Dutch missionaries left 2002 years earlier, and 1934, when the complete bible was published in Southern-Min. There will necessarily be considerable reference to the work of the EPM in Fujian, especially in the period 1847-1895. Prior to 1895, there was in effect one mission, which covered Fujian and Taiwan. After 1895, the differing impacts of Japanese colonialisation in Taiwan and of the political, social and linguistic developments in Fujian gradually led to less cohesion between the two areas
