what does taiwan people speak?
Chinese, Hakka Language Taiwanese Mandarin Taiwanese Mandarin Chinese
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 Taiwan 's Austronesian speakers were formerly distributed over much of the island 's rugged central mountain range and were concentrated in villages along the alluvial plains . The bulk of contemporary Taiwanese aborigines now live in the mountains and in cities . 

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 With the ending of martial law in 1987 , the restrictions on " local languages " were quietly lifted , resulting in growing interest in Taiwanese writing during the 1990s . For the first time since the 1950s , Taiwanese language and literature was discussed and debated openly in newspapers and journals . There was also support from the then opposition party , the Democratic Progressive Party , for writing in the language . From a total of 26 documented orthographies for Taiwanese in 1987 ( including defunct systems ) , there were a further 38 invented from 1987 to 1999 , including 30 different romanizations , six adaptations of bopomofo and two hangul @-@ like systems . Some commentators believe that the Kuomintang , while steering clear of outright banning of the native language movements after the end of martial law , took a " divide and conquer " approach by promoting Taiwanese Language Phonetic Alphabet ( TLPA ) , an alternative to POJ , which was at the time the choice of the majority inside the nativization movement . 

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 For centuries , Taiwan 's aboriginal peoples experienced economic competition and military conflict with a series of colonizing peoples . Centralized government policies designed to foster language shift and cultural assimilation , as well as continued contact with the colonizers through trade , intermarriage and other dispassionate intercultural processes , have resulted in varying degrees of language death and loss of original cultural identity . For example , of the approximately 26 known languages of the Taiwanese aborigines ( collectively referred to as the Formosan languages ) , at least ten are extinct , five are moribund ( Zeitoun & Yu 2005 : 167 ) and several are to some degree endangered . These languages are of unique historical significance , since most historical linguists consider Taiwan to be the original homeland of the Austronesian language family ( Blust 1999 ) . 

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 The People 's Republic of China ( PRC ) government claims Taiwan as part of its territory and officially refers to all Taiwanese aborigines as Gaoshan ( lit . " high mountain " ) , which are one of the 56 ethnicities officially recognized by the PRC . According to the 2000 Census , 4 @,@ 461 people were identified as Gaoshan living in mainland China . Some surveys indicate that of the 4 @,@ 461 Gaoshan recorded in the 2000 PRC Census , it is estimated that there are 1 @,@ 500 Amis , 1 @,@ 300 Bunun , 510 Paiwan , and the remainder belonging to other tribes ( Hattaway 2003 : 39 , 93 , 425 ) . They are descendants of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan who were in mainland China during the establishment of the People 's Republic of China in 1949 ( Hattaway 2003 : 39 , 93 , 425 ) . 

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 Despite recent changes in the field of anthropology and a shift in government objectives , the Pingpu and Gaoshan labels in use today maintain the form given by the Qing to reflect aborigines ' acculturation to Han culture . The current recognized aborigines are all regarded as Gaoshan , though the divisions are not and have never been based strictly on geographical location . The Amis , Saisiat , Tao and Kavalan are all traditionally Eastern Plains cultures ( Brown 2001 : 163 n6 ) . The distinction between Pingpu and Gaoshan people continues to affect Taiwan 's policies regarding indigenous peoples , and their ability to participate effectively in government ( Saisiyat people 2006 ) . 
