Siraya language, deemed ‘extinct’ over a century ago, finds its voice again in Taiwan

Uma Talavan, a Siraya activist in Tainan, Taiwan, spent more than two decades reviving her Indigenous community's language after centuries of forced assimilation left it officially classified as extinct since the 19th century. The breakthrough came from a Gospel of Matthew translated into Siraya by a 17th-century Dutch missionary, which her husband Edgar Macapili — a native speaker of a related Philippine language — helped decode into the first Siraya dictionary, published in 2008.

That work helped secure the Siraya's legal recognition in July as Taiwan's 17th Indigenous group, following a 2022 constitutional court ruling that came 12 years after Uma Talavan filed suit. Forty-five teachers now instruct Siraya at 26 schools, including one where it is mandatory, and the couple's grandchildren are reportedly the first generation to speak the revitalized language from birth.

Linguist Karl Alexander Sander Adelaar, who helped compile a 100-page Siraya grammar, says the reconstructed language cannot be identical to the historical one, since phonology can't be fully recovered from written texts alone. He argues that fidelity matters less than the fact that a community once told it had no past now has a book, a classroom, and a grandchild who speaks it better than its teachers.

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