Background Information

Hello! My name is Ai-yu Tracy Tang, and I am a graduate student of linguistics at the University of Hawaii. I am a speaker of Truku, and my project is on documenting some basic words in Truku.

Truku is spoken in Hualien, situated in the Eastern part of Taiwan, and has about 20,000 speakers. It is one of the Formosan languages, specifically a subgroup of Atayal commonly referred to as Sediq (Sejiq).  In addition, Sediq consists of three dialects: Teuda, Tkdaya and Truku (Yang 1993, a handout). 

The words below are recorded in my voice but are taken from Sin-de Tien, my grandfather, and Shung-tu Yang.  They currently are compiling a Truku-Chinese dictionary, editing language textbooks and teaching Truku in the communities.  They also worked on a sound chart, which I have modified here.  Naomi Tsukida, a linguist from Japan, is now working with my grandfather mostly on Truku syntax.

Unfortunately, we are running out of the funding for compiling the dictionary.  So I am now  working on applying for funds to continue the project.  Please contact me if you are interested in helping out!