The Taivoan people are a Taiwanese Indigenous group, their homelands within the hills and basin area of Tainan county. Their ancestral language is Taivoan, or Taivuan, which fell out of use at the end of the 19th century. Thanks to a growing movement to reawaken the Austronesian language, SIL International recognized Taivoan as an independent language in 2019, assigning it the Ethnologue code ‘tvx’.
This project, led by Benson Ko-Chou Fang, entails compiling the first dictionary that is reflective of all four subgroups within the language: Tevorangh, Vogavon, Kapoa, and Sia-urie. Due to political reasons, it has been difficult for the Taivoan language to gain resources for revival; and so, with this first Taivoan dictionary, Benson and his team hope to open the doors for more people to reclaim their heritage language.