In 1989 when Professor Huang Hsuen-fan of the Foreign Languages Department at National Taiwan University made a survey of students from the nine aboriginal tribes in higher education in Taipei, he found that compared with their grandparents 'generation, 31 % of the students had lost their native languages.
一九八九年，台灣大學外文系教授黃宣範曾調查在台北就讀大專的山地九族學生，發現原住民語言從祖父母輩到他們，已經流失了百分之卅一。