Siraya people

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The Siraya were an indigenous people of Taiwan. They lived in the flat southwest part of the island and are considered today to have become extinct or completely sinicized.

[edit] The Sirayan language

According to Taiwan Journal, Taiwan's Academia Sinica historians and linguistics announced, on February 14, 2006, that their team of researchers have deciphered up to 80% of the 187 so-called Sinckan Manuscripts (or Sinkang Manuscripts), a set of documents from 17th and 18th centuries written in the now extinct language spoken by the Siraya people using a system of romanization introduced by the Dutch in the 1600s. In order to convert the Siraya to Christianity, Dutch missionaries studied the Sirayan language, devised a romanized script in which to record it, taught the Siraya people how to use it, and began translating the New Testament into the Sirayan language. Copies of the Dutch missionaries' translation of the Book of Matthew into Sirayan have survived, and several of the manuscripts are bilingual, with side-by-side Sirayan and Chinese versions of the contents. (Excerpted from Taiwan Journal)