Protect Our Local Dialects----by Joyce

Protect Our Local Dialects

Joyce Liu Yang, Group 5

There has been a long debate about the Chinese policy of popularizing Mandarin. Since the day of the establishment of People’s Republic of China, Mandarin, a dialect of Beijing, has been the official language of the country. At the mean time, however, local dialects are rapidly losing their population and going to a phase of endangerment.

Many people from northern China admit that they find it very annoying when they go to Guangdong as everybody speaks Cantonese, a “foreign” language which they call “birdese”. When people from non-Cantonese speaking areas come into Guangdong to work, they felt alienated due to the language barrier and find it more difficult to adapt into the society. The difficulties of communicating within a multi-dialect country are expected to be the main reason for the government to popularizing Mandarin.

The initial purpose of promoting a standardized language is good and the Chinese government has done a very good job on it. In fact, the government has done too good a job that local dialects can hardly find their places to survive in nowadays’ society: teachers must past standard Mandarin tests before they are allowed to teach in schools, local dialects are not allowed in all official occasions and etc. In big cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the new generation is losing their dialect as they rarely have any chance to get exposed to Cantonese: even their parents try to speak to them in Mandarin as “they need to master Mandarin in order to do well at school”. Likewise for other dialects like Fujian and Chaozhou, old slangs are forgotten, as well as the local culture in them. This is a sad story for all of us. The cultural diversity that we are so proud of is now facing a severe challenge as dialects dies out.

Also, the exaggerated status of Mandarin has led to discrimination towards dialects. Take Guangdong as an example again, until today, even though Guangdong was the first province in China to open up to the world and had been the most developed region across the nation before the Yangtze river delta area rises, many people still hold the impression that Guangdong people are stingy, uneducated merchants. Though people admire the prosperity in Guangdong, in the annual Chinese New Year Concert present by China Central Television (CCTV), Cantonese are always found to speak poor Mandarin and act comically, which always gives audiences a good laugh. At the very same time, Mandarin based dialects always have their lovable place in the New Year Concert.

To make things worse, the central government came up with a proposal last year to suggest all local television stations using Mandarin, which cornered dialects to a dead end. This proposal led to a huge wave of protest in Guangzhou as well as in Hong Kong. Local dialects are like rich minerals where local cultures embed into. Many dialects are said to have inherited the pronunciations and expression of ancient Chinese language. For instants, Cantonese would say “未” instead of “没” for the meaning “not yet”, which is a character commonly seen in ancient Chinese literatures. To preserve local dialects is to preserve our culture that has passed from generation to generation.

In fact, when we look at the cosmopolites around the world, though they have official languages, dialects are well accepted by the citizens. BBC even has various dialect channels to appeal to dialect-speaking audiences. Singapore also has a very wise educational policy which suggests that students must learn the language of their own ethic. If Singapore can be so magnanimous to accept foreign languages and cultures, why cannot Chinese accept our own dialects?

( Yeah I finally finished!!!)