The Han-Tibetan family of languages has attracted more and more
attention from scholars, language experts said Thursday in an
international workshop on world languages.
Once used by most people in the world, the various Han-Tibetan
languages were uttered across a wide area including China, Vietnam,
Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal and India.
As
the native land of these languages, China has made great progress
in this field of study.
Over the past decade, hundreds of works have been published. A
number of scholars, including those from China's ethnic areas, have
carried out in-depth research on the history and evolution of the
languages.
As
most of world's languages gradually die out, studying these special
languages is important, according to James A. Matisoff, an American
linguist of the University of
California at Berkeley and the initiator of the workshop.
The extinction of a language is more depressing than that of an
animal, Matisoff said.
"When a language dies, the culture it built up also collapses," he
said.
Compared with the first international workshop on the Han-Tibetan
Family of Languages held in 1968, attended by only eight scholars,
some 200 researchers and experts from 17 countries attended this
workshop, the 34th of its kind, held in Kunming, capital of
southwest China's
Yunnan Province.
(People’s
Daily October 26, 2001)