In a quiet study in downtown Beijing, Professor Sun Hongkai is
putting the final touches on a book about the languages spoken by
the Rouruo people living in southwest China before they disappear
forever.
"We have identified more than 120 languages spoken by the Han
people and the 55 ethnic
minorities in China in the past 50 years," said Sun, president
of the Chinese Association on Minority Languages. "Among them, more
than 20 languages are used by less than 1,000 people and on the
verge of extinction."
It's no exaggeration to say a language is the carrier of the
knowledge and experiences accumulated by a nation or a group
throughout history. Losing the language is like losing a group's
identity. The gradual disappearance of a language is an irrevocable
loss to the nation and the whole world, so colorful due to the
multitude of cultures, Sun said.
"Time is getting shorter; we must hurry up to study and preserve
them," said the professor, an honorary member of the Linguistic
Society of America, a rare honor for the world's linguists.
Global Issue
The issue of endangered languages was highlighted globally in the
1980s. With the speeding up of economic development and the spread
of the Internet and other high-tech communication, increasingly
more minority languages are doomed to disappear in the global
village.
After the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) set 1993 as the year to save endangered
languages, the International Symposium on Endangered Languages was
held in November 1995 in Tokyo, Japan.
Linguists attending the seminar accounted that among the 6,760
languages found in the world, 234 had already disappeared. The
experts predicted that about 70 percent of the world's languages
will lose their communicational function in the 21st century and
give way to local authoritative languages.
In
May 1998, Director-General of UNESCO Federico Mayor wrote to member
countries of the organization, inviting their linguists to join the
effort to save endangered languages.
In
China, the Ethnic Minority Institute under the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences undertook the task of organizing the country's
linguists in carrying out general surveys of the languages and
finding out ways to preserve them.
Chinese Languages
China is a country with many ethnic minorities whose languages
differ greatly. One reason for this diversity is that many ethnic
minorities speak more than one language, Sun explained.
In
Taiwan Province, for example, the indigenous Gaoshan ethnic group
uses more than 10 kinds of language which belong to the
Austranasian language group.
During recent years, Sun and his colleagues at the Ethnic Minority
Institute carried out field surveys and compiled detailed reports
on the name, distribution, category and user population of the
languages used by ethnic minorities in China.
Sun noted that while the 20 some languages used by less than 1,000
speakers are clearly on the verge of extinction, the situation is
no better with languages of larger ethnic minorities.
The Manchurian ethnic minority, for instance, has a population of
several million. In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) founded by the
Manchus, the language was once widely used. Today, however, only
about a dozen elderly people in the Fuyu County of northeast
China's Heilongjiang Province still use the language.
The same situation is true with many other languages. In the small
regions where an ethnic minority concentrates, their own language
is retained mostly among the elderly people. The younger generation
often finds putonghua (standard Chinese) or some other kind of
language more practical to use.
As
the economy develops and more people leave their hometown in search
of a better life, the distance is widening between the ethnic
minority people and their mother tongues.
Sun pointed out that the Chinese government has always pursued the
policy of equality among all ethnic minorities but no one can
reverse the trend of some weak languages being replaced by more
functional ones.
"Language is a social phenomenon and an individual choice," said
Sun. "People have the right to choose whether or not to speak their
mother tongue. We can draw up plans and take measures to slow down
the disappearance of languages but we cannot stop this trend."
Sun has followed the disappearing process of the language of the
Anong people in Southwest China for some 40 years. His findings
have gained support from Jia Jiehua of the Ethnic Minority Language
Office at the National Ethnic Affairs Commission.
In
the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, for instance, there are
areas where people purely speak Chinese, and areas where people use
their own languages.
Jia said, "The situation is complicated, and our country fully
respects the custom and the choice of the people in the autonomous
regions."
Realistic Measures
As
the carrier of a culture, a language embodies rich heritage with
invaluable significance to the human civilization. Although the
linguists cannot keep the languages alive in daily life, they can
at least record and analyze them for future studies.
Starting in 1956, researchers gathered information from more than
1,500 survey sites. For instance, there were more than 90 sites for
the Tibetan language, and more than 200 sites for the Yi
language.
These surveys enabled the researchers to find out the internal
difference of a language. From this basis, they were able to create
written characters for 16 ethnic minorities who had no written
language to record their history.
"With written characters, it's much easier for the ethnic minority
people to preserve their spoken folklore and other traditions," Sun
explained.
From 1986 to 1990, another major field survey was carried out. From
more than 700 survey sites, some 70 researchers from ethnic
minority institutions across the country collated important
statistics, which form the basis for adaptations in the country's
policies regarding ethnic minorities.
While the survey of the 1950s laid out a framework about the
languages themselves, the new study aimed at raising the overall
cultural level of ethnic minorities.
In
the 1980s, the National Ethnic Affairs Commission initiated the
publication of 57 annals on some 59 languages of ethnic minorities
in China.
These books probe the thonology, lexicology, grammar, dialects,
source and other features of the languages.
At
present, Sun is leading Chinese linguists to compile a series of
books on the newly discovered languages. They have already
published 12 books, and some 30 more will be published in the
coming years.
Through his works, Sun has discovered nearly 20 languages,
including the language used by the Rouruo people of Yunnan
Province. The Rouruo people form a sub-division of the Nu ethnic
minority, which also has the sub-division of Anong people.
But more importantly, Sun has found nine languages spoken by the
Qiang ethnic minority in southwest China's Sichuan Province. His
discovery increased the number of Qiangic language branch in the
Tibeto-Burmese language group to 13.
In
addition, Sun is the chief editor of a series of dictionaries on
ethnic minority languages. Each dictionary contains at least 10,000
words, carefully noted with their pronunciation, meaning and
explained in speech context.
The dictionaries include up to 1,000 sentences that can best
represent the features of the noun, verb and other words in a
language.
In
the Tibeto-Burmese language group, for instance, one simple verb
can change into scores of forms in different contexts.
"It took me more than three hours to finish the variations of the
verb 'eat'," said Sun, who went to southeast Tibet Autonomous
Region twice in the 1970s and 1980s to study the languages of the
Monba and Lhoba ethnic minorities and the Dengba people.
Twenty such dictionaries have been published, and more are planned
for the coming years.
With the advance of technology and increasing funds from the
government, the Ethnic Minority Institute and the Central Ethnic
Minority University are able to record the languages using tape and
video. Ultimately, the researchers will store the precious records
with multi-media equipment.
"Salvaging a language is just as difficult and important as saving
an endangered species," said Sun.
(China
Daily November 15, 2001)