A study by Shanghai’s Academy of Social Sciences found that only 60 per cent of pupils in local primary and junior middle schools were able to speak the local dialect. Only a few were fluent and anecdotal evidence showed that some children of native parents were not able to speak a single word of Shanghainese.

In 2011, a group of young people, mostly university students, launched a campaign to promote the local dialect. The group, called Hu Cares, gathers at the People’s Square every week, calling on people to preserve the Shanghai dialect. The word Hu is the short form of Shanghai in Chinese.

Their efforts attracted the attention of local education authorities, who introduced the dialect in music and art lessons in the September semester and provided students with new textbooks featuring poems and folk songs in Shanghainese.

Unlike people in Guangdong, who insist on Cantonese’s superiority because it has a richer linguistic history than Putonghua, educators in Shanghai suggest that outsiders learn Shanghainese because a command of the local dialect will make them more confident residents of the city.

See also Zhou Yunpeng: We Want to Sing in Dialect, via CDT, which discusses the use of dialects in music as well as the tensions between dialects and Putonghua.

© Melissa M. Chan for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dialect, language, putonghua, Shanghai, Zhou Libo
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Actors in Chinese film and television productions routinely speak standard Mandarin, even when portraying historical figures, such as Chairman Mao or Sun Yat-sen, who are well known for their colourful dialects and accents. Although most Chinese TV and film productions have Chinese subtitles anyway, few directors would choose to inflict an impenetrable—if historically accurate—Babel of dialects, regionalisms and dead languages on their audience.

Analects points out that China inherited most of Qing’s territory and ethnicities, and has to reinvent its rhetoric for a multiethnic nation-state:

Even the very notion of the Qing as an imperial dynasty is difficult for some people to stomach. The story of China as a perennial victim of European, American and Japanese imperialist aggression does not sit easily beside the memory of an expansionist Qing, even if both are part of the same story. The Communist Party draws legitimacy from its historical victory over the twin evils of feudalism and foreign aggression, a victory that was symbolised in part by their claiming and defending the territory of the Qing empire. Awkwardly, the political needs of the present are prioritised above historical nuance.

Few of the million or so people who watch “Bu Bu Jing Xin” or “Zhen Huan Zhuan” this weekend will worry about the fate of empire or about whether the Qing emperors spoke Manchu or not to their concubines and wives. But the Manchus still matter. And with over 10m Manchu-language documents sitting in the Imperial Archives in Beijing, there is much research on Manchu rule and the Qing era yet to be done.

Posted with Blogsy

© Wendy Qian for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, language, Manchu, minorities, television
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The banner reads “Tibetans and Han are One Family”. Shanghaiist’s Kenneth Tan points out a satirically photoshopped image of an identical vehicle outside Hong Kong’s Sogo department store in, supposedly, 2015, its banner reading “China and Hong Kong are One Family”.

If a declaration of fraternity hanging from the side of an armoured vehicle isn’t ironic enough, the blog Mountain Phoenix over Tibet notes (in a different context) the historical background of the name “Kangding” 康定. It replaced “Dajianlu” 打箭炉 (based on the Tibetan “Dartsedo”) in the early twentieth century, and is widely held to refer to the stabilisation or pacification of Kham (eastern Tibet).

A friend, who hails from Kardze town, tells me the name is a contraction of the Tibetan karpo (“white”) and dzebo (“graceful”) – actually a rather unlikely and funny name for a macho Khampa place. It sounds more like a name for a Tibetan cosmetics line: “Fair & Lovely”!

The town Kardze, however, is not the capital of the Prefecture Kardze. That privilege goes to Dartse(m)do, a formerly important trading-town on the old Sino-Tibetan border. But in present-day Tibet, folks who hail from Dartsedo would tell you they are from Kangding.

How Dartsedowas can be so brainless and voluntarily use that dreadful Chinese name is a mystery only they are able to penetrate. Doesn’t it mean “subjugation of Kham”? Arrog Khampa, what happened to your famous pride? Linguistics is a political battlefield, if you still haven’t noticed. Why do you shoot yourself in the foot?

The BBC’s Michael Bristow describes the extensive security operation currently in place in the area, following a series of self-immolations:

A BBC team was stopped and held at the roadblock [on the way to Kangding]. “Foreigners are not allowed into Tibetan areas,” said one security man.

We were then escorted back into Ya’an, where we were questioned at government offices by an official, surnamed Ma, who veered from friendly to threatening.

“You need to make a confession and sign a statement saying you will not go back into Tibetan areas,” he barked at one point ….

Robert Barnett, of New York’s Columbia University, said this region of western Sichuan, historically known to Tibetans as Kham, was relatively peaceful until a few years ago.

“We are talking about an area where China had a working relationship with Tibetans,” said Mr Barnett.

But he said trust started to disappear just over a decade ago when the central government began introducing hardline policies that were already in place in Tibet proper.

Kristin Jones at the Committee to Protect Journalists suggests that the policy of denying media access may be counterproductive:

Placing travel restrictions on journalists may have one unintended effect. It means that when it comes to unofficial news from China, activists and advocacy groups play a vital role in collecting and disseminating information.

Chinese authorities are hard on activists–even harder than they are on journalists. But by preventing reporters from doing their jobs, Chinese officials all but guarantee that activists are the ones reporting the news.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, language, media conditions, Robert Barnett, Sichuan, Tibet coverage
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From the very first edition in 1953, it has mirrored social, political and economic changes in Chinese society and government. In this new edition, all terms that have anything to do with class struggle, and hence do not correspond to China today, have been deleted or somehow revisited. To take the example of the pronoun “Zanmen” (all together): in the 2004 edition, the sample given for its meaning was: “All together, we the poor have revolutionized our village.”

Seven years later that has been replaced by: “All together, we have become rich in our village.”

The word for slave (Nu) has also been given a new modern usage, one that has long been in use in spoken Chinese. The terms “Fang Nu” and “Che Nu” are used to mean slaves to one’s home or car, in the sense that someone is a slave to the debt they have incurred to acquire a home or vehicle ….

In a country where some half a billion people have Internet access, many new terms are Internet-related. Still, the dictionary has trouble keeping up, and many terms routinely used in daily life like “Weibo” (micro-blog) and “Xia Zai” (download) will have to wait until the next edition. Words like firewall and proxy server are taboo, however, for reasons having to do with Internet censorship.

If the term you’re looking for isn’t in there, try chinaSMACK’s glossary and our own Grass Mud Horse lexicon.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese, history, Internet censorship, language
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So Hasutai, who in the Manchu tradition goes by the one name, has come to this remote corner of China on a quest. His goal is to connect with members of the Xibe tribe — a reclusive group who speak a forgotten dialect similar to his people’s. Along with a band of like-minded young people in half a dozen Chinese cities, Hasutai has started schools, Web sites, written textbooks and recorded the few remaining Manchu speakers for posterity. “At some point you realize that the first language you’re speaking isn’t your mother tongue,” says Hasutai. “You feel like an orphan. You want to find your mother.”

Hasutai is at the vanguard of an explosion of ethnic awareness and pride across China. The nation’s 1.3 billion people are overwhelmingly Han Chinese, but roughly 9% of the population are ethnic minorities: Manchus and Mongolians, Uighurs and Tibetans as well as dozens of others. Although their numbers are small, minorities live on nearly half of China’s territory, including most of its borderlands. Over the past two years they have been at the center of bloody riots that claimed hundreds of lives.

As China’s Communist Party marks its 60th year this week with a series of festivities to symbolize national unity, Chinese society is struggling to overcome growing ethnic rifts.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, language, Manchu, minorities
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“Entering into the village I had little girls singing those songs — those dong songs, the welcoming songs — one at each elbow,” Tan says. “However, the singing isn’t just to welcome tourists, it’s how the culture communicates with each other.”

While these “gate-barring songs” are reserved mainly for tourists and official guests, the Dong song-style is a form of communication every child learns from the age of 5. “And they sing on key, on rhythm, perfectly a capella, in tune with one another,” Tan says.

Young children not only sing to greet but also talk about community and the changing of seasons.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dong Minority, folk culture, Guizhou, language, minorities, music
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A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.

The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words. “The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him’,” the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming. [Full Text]

Also on the subject of Internet lingo, China in Transition blog reports that a list of supposed “new vocabulary” originating from the Internet is actually incomprehensible to most Chinese netizens:

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Read the rest of Couple Tried to Name Baby “@” – Reuters (138 words)

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet culture, Internet growth, Internet users, language
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Three decades ago when Hong Kong was still under British rule, English and Cantonese were the most popular languages in the territory.

It was during that time that Cheung Dan, a Beijing linguistic scholar, established a Mandarin school there, vowing to teach Hong Kong people Mandarin….[Full Text]

© Sophia Cao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: language, mandarin
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From PC World:

“Google Inc. has commented on a new software tool it released in China this week, although it did not address allegations that the software bears more than a passing resemblance to a rival’s product.

“Two days ago we launched our Chinese Pinyin Input Method Editor (IME) as a test product in Google Labs. Based on feedback from users and our own testing, we made a number of updates to the product this morning. Like all Labs releases our IME product is a work in progress, and we expect to continue to improve it over time,” Google said via email on Friday.

Soon after its release, some users began to notice similarities between the dictionary used with Google’s IME and a popular offering from Chinese rival Sohu.com Inc.’s Sogou search engine.” [Full Text]

Here is a link to Google’s Pinyin IME for those interested in the allegations.

© Eric Kaltman for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Google, language, online
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A computer user in Hong Kong watches online Mandarin teacher Lily Huang at her home on Hainan island, mainland China on 27 March 2007. Lily teaches students across the globe via Skype, the Internet telephony system that allows people to communicate for free across the world, often using webcams.



Such is the strength of the technology that a broadband connection means the 34-year-old from the island’s capital city of Haikou can meet the huge demand for Mandarin teachers in countries as far away as the United States, New Zealand and Malaysia, something that would have been impossible even five years ago. [Full Text]

© Morgan Figuers for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: language
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Taiwan is considering abandoning its long-standing policy of recognizing Mandarin Chinese as the island’s only official language, the premier said Tuesday, in a move that would likely anger rival China.

Su Tseng-chang said the Cabinet is examining a draft for a “National Language Development Act” to promote the use of local dialects and prohibit linguistic discrimination. “Taiwan is a plural society, and all languages should have equal standing and be respected and supported,” Su said, indicating an intention to confer equal status on the Taiwanese dialect of Chinese, as well as Hakka, another Chinese dialect.

Such a move would likely be renounced by Beijing, which regards Taiwan as part of its territory and opposes any efforts by the island’s leadership to loosen cultural and other bonds. [Full Text]

© Patricia Kim for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: language, mandarin, Taiwan culture
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Many words or phrases are not frequently used or have been completely forgotten by Chinese people in the last decade. This is 49 of them. People may have different attitudes towards them. Nevertheless, these words are in people’s memories and they are worth discussing.

Neighbor: disappeared in the 1990s

For several thousand years, a close and friendly neighborhood played a major role in the lives of Chinese people. People knew almost everything about their neighbors and were always ready to help. However, Chinese have become more and more estranged from one another following a 1990s trend towards commercial residential buildings. Furthermore, a lack of mutual trust and an emphasis on privacy has made people more indifferent to their own neighborhood. They know almost nothing about their neighbors. As a result, the term “neighborhood” means almost nothing to most Chinese and has passed into oblivion.

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Read the rest of 49 obsolete Chinese words, Part I – People’s Daily (118 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2006. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: language
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From the third floor restaurant in Shanghai’s Oriental Riverside Hotel, the view west across the Huangpo river is uninterrupted. The European architecture along the Bund on the opposite bank remains a symbol of Shanghai’s 1930s heyday, in the same way that the skyscrapers on this side of the river in Pudong proclaim the great city’s modern resurgence.

Inside the hotel, a scene is occurring that many would say is also symbolic of Shanghainese pride. As delegates from a conference in the Shanghai International Convention Center next door flow in for lunch, accountant Liu Xiaopei is standing with colleagues who are chatting among themselves. But Liu, from the northern province of Heilongjiang, cannot join in because the discussion is in Shanghainese.

© Max Woodworth for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dialect, language
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At first glance, the new rules handed down by China’s broadcasting authority seemed natural enough in a country where the Communist Party feels duty-bound to set the tone for everything, even pop music.

Masters of ceremony on state television’s seemingly endless roster of variety shows, the regulations said, should avoid vulgarity, dress modestly and uplift their young viewers. “Hosts and hostesses represent the image of radio and TV stations and therefore have an unshakable responsibility to spread advanced culture and national virtue and to safeguard the country’s interests,” the authorities decreed.

But also in the latest set of rules, published Sept. 10 by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, was a less obvious stipulation: Masters of ceremony should always use standard Mandarin Chinese and should stop affecting Hong Kong or Taiwanese slang and accents

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: broadcasting, Chinese language, language, mandarin, slang, TV
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A recent survey has revealed that nearly half of China’s population cannot speak the official dialect, mandarin, despite decades of efforts by the communist government, state media said Sunday.

The National Language Commission’s survey also found that many of the 53 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people who can speak mandarin are not frequent mandarin users, preferring their local dialect, the Xinhua news agency said.

The Xinhua report is here.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2005. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: language, mandarin, putonghua
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