Preserving Ethnic Identity

A project is under way to save endangered ethnic minority languages By Yin Pumin

Long Xiang has been in Beijing for more than 10 years. After studying at college, he found a job and stayed in the metropolis. Until today, however, few of his friends and colleagues know he is a member of the Mulam ethnic minority, from south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, because nobody has ever heard Long speak his mother tongue.

“In fact, I can only speak a few words of the Mulam language,” 30-year-old Long said in regret. According to him, in his hometown in Luocheng Mulam Autonomous County in the northern part of Guangxi, only elderly people use the language in their daily communication. Young people have abandoned the language in favor of Mandarin.

As Long recalls, in his family, only his grandparents could speak the Mulam language when he was a child. “I’m so sorry I didn’t learn the language when my grandparents were still living. I’m afraid our language will become extinct someday if we don’t take action to preserve it,” Long said.

In fact, Mulam isn’t the only language in China that faces extinction. Nearly all of the 130-plus languages of the 55 non-Han ethnic minority groups face the same problem, according to data from the Research Center for Protecting the Language Resources of China.

The data show that 68 languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers; 48 have no more than 5,000; and 25 have 1,000 at most. The languages most at risk of extinction are Hezhen and Lhoba, each of which has fewer than 100 speakers.

“Language is the foundation and spirit of an ethnicity’s culture. To preserve culture and history, we must take necessary action to save those languages in danger,” said Ding Shiqing, a professor with the Minzu University of China (MUC) and Vice Director of the Research Center for the Protection of Chinese Ethnic Minority Languages.

To preserve endangered languages, the Chinese Government launched a large-scale project for protecting the language resources of China in 2015, deciding to conduct field investigations into the language resources around the country and create a multimedia language database.

Ding said the move taken by the government indicated that a nationwide campaign, with central government departments, local governments and experts working together, had been put on the fast track. “The project will be marked as a great undertaking in saving our diversified culture in future history,” Ding told Beijing Review.

To further promote the project in a regulated and scientific way, the State Ethnic Affairs Commission of China issued its Work Plan for Preserving Ethnic Minority Languages During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20) in April this year, vowing to put the freedom of ethnic minorities to use and develop their own languages under more effective protection by 2020.

A serious situation

In China, more than 40 percent of the ethnic minority languages are in danger of extinction, according to Huang Xing, a researcher with the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Take the Hezhen ethnic group in northeast China, for example. There are more than 4,600 Hezhen people scattered around Heilongjiang Province. Today, only 2.14 percent of them can speak or use the Hezhen language. “The language has come to the brink of extinction,” said Dai Qingxia, a professor with the MUC.

According to Dai’s investigation, only 15 people use Hezhen as their only language. In the village of Bacha in Heilongjiang’s Tongjiang City, one of the locations in which the Hezhen language is best preserved, only six elderly people can use the language fluently.

“The Hezhen language only has a spoken form. When those elderly people die one day, the language will vanish along with them,” Dai said.

The same fate faces the Tujia language, even though the Tujia ethnicity’s population numbers more than 8 million, mainly in the provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Sichuan. According to Dai’s investigation, only 3 percent of the Tujia people can speak the language.

“Like the Hezhen language, Tujia only has a spoken form. If no appropriate measure is taken to save it, the language will disappear in the near future,” Dai said.

Xu Xiangrong is an 84-year-old Tujia farmer living in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Hunan Province. His 22-year-old grandson, who is now studying at college in the provincial capital of Changsha, can speak Mandarin and English but not a word of Tujia. This makes the old farmer very sad.

Even worse, the situation with Xu’s grandson is typical among young Tujia people. “In my village, only people around my age speak Tujia language. I’m afraid nobody will know Tujia language after old people like me die,” Xu lamented.

The Manchu language is another of those at high risk of extinction, although the Manchu people comprise the third-largest ethnic minority in China, with a population of 10.41 million.

Dekjin is a native Manchu young woman who works in Beijing. She said many of her friends are also Manchu, but few can speak the language. “Manchu people have their own spoken and written language. Today, maybe some people can read a bit of Manchu, but few have the ability to speak the language. It’s a pity for us Manchu people,” she said.

To change the situation, Dekjin and her friends set up a training center for Manchu language learners in Beijing in 2007. While searching for suitable teachers, Dekjin discovered that the Manchu language is still used by the Xibe ethnic group, whose members originated in northeast China and now also inhabit Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

“Fortunately, a large part of the Xibe people can speak the Manchu language. This provides a rare opportunity for us to revive the language,” Dekjin said.

According to Feng Hui, a professor with Xinjiang Normal University, in some parts of Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County, the Manchu language is still in daily use among Xibe people. “Although few can write Manchu characters anymore, many people can speak the language fluently,” Feng said.

Feng advises combining Manchu writings with the language spoken by the Xibe to facilitate revival of the Manchu language.

“A language represents an ethnicity’s culture, history and characteristics. It can