Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 12:37 amRelikai wrote:Bombadil wrote:
I'll have to check I suppose but I think they have one official national language as Mandarin, and then within specific provinces, such as Tibet and Xinjiang they have two official languages.. and we all know how that's panning out.
But I'll have to double check.
Please do.
There is a difference too. I speak 2 official languages of Singapore, but I DO NOT speak the national language fluently even though it is used in the military and the National Language.
So yes there is a difference.
Ok, so the specific law mentions one language, Putonghua, as the standard language of China.
Article 1 This Law is enacted in accordance with the Constitution for the purpose of promoting the normalization and standardization of the standard spoken and written Chinese language and its sound development, making it play a better role in public activities, and promoting economic and cultural exchange among all the Chinese nationalities and regions.
Article 2 For purposes of this Law, the standard spoken and written Chinese language means Putonghua (a common speech with pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect) and the standardized Chinese characters.
It does allow provision for unspecified languages..
Article 8 All the nationalities shall have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages.
The spoken and written languages of the ethnic peoples shall be used in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Constitution, the Law on Regional National Autonomy and other laws.
Link
9 regions made special laws within their region but most were related to implementing Mandarin given the specifics of their native language.
The Tibetan Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Shanghai, Fujian Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, and Guangdong Province were selected to introduce their language regulations and provisions because all these places display different features of language, and thus require special objectives and tasks in the management of the life language and different focal points of work..
..I will take Shanghai, Fujian Province, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region as examples to illustrate the point. Promoting Putonghua and implementing standard written characters has been the main focus of Shanghai language regulation to improve Shanghai citizens’ proficiency in the use of national standard spoken and written language to provide better language services to people coming from all over the country. In Fujian Province, promoting Putonghua and implementing standard written characters has also been the focal task to facilitate exchanges, foster national identity, safeguard the unity of national sovereignty, and promote economic and social progress.
Link
4 regions nominated other languages for inclusion in their region, being:
HK (English and Cantonese), Macau (Portugese and Mandarin), Xinjiang (Uygher and Mandarin) and Tibet (Tibetan and Mandarin).
However both Tibet and Xinjiang have strong policies to remove those languages.
In schools, Mandarin is completely replacing major minority languages as a language of instruction: Tibetan language education beyond primary school is to be phased out of all Tibetan areas except Qinghai province by 2015; in Xinjiang, the phase-out of Uyghur began in 2002 and has reached from the university level down through the primary schools. “Bilingual” education has in these areas been replaced by Mandarin-only education.
Mandarin is far more than a means of imparting facts; it is also a primary means of socialization of minority and non-Mandarin Han students. But the socialization into Beijing-sanctioned Mandarin Han culture in minority areas alone was apparently not seen as sufficient, so in the mid-1980s, Beijing began transferring minority pupils to schools in Han-dominated China under the “neidi ban” or inland classes policy. It is likely that at least a quarter of a million Tibetans and Uyghurs have been transferred: Fully a third of secondary school graduates from the Tibetan autonomous region were transferred, and by 2001, more than 23,000 Tibetan primary school graduates had been transferred. The Xinjiang Ministry of Education also noted this year that “qualified high school graduates” are sent to inland China for four years in so-called “Xinjiang classes” to “always carry out educational work. . . love the socialist motherland [and] safeguard national unity.”
These Tibetan and Uyghur pupils are being socialized into Han culture during a critical developmental period. The uprooting of children from their families, languages and cultures in service of the national project is reminiscent of the residential boarding schools that the United States and Canada subjected First Nations peoples to. Little wonder that Tibetans and Uyghurs consider these policies to be at best linguicide.
Link
Even in HK, Chinese in primary schools is taught in Mandarin, get 'em young.
In Guangzhou they even had protests in 2010 when they announced they would be stopping all Cantonese television broadcasts, they halted but then quietly went about it anyway in 2014 taking advantage of negative sentiment around the Umbrella protests.
Anyway, I think language does play a strong part in where HK feels it retains a unique identity it's unwilling to let go of.