Protection_of_the_varieties_of_Chinese
Protection of the varieties of Chinese
Language preservation efforts
Protection of the varieties of Chinese (Chinese: 保护方言) refers to efforts to protect the continued existence of the varieties of Chinese in mainland China and other Sinophone regions, amid pressure to abandon their use, usually in favor of Standard Chinese.[1][2][3][4][5] The Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China has proclaimed to be taking active measures to protect ten varieties of Chinese.[1] However, a large majority of the citizens of China speak a dialect of Mandarin Chinese, a standardized form of which has been enforced and promoted by the government of China for the last sixty years.[5] The Constitution of the People's Republic of China calls on the government to promote Standard Chinese as the common tongue of the nation,[6] but this policy has caused conflict to a certain extent with plans to preserve local varieties of Chinese. Education and media programming in varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin have been discouraged by the governments of the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and Taiwan.[7][8] Teaching the varieties of Chinese to non-native speakers is discouraged by the laws of the People's Republic of China in favor of Putonghua.[9] The Guangdong National Language Regulations were passed by the Guangdong provincial government in 2012 to promote the use of Standard Chinese in broadcast and print media at the expense of the local standard Cantonese and other related dialects. It has been labelled "pro-Mandarin, anti-Yue" legislation.[10]
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Chinese. (July 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
For forty years following the arrival of the Kuomintang (KMT) government in Taiwan, the Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka and Taiwan aboriginal languages were suppressed by the government in favor of Mandarin Chinese, until the mid-1990s.[11]