China will \u201cunswervingly\u201d stick to the promotion of Mandarin for ethnic minorities, the government said on Tuesday of a policy that has ignited sporadic protests, and will also step up protection for threatened tongues on the verge of extinction.<\/p>\n
Reuters
January 24, 2017 11:00 PM<\/p>\n
BEIJING \u2014 China will \u201cunswervingly\u201d stick to the promotion of Mandarin for ethnic minorities, the government said on Tuesday of a policy that has ignited sporadic protests, and will also step up protection for threatened tongues on the verge of extinction.<\/p>\n
Language politics have long been tricky in China, especially in restive minority areas like Tibet and Xinjiang where non-Chinese languages are widely spoken and have official support including being taught in school.<\/p>\n
The pushing of bilingual education in Tibetan regions has set off protests in recent years, though many parents also want their children to learn Mandarin to improve their job prospects.<\/p>\n
The government has pushed Mandarin for decades to give a common means of communication in a country where thousands of Chinese dialects and many dozen non-Chinese languages like Tibetan and Uighur are spoken.<\/p>\n
Five-year plan<\/strong><\/p>\n In a lengthy policy document mapping out development goals for ethnic minority regions over the next five years, the central government said it would promote teaching in Mandarin.<\/p>\n \u201cFully promote and spread the national common language and script,\u201d the government said, referring also to the use of the simplified Chinese script officially used in China.<\/p>\n \u201cRaise the ability and level of ethnic minority students to grasp and use the national common language and script.\u201d<\/p>\n Focus must be put on areas with limited Chinese abilities, it added, without naming any locations.<\/p>\n Help to save minority languages<\/strong><\/p>\n The government also pledged help for threatened tongues.<\/p>\n \u201cIncrease efforts to protect ethnic minority languages in imminent danger,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n The United Nations estimates more than 100 languages in China are at risk of dying out, including Manchu, mother tongue of the country’s last emperor, as Mandarin takes over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" China will \u201cunswervingly\u201d stick to the promotion of Mandarin for ethnic minorities, the government said on Tuesday of a policy that has ignited sporadic protests, and will also step up protection for threatened tongues on the verge of extinction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=3348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}