[lg policy] The Disappearing Dialect at the Heart of China’s Capital

Thu Nov 24 15:37:00 UTC 2016

The Disappearing Dialect at the Heart of China’s Capital
点击查看本文中文版

Sinosphere

By EMILY FENG NOV. 23, 2016

“You almost never hear the old Beijing dialect on the city streets
nowadays,” said Gao Guosen, 68. Mr. Gao has been identified as one of a
diminishing number of “pure” speakers of the dialect. Credit Gilles Sabrie
for The New York Times

BEIJING — To the untutored ear, the Beijing dialect can sound like someone
talking with a mouthful of marbles, inspiring numerous parodies and viral
videos. Its colorful vocabulary and distinctive pronunciation have inspired
traditional performance arts such as cross-talk, a form of comic dialogue,
and “kuaibanr,’’ storytelling accompanied by bamboo clappers.

But the Beijing dialect is disappearing, a victim of language
standardization in schools and offices, urban redevelopment, and migration.
In 2013, officials and academics in the Chinese capital began a project to
record the dialect’s remaining speakers before it fades away completely.

The material is to be released to the public as an online museum and
interactive database by year’s end.

“You almost never hear the old Beijing dialect on the city streets
nowadays,” said Gao Guosen, 68, who has been identified by the city
government as a “pure” speaker. “I don’t even speak it anymore with my
family members or childhood friends.”

The dialect’s most marked characteristic is its habit of adding an “r” to
the end of syllables. This, coupled with the frequent “swallowing” of
consonants, can give the Beijing vernacular a punchy, jocular feel. For
example, “buzhidao,’’ standard Chinese for ‘‘I don’t know,’’ becomes
“burdao’’ in the Beijing dialect. “Laoshi,’’ or “teacher,” can come out
sounding “laoer.”

In the 1930s, China’s Republican government began defining and promoting a
common language for the country, referred to in English as Mandarin, that
drew heavily, but far from completely, on the Beijing dialect. The
Communist government’s introduction of an official Romanization system in
the 1950s reinforced standardized pronunciation for Chinese characters.
These measures enhanced communication among Chinese from different regions,
but also diminished the relevance of dialects.

A 2010 study by Beijing Union University found that 49 percent of local
Beijing residents born after 1980 would rather speak Mandarin than the
Beijing dialect, while 85 percent of migrants to Beijing preferred that
their children learn Mandarin.

The remaking of the city has also played a role in diluting the language.
Into the mid-20th century, much of Beijing’s population lived clustered in
the hutongs, or alleyways, that crisscrossed the neighborhoods surrounding
the Forbidden City. Today, only a small fraction of an estimated 3,700
hutongs remain, their residents often scattered to apartment complexes on
the city’s outskirts.

The city has also become a magnet for migrants from other parts of China.
According to China’s last national census, an average of about 450,000
people moved to Beijing each year between 2000 and 2010, making about
one-third of Beijing’s residents nonlocals.

Mr. Gao, a diminutive man with a booming voice, remembers how different it
used to be.

“Until this project, I didn’t even know that what I was speaking was a
dialect, because everyone around me used to speak like that,” Mr. Gao said
in his new apartment, not far from the hutong where he lived for more than
60 years.

According to the United Nations, nearly 100 Chinese dialects, many of them
spoken by China’s 55 recognized ethnic minorities, are in danger of dying
out. Efforts are also underway in Shanghai, as well as in Jiangsu and five
other provinces, to create databases as part of a project under the
Ministry of Education to research dialects and cultural practices
nationwide.

Yet the potential loss of the Beijing dialect is especially alarming
because of the cultural heft it carries.

“As China’s ancient and modern capital, Beijing and thus its linguistic
culture as well are representative of our entire nation’s civilization,”
said Zhang Shifang, a professor at the Beijing Language and Culture
University who oversaw the effort to record native speakers. “For Beijing
people themselves, the Beijing dialect is an important symbol of identity.”

The dialect is a testament to the city’s tumultuous history of invasion and
foreign rule. The Mongol Empire ruled China in the 13th and 14th centuries.
The Manchus, an ethnic group from northeast Asia, ruled from the mid-17th
century into the 20th. As a result, the Beijing dialect contains words
derived from both Mongolian and Manchurian. The intervening Ming dynasty,
which maintained its first capital in Nanjing for several decades before
moving to Beijing, introduced southern speech elements.

The dialect varied within the city itself. The historically wealthier
neighborhoods north of the Forbidden City spoke with an accent considered
more refined than that found in the poorer neighborhoods to the south, home
to craftsmen and performers.

In Shanghai, some schools teach in Shanghainese rather than Mandarin. The
Beijing city government has explored the idea of developing teaching
materials in the Beijing dialect. However, these proposals have been
criticized by those who fear such lessons would diminish the effectiveness
of Mandarin-language education.

“As a Beijing native, I personally hope the dialect will survive,’’ said
Wang Hong, a third-grade teacher at the Affiliated Elementary School of
Peking University. “But if you aren’t a native, there’s no reason to learn
Mandarin plus a dialect. You would just confuse the two.”

The researchers documenting the Beijing dialect are quick to stress the
preservationist nature of their efforts.

“We aren’t promoting the teaching of dialects in school, because China is
still a Mandarin-speaking society,” said He Hongzhi, the director of the
forthcoming online dialect museum, which will showcase some of the
recordings collected by Professor Zhang.

For Mr. Gao, the vanishing dialect of his youth is nothing to be mourned,
though he is happy that more people are paying attention.

“Society needs a unified language and culture to develop,’’ he said. “If we
restored the old things, then the road ahead wouldn’t exist.”

“But I love to listen to the Beijing dialect,’’ he said. “It is something
innate. When I speak the Beijing dialect, it comes naturally from my heart.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/world/asia/china-beijing-dialect.html?_r=0

-- 
**************************************
N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its
members
and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or
sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who
disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write
directly to the original sender of any offensive message.  A copy of this
may be forwarded to this list as well.  (H. Schiffman, Moderator)

For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to
https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/
listinfo/lgpolicy-list
*******************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20161124/9325f87e/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
This message came to you by way of the lgpolicy-list mailing list
lgpolicy-list at groups.sas.upenn.edu
To manage your subscription unsubscribe, or arrange digest format: https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy-list