Do you speak a Chinese dialect in your daily life? While Mandarin is widely spoken by people across China, some local dialects are in danger of dying out. To save them, the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission launched the Chinese Language Resources Protection Project CLRPP years ago.
This project, which surveyed the language resources of 1,712 locations including 103 with endangered Chinese dialects, has helped China successfully build the largest language resource library in the world. The online library not only meets the needs of professional researchers but also enables the public to access over 5.6 million audio files and over 5 million video files for their dialect learning.
When it comes to the reason, Dr. Zhang, chief expert on CLRPP, once expressed his concerns in an article. “For about over a decade, in Wu dialect areas, children aged 6 to 15 can understand but hardly speak the dialect. Young people above 15 years old sometimes speak it, but not fluently, Zhang said. “If this continues, dialects will disappear in a few decades. When local dialects disappear, where will our nostalgic (怀旧的) feelings find their home?”
As China is a vast country with a wide variety of dialects, national efforts have been made to establish a language resource library. “Most international language protection projects are implemented by separate efforts. But in China, it’s a national project,” said Zhang. Within five years, more than 350 universities and research institutions took part in the project, with over 4,500 professional technicians and more than 6,000 language dialect speakers involved.
Language protection not only relies on the government and experts but also on the involvement of billions of language users. The project supports schools to set up some extracurricular classes so students can learn dialects and local opera performances. Currently, the second stage of the project is underway. Its main tasks include the deeper development of digital applications, such as digital and mobile dictionaries for dialects as well as multilingual textbooks.
12. What do we know about CLRPP?
A.It has provided a large number of audio and video files for researchers. |
B.It has saved at least 103 endangered Chinese dialects from 1,712 locations. |
C.It has played a vital role in setting up an online library for dialect learning. |
D.It has made a collection of all the endangered dialects in different locations. |
13. What can we infer from Dr. Zhang’s words?
A.Young children in Wu area can no more speak the dialect. |
B.Natives have urgent desire to save the dialects in the future. |
C.The fluency of local dialects raised much concern nationwide. |
D.People may lose a sense of belonging as local dialects die out. |
14. What differs China with other countries in language protection?
A.Only China has libraries for protection of language resource. |
B.Chinese government has invested more on language protection. |
C.China is home to more types of dialects than other countries do. |
D.People in China made joint efforts to protect their local dialects. |
15. Which is helpful to language protection?
A.Promotion of local opera performances. |
B.Mobile dictionaries for Chinese learning. |
C.Further exploration of existing textbooks. |
D.Extracurricular classes of digital development. |