An exhibition on the country's ethnic minority languages kicked off on November 24 in the Central University of Nationalities in Beijing, a major institution for the study of ethnic languages and cultures in China.
The exhibition, which ran from November 24 to 29, was co-organized by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) and the Ministry of Education, and according to the organizers, was the first-ever exhibition on the research done in the field of ethnic minority languages nationwide. It attracted language professionals from 12 provinces and autonomous regions, and displayed recent achievements in the areas of publishing, film, broadcasting, literary translation, language standardization, ancient book collections, and calligraphy of ethnic minorities, etc.
"China is a unified multiethnic nation and ethnic minority languages are valued cultural resources for the entire Chinese nation," said Professor Sun Hongkai, an expert in ethnic minority languages. "The disappearance of a language equals the vanishing of a species, because there are several things hiding behind the language that are worth exploring."
China has 55 ethnic minorities that account for only 8.4 percent of the population. Most of the ethnic groups live in the impoverished western regions and border areas of 10 provinces and autonomous regions, including southwest Yunnan, Guizhou, northwest Xinjiang and north Inner Mongolia. Currently, the ethnic minority population in China is over 100 million; among these some 60 million use their own languages, and some 30 million use their own characters.
The SEAC said the government was recording the endangered languages of minority groups and offering bilingual education to protect and rescue their cultural heritage. |