Mandarin and Local Dialects
I heard an interesting story from local TV news yesterday evening and it somehow
made me associate with something else.
It is like this. A thief was caught at the doorway as soon as he tried to step
out of a Jewelry Shop and was found a piece of platinum necklace in his trousers
pocket. A saleslady said afterwards, she noticed that guy for a while and felt
something unusual on him, but she pretended nothing had happened. She kept talking in Minnan dialect (southern Fujian dialect) as if chatting with her co-salesladies. Actually she was telling her boss and guards about that guy and they were sure that people out of their homeplace have narrow chance to understand Minnan dialect.
The story reminds me of another similar interesting thing happened in WWII. The
US Army Headquarter was rather disturbed to have sensed that their wireless communications with the front might be cracked by Japanese Intelligence Department.
Then they had tried several different sets of code but still not satisfied. Finally they decided to employ a number of American Indians and use their Tribe language to communicate each other. It was testified to be great success.
You see, small languages or dialects can be surprisingly useful on some occasions! Language is a tool for communication, but sometimes it also can be a secret weapon. Our government has made great efforts to popularize Putong Hua (the common spoken mandarin) since 1950 and the efforts have borne rich fruits so far. Nevertheless, when we hear local Han people or minority nationalities speak quite
well in standard mandarin, it is still too early to feel overjoyed. Although the popularization of Putong Hua helps us for communication, it is also a double-
edged sword because regrettably, we find out that dialects are gradually disappearing at a terrific speed. And it is said, according to UNESCO, thousands of African small languages have already disappeared. For me it is not comfortable to
think that all Chinese people speak just one dialect and people all over the world speak only in English. Languages, small or not, are also parts of nonmaterial culture heritage we’ve inherited from our ancestors; we somehow are responsible to pass them downward to the next generation and maintain the world in variety. At least we should keep calm at the whoops of world cultural integration or
economic integration. At this point of view, I understand and respect for what
French people have done for safeguarding their language and culture.
Jeannie
