In China, many hundreds of dialects (方言) are spoken. But unluckily, some dialects are in danger of disappearing. To save them, the Chinese government started the Chinese Language Resources ProtectionProject(中国语言资源保护工程) a few years ago.
It's well-known that it is important to protect the dialects. According to British linguist Harold Palmer, dialects show the history and culture of an area, They are the keys to storing local cultures. But nowadays, they are easy to be forgotten.
Zhang Hongming, a Chinese expert, also expressed his worries about the disappearing of dialects. "In the Wu dialect areas such as Shanghai and Suzhou, children aged 6 to 15 can understand but hardly speak the dialect. At the same time, young people above 15 years old sometimes speak it, but not very well. If this keeps happening, the dialect might disappear. As a result, the cultures and customs behind it might disappear, too. "he said.
This first stage of the project included making a survey about how people talk in 1, 712 places. The researchers found 103 dialects are almost gone in these places. Then the project helped China build the largest online language resource library in the world, where people can learn dialects from over 5 million videos.
To build the biggest library, a big national effort has been put into the project. Over the last five years, more than 350 universities and research groups have joined in the project, along with over 4, 500 experts and more than 6, 000 dialect speakers.
The project is now entering into its second stage. This includes developing more creative tools like apps and mobile dictionaries to help people learn dialects.
