Do you speak a dialect (方言) in daily life? While many Chinese people speak putonghua, some local dialects are in danger of disappearing (消失). To save them, the Chinese government started the Chinese Language Resources Protection Project (中国语言资源保护工程) a few years ago.
This project looks at how people talk in 1,712 places. Their languages include 103 dialects that are almost gone. It has helped China to build the largest language resource library in the world. There's an online library where people can learn dialects from over 5.6 million audio clips and over 5 million videos.
____ According to Harold Palmer, a world expert on language, "dialects are a key to store local cultures. Language clearly shows the history and beliefs of an area," he said.
Scholar Zhang Hongming talked about his concerns about the disappearing of dialects. "For about over 10 years, in the Wu dialect areas such as Shanghai and Suzhou, children aged 6 to 15 can understand but hardly speak the dialect. Young people above 15 years old sometimes speak it, but not very well. If this keeps happening, the dialect might disappear," he said.
So how did China make this big library? "A big national effort has been put into the project to make it happen," said Cao Zhiyun, an expert on the project. "Over five years, more than 350 universities and research groups joined in, along with over 4,500 experts and more than 6,000 dialect speakers."
The project is now entering into its second part. This includes creating digital (数字化的) tools like apps and mobile dictionaries to help people learn dialects.
