Primary school students in Changsha, Hunan Province, have started to learn the Changsha dialect (方言) in a course for them to choose which was newly offered this term.
More than 20 third-grade students from a local primary school have signed up for the course. Many language professors at some major universities in Hunan are teaching it.
Besides the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, students will also get knowledge about the idioms, nursery rhymes (童谣) , figures of speech and culture behind the dialect, according to Luo Xinru, Chinese language professor at Hunan Normal University and one of the teachers of the course.
As our country has spent a lot of energy promoting standard Mandarin (标准普通话) , lots of young children have not learned how to speak local dialects, she said. That's why the country has started to protect different language resources in recent years, she added.
The Ministry of Education carried out the National Language Resource Protection Project in 2015 to do some surveys and better protect its language resources. Our country has set up the largest language resource center in the world, according to the ministry.
Luo said promoting Mandarin and using dialects are not contradictory and children have the ability to speak them at the same time.
"Dialect protection is very important and different dialects which carry different cultures and values should not and will not disappear," she said. "We do not expect all children taking the course to learn perfect Changsha dialect, but they should understand the importance of different dialects and perhaps be willing to dive into the research and protection of them as they grow older."