Dialect is a specific form of a language that has great significance to a nationality [1]. According to the United Nations, there are 56 nationalities in China and more than 100 of the dialect languages are in danger of extinction [2]. This striking statistic illustrates the importance of Chinese dialect preserving. This essay will describe the problems regard to disappearance of the dialect, and outline the solutions that make the efforts to preserve the dialects, with accurate evaluation. Dialects are one of special culture with many characteristics in China. Throughout approximately 130 local dialects, many Chinese dialects even have longer history than Mandarin itself, so the dialect is an indispensable part of Chinese culture. If …show more content…
Furthermore, the real dialect speakers become less and less. The users of dialect are seldom teach other people and their children almost use the Mandarin ignoring the dialect. As a consequence, these problems make the spread of the dialects become more difficult. The Mandarin will replace all dialects because of social evolution if the people will not take any measures [5].
Currently, when people are starting to realize this widespread dialects gradually disappear, measures are being taken to help protect endangered dialects [4]. The first solution to the problem is setting up a page dedicated to the language with sound clips. Some organizations have started collecting sound clips from different parts of China in order to save dialects for future generations [4]. The volunteers work throughout China in order to interview, record, and transcribe various pronunciations of dialects collecting the information [4]. All the audio clips will be gathered to Chinese dialect maps. By clicking the points on the map, people can listen to the audio and access to relevant information, including the speaker story, teller’s name, age, hometown, and the region of the dialect spoken [3]. Therefore, people can learn the dialects in the Web any time and pronounce of dialect will be saved
Even though Seiyap is a sub-dialect of Saamyap, people who speak the standard have a hard time understanding the harsher, village dialect of Taishanese. This is due to the difference in tones and the changing of certain consonants either before or after words. In order to more carefully evaluate the differences between the two dialects, I asked native speakers of each to give me sample readings of the same passages. I recorded their voices in hopes of identifying the major differences in word usage and pronunciation.
Do you ever think about the way you speak and why? Well, Paul Robert does an excellent job explaining why people use the dialect they use in Speech Communities. He discusses that people change their use of language throughout their lives to conform to either society or to what kind of person they want to be, or to just conform to who they need to be at a particular moment, in which I agree. People’s choice of language, including myself, are affected by many of their surroundings, such as where they live and grow up at, their peers, and a person’s work place.
The English language is particularly complex in almost all aspects. Many of the words in the English language have different meanings for the same word. This is not unlike the definition of the different levels of usage. McCrimmon defines the three levels, formal, moderate, and colloquial, by their sentence structure, diction, and tone (McCrimmon 193). ¹ Using McCrimmon’s definitions, authors can determine what type of writing is applicable to each of the three levels. For the formal writings, an adequate example of where readers can find it is in a professional journal, and an appropriate place to find an example of the moderate level is in a weekly news magazine. Also, the best place to look for an example of the colloquial level is in certain sections of the newspaper. All of the levels of usage apply to these different types of writings and assist in defining what each level involves.
Furthermore, the language, art, and celebrations are a few of the intriguing aspects of the Chinese culture. Initially, there are seven dominant dialects of the Chinese language. Each of these languages also have their own variations. For instance, Mandarin dialects are spoken by 71.5 percent, Wu 8.5 percent, and Yu (also known as Cantonese) 5
In the following examples, identify the features that belong to non-standard dialects of English. Then rewrite them in standard English trying to keep the meaning as close as possible to the initial utterance.
Right now, the United States has no assigned authority dialect. In spite of the fact that it is seen as an English talking country, there has been a running open deliberation among the voting open in respect to whether English should be the official dialect. While there are many people that communicate in English or Spanish, there have been calls for multilingualism. This open deliberation has produced contention and political changes among both English and non-English talking groups. While English-talking groups have been in a backing of a brought together method for correspondence, the non-English talking groups have provoked this recommendation as a method for isolating minority bunches. This later gathering feels that in an area termed as free and reasonable and where all fantasies materialize, no specific dialect should be received to the detriment of different dialects. In this paper, I will contend out that English should be the official dialect of the United States.
In Vanishing Voices by Russ Rymer, the author gives readers an in depth overview of the significant loss in the number of languages over the years. “One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?” he asks. A major argument Rymer includes in his essay is that languages are seeming to “compete” with one another. Parents children who speak tribal languages encourage their children to break away and learn to speak major languages such as English, Spanish, or
Because of its varied history and the different languages spoken in this region for centuries, there are a number of very different dialects spoken
Pennsylvania Dutch is one of the hardest dialects to study, and yet has an extremely interesting history as well as a significant impact on the English language of the Pennsylvania area. Study of Pennsylvania Dutch is difficult for researchers because of the scarcity of books printed in it. The language had been preserved largely by word of mouth and lacks a traceable history through written works, making it difficult to trace its development (Follin, 1929, p. 455). However, what there has been much research on is how it differs from modern German, also called High German, and also how Pennsylvania Dutch and English have mutually affected each other. Researchers can even tell which dialects Pennsylvania Dutch evolved from and whence
As different dialects of a language develop they are shared with the people of the area. People often use the dialect of those that they interact with most. To explain this simply, a person who only speaks Chicano English is fine in their daily interactions with other speakers of the dialect but they may have trouble speaking with a Northern Dialect. The spread of language change depends on the factors that are causing it. The natural change in language over time smarts in a small area and spreads to everyone that it comes in contact with.
The Chinese alphabet is very different from the others because characters represent whole ideas, concepts, or words. The dialect does not determine the symbols to be used and they are uniform throughout the different dialects. Chinese people speak the Mandarin and Cantonese. Cantonese dialect happens to be common and it is mainly spoken in the south while Mandarin is common in the northern part of the country. It is worth noting that a dialect is the way words are pronounced but not how they are written. Moreover, it is
Among the most important concepts to emerge are those relating to dialects and language standards. Sociolinguists have documented the presence of dialects in every language. These dialects, all of which are legitimate, are associated with educational, economic, social and historical conditions. Hence, even if an individual scrupulously studies all the possible dictionaries of a random language, he would still be somewhat of a stranger to that language since he is unaware of all the dialectal changes.
Ever walk past a child who is engaged in an activity while talking to themselves out loud? If so, do not worry, after reading this research paper you will understand it is perfectly normal. Language has many dynamics including: words, private speech, inner speech, syntagmatics, paradigmatics and much more. According to Craig and Dunn (2010) by age three, most children can use 900 to 1,000 words; by age 6, most children have a productive vocabulary of 2,600 words and can understand more than 20,000 (pg. 161). Some children I work with who are in the toddler room are able to talk, but leave out the pronouns a sentence. For example a child would say, “Us go on walk?” Language and cognitive development go hand in hand, as children learn about
Talking about “dialects”, a term often mentioned along is “standard language”. When being brought into comparison with “dialect”, “standard language” usually serves as a legitimate variant with the highest level of excellence (Bex & Watts, 1999). Though positive in nature, standardization - the procedure of standardizing a language – often raises heated controversy because of its consequences on not only linguistics field but also the society. In the second part of the essay, I will focus on the disadvantages of language standardization.
Most young children develop language rapidly, moving from crying and cooing in infancy to using hundreds of words and understanding their meanings by the time they are ready to enter kindergarten. Language development is a major accomplishment and is one of the most rewarding experiences for anyone to share with a child. Children learn to speak and understand words by being around adults and peers who communicate with them and encourage their efforts to talk.