preview

Essay on Dialect Preserving

Decent Essays

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

Get Access