Volume 2012, Issue 215 - The Contact between Putonghua and Minority Languages in China

To provide the background for this issue of IJSL, this introduction focuses on the social and linguistic contexts for the contact between Putonghua and minority languages in China and raises some questions about language contact in China's language planning environment. It first examines how Putonghua rises as China's national language and to what extent it has spread throughout China in the past five decades. It then argues that it is particularly meaningful to investigate language contact and language planning from the perspective of a (managed) community second language acquisition model. The article concludes with highlights on how the contributions in this issue answer the questions on Putonghua spread and language contact in China's minority communities.

Due to increased contact with the Zhuang language since the beginning of the 1990s, Putonghua spoken by Zhuang people bears distinctive traits of their mother tongue. Taking Chengxiang Town as an example, this article analyzes the influence of Zhuang on Zhuang Putonghua's phonological, lexical and grammatical features.

This article reports on language contact between Uyghur and Chinese in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in China. It proposes that the massive influx of Han Chinese migrants to Xinjiang resulted in intense language contact between the speakers of Uyghur and Chinese. As a result of this, these two languages are mutually affecting each other in the region. The focus of this article is on the influence of Uyghur on Putonghua in Xinjiang. Four categories of this influence are reported: (1) phonological influence that produces Putonghua sounds similar to Uyghur sounds, exemplified by the dropping of tones, the changing of sounds and the addition of certain sounds which are closer to those in Uyghur; (2) lexical influence, exemplified by introducing into Putonghua elements of the Uyghur lexicon which are then adapted to resemble Putonghua lexical forms; (3) grammatical influence that produces Putonghua grammatical structures similar to those of Uyghur, exemplified by changing word order in Putonghua grammatical structures; and (4) semantic influence that makes use of Uyghur expressions in Putonghua through literal translation, exemplified by using Uyghur similes and metaphors directly to describe people and things in certain contexts.

The Yi people of southwest China constitute the country's seventh largest minority group. Due to constant interaction between local Yi and Han Chinese, the Yi language and local varieties of Chinese have intermingled, forming a new code-mixing language which residents refer to as Tuanjie hua. To investigate its distinctive characteristics, as well as its social and psychological implications, we conducted a field trip to Xichang City in Sichuan Province and the nearby counties and villages where Yi people and Han people live in close proximity to each other. Our research reveals that more Yi people than Han people speak Tuanjie hua, that they use it mainly in informal situations, and that use of the variety is negatively correlated with speakers' educational levels. These results suggest that use of Tuanjie hua is constrained by a number of social factors: power, policy, education, intensity of contact, and social situation.

Language change is often traced to language contact, but the specific sociolinguistic processes are not fully understood. This article reports on our field research of contact between Chinese and two minority languages in rural southwest China: Sui and Qiang. The study shows how lexical tone, an underrepresented variable in sociolinguistics, can be valuable as an empirical measure of language contact and change. Furthermore, we find that it is the same Chinese tone, a high tone in Southwest Mandarin, which is affecting the phonologies of both of these disparate minority languages. We use a social constructionist approach to model these changes: the “Structure” of a language is dialectically constructed by individual moments of speech — “Events” — which are in turn influenced by Structure. From this perspective, each individual use of a high-tone Chinese word is constructing and changing Sui and Qiang. Tone therefore provides an audible gauge of cross-cultural contact, reflecting and constructing the rapidly changing sociolinguistic landscape of rural southwest China.

Mongghul is a Mongolic language spoken in northwestern China. Though the precise number of speakers is unknown, estimates are that around 50,000 people currently speak it. Most speakers of Mongghul are also bilingual in the local dialect of Chinese. We argue that the current contact between Mongghul and Chinese is best understood as a form of “massive borrowing” within Thomason and Kaufman's (1988) framework. Moreover, the borrowing is leading to the endangerment of the language in part because the government has failed to help it adapt to changing socio-economic conditions. Evidence that the language is failing to adapt is presented in lists of loanwords and a transcribed conversation. The government's failure to assist the language is evidenced by its withdrawal of support for the language's writing system. We apply a UNESCO assessment and conclude that while it is not in imminent danger of extinction, the language is endangered.

The Miao language is spoken in southwest China and adjacent countries by some 10 million people. This article focuses on the treatment of Chinese loanwords in the Hmu dialect of Miao. In the 1950s, the script earlier used by missionaries was replaced by a Latin-based script. In 1956, a written form for Hmu was elaborated, with detailed prescriptions for the spelling of Chinese loanwords. After 1949, the amount of Chinese loanwords in Hmu increased drastically, and by 1959 already reached around one third of the words in the colloquial language. After 1959, the new Hmu script ceased to be used in education; however, in 1981, Hmu writing was reintroduced on a trial basis in primary schools and the spelling of Chinese loanwords was changed in accordance with local Chinese pronunciation. Since the 1980s, the use of Putonghua has spread rapidly in the Hmu communities. The spelling principles for Chinese loanwords have, however, been retained, although an increasing number of Hmu tend to pronounce these words according to the Putonghua standard.

This article explores the negotiation of discourses of ethnicity and language standardization among users of Bái in Yúnnán Province. Drawing on Kloss's (1967) Ausbau and Abstand , I compare texts in which language users represent their vernacular in orthography and in Chinese characters to demonstrate the asymmetrical projection of a Standard vs. non-Standard opposition and a Sinitic vs. non-Sinitic opposition from the national to the local level. Theorizing these asymmetries in terms of Irvine and Gal's (2000) fractal recursivity and Silverstein's (2003) indexical order , I discuss how they simultaneously index language users' social positions and demonstrate their orientation toward broader discourses.

European language activists have successfully campaigned for the right to use regional or minority languages in a range of social contexts. Despite this, such rights are rarely exercised. Non-use is generally understood as a function of the unavailability and/or inaccessibility of appropriate language services and Governments across the European Union have been criticised as a consequence of this. The article draws on qualitative data to examine the negotiation over language use in a research encounter where the Welsh or the English language might have been used. It is argued that the availability of language choice is only one of a number of factors likely to influence which language is selected for usage in any context. Indeed, language selection is shown to be the outcome of complex and situated negotiation. The findings challenge oversimplified understandings about minority language use and non use.