Comments on: Gaining a Green Thumb for Grassroots Language Activism

By: Luc Belliveau

Luc Belliveau — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 03:45:00 +0000

I’m sure this sort of thing is playing out all over the globe with minority languages. One example that comes to mind is “Newfoundland English” in Canada, which, for a long time had been looked down upon, but now sees more widespread appeal through online memes and in-jokes. There is now a whole linguistic tourist industry of souvenirs inscribed with “Whaddayat b’ys?” and so on.

I wonder how much the use of Latin text for Zhuang impedes its recognition among non Zhuang Chinese online as well as offline. As you mention, it’s taken to be English because of the text type, and not even recognized as a language indigenous to China. It’s similar to how in Taiwan, most people will tell you that 台語沒有文字 (the Taiwanese language has no written form), despite there existing a number of Latin written forms (including the officially supported Taiwanese Romanization System) as well as a kanji orthography from Japanese imperial rule, not to mention the use of Chinese characters that sound similar to Taiwanese words to refer to those words (eg. 白目 – sorry, that’s the best I could think of at the moment). Perhaps it’s that the language was not formally taught until recently, and that few people apart from those learning it in school are aware of its Latin script form, or maybe the text type is taken as foreign, inauthentic and imposed.

Newfoundland English is decipherable to other Canadians, but perhaps the familiar text type is the greatest facilitator in that sense.

Once I’m finished final assignments, I’ll take a look at your thesis on the subject, because this is really interesting to me!

By: MonyCRole

MonyCRole — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 09:42:00 +0000

In reply to Language on the Move. Thanks for sharing the thesis! It is great to see further exploration on the unique language as fewer and fewer local people in Zhuang speaking areas use or value it. Also, late congratulations to the thesis for the award win!

By: Language on the Move

Language on the Move — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 21:43:00 +0000

In reply to MonyCRole.

Thanks, MonyCRole! For an in-depth update, the PhD thesis on which this post was based has now been completed:

Grey, Alexandra. 2017. How do language rights affect minority languages in China? An ethnographic investigation of the Zhuang minority language under conditions of rapid social change. Macquarie University. Available for download here: http://languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Grey_How_do_language_rights_affect_minority_languages.pdf

In fact, the thesis was so successful, it won the 2017 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics (see http://languageonthemove.com/2017-australian-phd-prize-for-innovations-in-linguistics-and-michael-clyne-prize/)

By: MonyCRole

MonyCRole — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 15:34:00 +0000

Surprisingly, this is the first time I learn that Zhuang language has a written form! And as Chinese, I cannot read any of the words in the screen catch provided in the article. Indeed, they look really like Arabian language. But the reason why I am surprised is because last time I went to Yunnan for travel, I was told that the written form of the language was meeting extinction and sadly, even the oral form of the language was losing its popularity among its users. However, it is still a great news to see Internet has been playing a role of revitalizing the language and maybe other grass root languages as well.

By: Alexandra Grey

Alexandra Grey — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 03:21:04 +0000

In the screen shot above I marked the translation of RAIX SAWCUENGH with an asterix * because it was ambiguous/non-standard. I have now confirmed the expression is one way of saying WRITE ZHUANG.