EALC 430

Introduction to Chinese Linguistics

Language Policy and Standardization

Chilin Shih
Communication Problems in China
 How do people communicate with each other if
they don't speak the same language/dialect?
 How does a government operate if her citizens
speak different languages and dialects?
 Possible (theoretical) solutions
 Learn other languages
 Change the languages
 Learn a single language
 Complications to the Solutions
 Learn other languages
 Number of language to learn: Given that there are
many languages, many mutually unintelligible
dialects, and each with many local variants, there
are too many languages to learn
 Time delay: It takes time to learn a language, while
communication need is often a problem of here and
now
 Capability to learn: People vary in their aptitude and
motivation in language learning.
 Change the Language
 What are the function of language? There are
conflicting goals:
 Communication (want to be the same)
 Differentiation (want to be different)
 Relationship among people (friends, family, town and
country etc)
 Capability and creativity (trades and social class etc)
 Judging from historical development, natural
development of languages leads to language
divergence

Language standardization leads to convergence
 Learn a Common Language(s)
 Assign national language(s)
 Most nations in the modern world specify their
official languages
 Even private organization and conferences
specify official languages
 There are social, economical, cultural
consequences for the languages that don't have
the status of a national/official language
Standard Chinese in Ancient Time
 Old Chinese (771 BC – 220 AD) Zhou Dynasty
– There were clear mention of many 方言 fang1
yan2 “dialect”
– Confucius Analects mentioned that Confucius
was teaching in 雅言 ya3 yan2, “elegant
speech/common speech”.
– One interpretation is that it was a common
language that Confucius spoke to teach 3000
disciples, who must had come from different
places and spoke different dialects
Standardization in Middle Chinese
 Middle Chinese (220 – 960 AD)
– During Sui Dynasty, a formal nation-wide exam
system was established to select scholars to
work in the court. This system was fully
developed in Tang dynasty, and was used
throughout the imperial China.
– Poetry was an important subject. An official
rhyme book 切韻 qie1 yun4 was compiled in
Tang Dynasty which provided a standardized
dictionary instructing rhyme words for scholars
from of all dialect regions. It has tremendous
impact on language standardization
 Natural Changes of
Standard Chinese
 Early Modern Chinese (960 – 1900)
– This 1000 years of history includes 500 years of
rule by speakers of Altaic languages
– The capital moves many times
– Nanjing (Nanking) was the capital during the
reign of early emperors in Ming dynasty
– Beijing (Peking) was the capital of Yuan
dynasty, part of Ming dynasty, and through Qing
dynasty
 The dialects spoken in the capital was
prestigious and in time, became the de facto
standard language
 Thoughts on Language Planning
 There were serious discussion in late Qing
dynasty to choose a national language 國語
guo2 yu3
– A unified language is seen as a necessary step
toward the modernization of China
– Nanjing, Wuhan, Shanghai, Beijing, Cantonese
were all serious contenders
 There were also discussion on replacing the
Chinese writing system with phonetic spelling
 No official implementation during Qing dynasty
Early Effort on Language Planning
 Modern Chinese (1900 – present)
– Choosing and defining a national language for
the new Republic of China
– 1913: An 88-member commission representing
all provinces met for a month and came up with
the official pronunciation of 6500 characters. It
failed. The system tried to include features from
different dialects (among them, -p, -t, -k ending
on syllables). In effect, the committee created
an artificial language no one speaks
 Language Planning that Worked
 In 1932, the artificial national language was
abandoned, and the Beijing dialect was adopted as
the national language
 “A Glossary of Frequently Used Characters in National
Pronunciation” was published, annotating 12,219
characters
 A phonetic annotation system 注音符號 zhu4 yin1
fu2 hao4 was developed to help pronunciation learning

 The Ministry of Education vigorously promoted the use

of the national language in elementary school
 Public Speaking in the
Early 20 Century
th

 Dr. Sun Yat-Sen (1866-1925) Sun Yat Sen

 Mdm Soong Chingling (1893-1981)Soong Qingling
 President Chiang Kai-Shek (1887-1975)Chiang
Kai-Shek
 Chairman Mao Zedong (1893-1976)Mao Zedong
Writing Reform
Oracle Bones
Bronze Script
 Standardization of Writing
 Historical documents indicated that Chinese
writing wasn't standardized in Chun-Qiu and
Warring States Period (Zhou Dynasty)
 Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor, asked Prime
Minister 李斯 Li Si, to reform the writing
system. This was the first effort standardizing
Chinese writing
 小篆 xiao3 zhuan4 “the small seal” was difficult
to write. During Han Dynasty, the writing form
隸書 li4 shu1 “The clerical form” became
popular
 Character Simplification
 The Chinese writing system remained largely the same for
around 1700 years from Han Dynasty to the People's
Republic of China

During this long period of time, minor font variations exist
without affecting intelligibility

Viewing the writing system as a major obstacle to literacy,
education, thus science and technological development,
many scholars in the early 20th century tried various
proposals to simplify Chinese writing system
 Character simplification was attempted briefly in 1935 for
324 characters. The reform didn't take off.
Small Seal
 Simplified Character

The work designing the current forms of simplified
character started in the 1950's by the Committee of Script
Reform. Some of the strategies involve:
– Adopt a simpler old form 云 雲
– Adopt an early cursive form 书 書
– Adopt a simpler popular form 万 萬
– Create a new form 卫 衛
– Omit components from the character 厂 廠
– Substitute by a homonym 后 後
– Replace the sound component 宾 賓 华 華
– Simplify radicals
 Language Policy
What are the pros and cons of language and
writing standardization?
What are the pros and cons of replacing Chinese
writing with an alphabetic system?
What is your view of language policy?
What are good and bad cases of language policy
implementation? Are there cases that need help
from language policy? Are there cases of
detrimental language policy?