Chinese Minority Languages in Danger of Disappearing

Around half of all the languages in the world are under threat of extinction. 41 of these are in China. It's a problem the United Nations hopes to address on Monday 21 February, with the International Mother Language Day. The event is organized by the UN's cultural arm UNESCO and aims to promote all spoken languages, even the smallest. But despite government efforts there's a danger some languages in China could die out. CRI's Dominic Swire reports.

What you've just heard is one of the world's rarest languages. The man was speaking the Chinese language Anung . The United Nations cultural body UNESCO says it's in danger of disappearing for good. Dr David Bradley from Australia's La Trobe University is an expert in China's ethnic languages…..

"The Anung language is one of the four languages spoken by a nationality classified as the Nu nationality in northwestern Yunnan in southwestern China. It's probably only spoken by about 50 people right now even though there are about 6000 members of this ethnic group."

Anung is just one of around 3,000 languages UNESCO classes as endangered. This means they are no longer being taught to children. As an expert in Chinese languages Dr Bradley says we are losing part of our history…

"Every time a language disappears that means the whole cultural knowledge of that people disappears. For example all of their traditional medical knowledge, all of their traditional historical knowledge, all of their family history, everything can disappear with the language if the community is not careful."

The Chinese government is making efforts to protect ethnic minority languages. Almost thirty are taught in thousands of schools across the country. And the Chinese constitution gives all ethnic groups the right to use and develop their own language. But despite this, Dr Bradley is concerned some languages in China could die out.

"Putonghua, standard Chinese, is so dominant that everybody wants to use that instead of their own language. So there's a two-way tension between the right to maintain your own language and the desire to become part of the mainstream. So in the long term, probably, many more languages will disappear, alas. But some communities may choose and we hope they do choose, and we can help them if they do, to maintain them."

The organizers of international mother language day estimate that since 1950 the world has lost over 200 languages. They hope that Anung and other unique languages don't go the same way.

For CRI, I'm Dominic Swire.