education in china spl reports

Chinese Ethnic Minorities Pen Their Own Languages
2002-03-19

Pan Chengqian, 70, does not know English. But this is not a problem for him when contacting scholars in the United States via the Internet.
"We communicate with each other in Yao language," said the retired associate professor of the Beijing-based Central University for Nationalities.
Together with experts at home and abroad, Pan created a written language for his Yao ethnic group in 1980s.
In cooperation with American scholars, he is now compiling a dictionary of Yao, Chinese and English, the first of its kind to be published in China.
This would have been impossible 20 years ago because Yao, with a population of over 2.1 million, had never had its own written language.

Written languages for ethnic groups on increase
Yao is not alone. Most of China's 55 ethnic minorities, with exceptions such as Mongol, Tibetan, and Uygur, did not have their own written languages before 1949. Some had borrowed Chinese.
Thanks to the efforts made by the central government, 13 ethnic minorities have had their own written languages created over the past 50 years.
The number of ethnic minorities which have written languages increased to 22, said an official with the State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC) Thursday.
Among these nationalities are Zhuang, China's biggest ethnic group with 18 million people which equals that of Australia, and Tu ethnic group, with a population of 190,000.

An idea proposed by late Chairman Mao
The idea of creating ethnic languages was first proposed by late Chairman Mao Zedong soon after the New China was founded in 1949.
Mao and other top Chinese leaders suggested written languages be created for those which had vocal ones in order to help preserve ethnic cultures and improve ethnic economic conditions.
Free will and independent decision making are the essential principles to be observed in formulating an alphabetic system of writing for these ethnic groups, said Li Xulian, an SEAC official working on ethnic languages.
"China's ethnic groups are free to decide either they would adhere to the Chinese (language of the Han people) or they would like to have a new language," he said.
All the new written languages were based on the 26-letter Latin alphabet. They are more learner friendly as the spelling always accords with the pronunciation.

How Zhuang language taken into formWei Xinglang, 69, participated in creating a new written language for the Zhuang ethnic group in the 1950s.
"We decided to formulate an alphabetic system of writing for our group because the Chinese language has four tones, but ours has six," said Wei, who himself is from Zhuang ethnic group. " Sometimes it fails to embody the uniqueness of our culture."
He recalled that over 90 percent of all Zhuang ethnic people could not read and write in early 1950s.
"It would be even more difficult for these people to learn Chinese without a written language of our own" he said.
The result is that tens of thousands of farmers in south China' s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region have learnt to read and write within a short period of time. Pan said that he believed the newly formulated languages not only help eliminate illiteracy, but also benefit cultural exchanges among different ethnic groups.
Schools in areas with concentrations of ethnic nationalities prove that children who have learnt the new written languages make more progress when they learn Chinese and English.
Long Qingli, a 25-year-old woman of Zhuang nationality in Guangxi, studied the Zhuang language in primary school. She was able to learn a new way of sub-tropical farming from an ethnic newspaper published in her language, which led her and her family from rags to riches.
More than 700,000 young or middle aged people like Long have studied the Zhuang language over the past two decades. The central government has earmarked at least five million yuan (602,400 U.S. dollars) annually for popularizing the ethnic language.

New problemsSome ethnic groups altered their primary decisions during the application or experimental period. Yi nationality gave up the new written language and returned to the old but later reformed one. Uygur and Kazak ethnic groups resumed using their original Arabic alphabets. Hani ethnic people picked up one out of the two invented for it.
Ethnic Education Improving in Gansu
2002-01-07

       Education among ethnic minority people in northwest China's Gansu Province has made marked improvement in recent years.

Gansu is home to 44 minority ethnic groups totaling 2.38 million people, 9.3 percent of the region's total population.

Most people from the ethnic minority groups are living in the two ethnic autonomous prefectures, seven ethnic autonomous counties and dozens of multinational counties.

The 10 pastoral counties in the province have set up many learning centers and over 100 boarding schools, providing education for children from herdsmen families, an official said.

Ethnic education in other parts of Gansu has also improved. Some 76.33 percent of ethnic minority children are studying in primary schools.

The province and the World Bank have provided a total of 72.04 million yuan for 316 schools in minority area. Meanwhile, the country's national compulsory education program invested 150 million yuan for 366 schools in 12 poverty-stricken counties in the province.

Last year, 2,521 students of ethnic minority people in Gansu entered colleges and universities, making up 10.2 percent of the province's total college enrollment.

Gansu has also set up dozens of training centers for thousands of teachers, who are now playing an important role in the region's education for ethnic minority students.

The Department of Education in Gansu also attaches importance to improving bi-lingual teaching, especially in the minority-inhabited areas.

So far, more than 306 primary and high schools as well as two universities in the province have opened ethnic language courses.
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Tibetan Language Dictionary Gets Thicker
2001-12-04

Tibetan language dictionaries just keep getting thicker with the creation of more words to help define a changing world. "New words are being created one after another. I have to rely on Tibetan language dictionaries instead of my memory now," said Qamba, a professional translator from the Lhasa Translation Bureau. ¡¡¡¡ And that costs a lot of time and money, Qamba pointed out. In his 26 years as a translator, Qamba has regarded the Tibetandictionary as an indispensable tool in his work. But a Tibetan dictionary was rare in 1972, when he learned Tibetan-Han (Putonghua, or standard Chinese) translation in the Central Nationality Institute. Puncog Zhaxi, a translator who worked on the translation of the"Agreement of the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet on the Measures for the Peaceful Liberation ofTibet" signed in 1951, said that at that time, due to the lack of a Tibetan dictionary, the true meaning of many modern words such as "imperialism" could only be guessed at. The Tibetan language is one of the oldest languages in the world, with a history of more than 1,300 years. The first Tibetan language dictionary came out in 1949, engraved on wood. A lama scholar named Gexi Qughizaba spent 10 years compiling it with assistance of a peer in Lhasa. In 1957, this dictionary was published by the Nationality Pressusing modern printing technology. However, the 900-page dictionarywas mostly used for help in reading sutras and Tibetan ancient books. That volume is now sorely outdated. Since the Tibet democratic reform in 1959 and along with the progress of the Tibetan ethic group, Tibetan and Han scholars havecompiled and published a series of dictionaries including the "Han-Tibetan Glossary Dictionary", the "Tibetan Language Dictionary" and the "Tibetan-Han-English Dictionary." And there are dictionaries specially filled with terms on politics, economy, history and literature in Tibetan. The first Tibetan dictionaries were the size of a normal book; now, the thickest dictionary is in three volumes, more than 3,000 pages in total, and is too heavy to carry around in a rucksack or briefcase, scholars note. The latest publication is the "Han-Tibetan Dictionary", which came out in 1991, containing more than 80,000 terms. It includes not only Tibetan words, but also a lot of idioms, adages and scientific expressions. It contains a chemical element glossary, which has never before been translated into Tibetan language. With the development of the Tibetan economy and society, the ancient Tibetan language has been enriched with many modern and new words and phrases, such as "environmental protection." Many are used frequently by modern Tibetans, such as "market economy" and "reform and opening up to the outside world." With the frequent addition of Tibetan words, the standardization of the language became a new issue for scholars totackle. The Tibetan Language Advisory Committee of Tibet Autonomous Region has recently called on professional translators from different fields to discuss ways to advance the standardization ofthe new words in the ancient tongue.
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Tibet's First Deaf-Mute School Celebrates First Birthday
2001-12-03


The first school for blind, deaf and mute children in the Tibet Autonomous Region celebrated its first birthday Friday.
The school built in the eastern suburbs of Lhasa, capital of Tibet, occupies 20,000 square meters and is designed to hold 200 pupils.
The school's curriculum includes braille and sign language training, Tibetan, mathematics, writing, ethics training, PE, arts, handcrafts, speech and walking courses.
At the celebration, the audience was touched by a silent song "sung" by the students with sign language.
Baiba Toinzhub, a 10-year-old blind child, can speak fluent Mandarin and is good at singing and dancing. He told visitors that the life in the boarding school is comfortable.
This year the regional government of Tibet and the municipal government of Lhasa donated educational, sports and audio and language training equipment to the school.
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Institute for Nationalities Marks 50th Anniversary
2001-10-29


Yunnan Institute for Nationalities, the cradle of the first generation of college students from many ethnic minorities in China, held a grand celebration Friday to commemorate its 50th anniversary.
Located in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, which is home to numerous ethnic minorities, the institute has played an important role in educating ethnic people.
Sources indicated that more than 85 percent of the institute's new students every year are minorities, and some 38,000 graduates are now working in various sectors in China's ethnic minority regions.
Yunnan Institute for Nationalities has grown into a modern socialist college, offering bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, and courses of study for foreign students.
Experts and heads of some 80 states and regions have visited the institute to see first-hand the diversity of its student body and the academic programs offered. It has also established long- term cooperation relations with scores of foreign universities.