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"Today, on average, we lose one language in the world every six weeks. There are approximately 6800 languages. But four percent of the population speaks 96 percent of the languages, and 96 percent of the population speaks four percent of the languages. These four percent are spoken by large language groups and are therefore not at risk.
A school in Guangdong with writing "Please speak Standard Chinese.Please write standard characters" on the wall.. Protection of the varieties of Chinese (Chinese: 保护方言) refers to efforts to protect the continued existence of the varieties of Chinese in mainland China and other Sinophone regions, amid pressure to abandon their use, usually in favor of Standard Chinese.
They view dialects as outdated, especially those without the official Mandarin accent, considering them as "pseudo-foreign languages" that hinder communication among the people of the country. These individuals argue that dialects rarely have any use in large-scale social settings and are considered "social cancers" or "superfluous."
Dialect discrimination is linked to perceptions of dialects in relation to race, class, national origin, and other categories. For instance, in the United States, Southern accents are associated with lower class individuals, and there is a resulting reduction in pay offered to those with Southern accents compared to accents perceived as more ...
In the Hokkien topolect (Chinese: 閩南語), which is widely used in Fujian, Taiwan, and in the Chinese diaspora, it is debated that whether Taiwanese dialects (Chinese: 臺灣閩南語) should be separated from the Hokkien language as the Taiwanese language (Chinese: 臺灣話 or 臺語), [35] [36] although people from Fujian and Taiwan can ...
However, this is a contentious topic as the decision of substantiation is often arbitrary. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 26, does promise to protect all individuals from discrimination on the grounds of language.
Another approach, where dialects are mutually intelligible, is to introduce a poly-phonemic written form that is intended to represent all dialects of a language adequately but with no standard spoken form. If one dialect is chosen, it comes to be perceived as supra-dialectal and the 'best' form of the language. [17]
Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are: Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated ...