Image of dictionary burning circulating on social media
On New Year’s Eve, when many people around the world were excited about firework shows, a group of Mongols in remote Inner Mongolia had “fireworks” of a different kind: they were busy burning dictionaries. The dictionaries that ignited their rage were the Mongolian Chinese Dictionary (Mongol Hyatad Toli; 1999, Inner Mongolia University Publishing House) and the Dictionary of Correct Mongolian Spelling (Mongol Jüb Bichilgiin Toli; 1998, People’s Publishing House of Inner Mongolia). The scenes of destruction (in addition to burning the dictionaries, copies were also destroyed by soaking them in water) were photographed and videoed and widely shared on social media.
What attracted the book burners’ ire on social media was the inclusion of Chinese loanwords in the Mongolian-Chinese dictionary. Controversial examples such as the following were discussed on social media: jintüü (Chinese pinyin: zhen tou; English: “pillow”), damen (Chinese pinyin: da men; English: “gate”), leu (Chinese pinyin: lou; English: “building”), yeye (Chinese pinyin: ye ye; English: “grandfather”) or yintai (Chinese pinyin: yin de; English: “addicted”). Examples such as these – transliterated Chinese loan words – were viciously attacked in WeChat groups. Equivalent Mongolian expressions exist for these words: there is der for “pillow”, üüd for “gate”, asar for “building”, ebeg for “grandfather” and shunaltai for “addicted”.
Image of dictionary burning circulating on social media
By way of background, it is important to know that Khorchin Mongols, who live in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia and who are “notorious” for code mixing, use the offending Chinese expressions often in their everyday Mongolian interactions. Nevertheless, seeing these local vernacular expressions printed in the dictionary as “Mongol” words is unacceptable for many Mongols, including Khorchins.
The outrage against the inclusion of Chinese loan words in the dictionary had been simmering even before the actual book burnings took place. For instance, a WeChat page entitled Please Speak Pure Mother Tongue (in Chinese pinyin: qing jiang chun mu yu; please note that WeChat pages can only be registered with a Chinese name) complained already on December 21 that Mongolians did not even have “a good-quality dictionary”. This WeChat group posts a transcript of a Mongolian-Chinese mixed conversation every day. This “incorrect” version is then followed by a “pure” corrected version of that same conversation underneath. In a third version, the transliterated Chinese words are highlighted and they are followed by “correct” Mongolian and Chinese characters, like a vocabulary list.
Loan words in the dictionary that stirred debate on social media
Mongolian and Chinese have a long history of language contact and so Mongolian-Chinese code-switching is nothing new. Why then does it attract so much anger and sensitivity at this point in time? Why the ever-increasing emphasis on language purity, as expressed in the public destruction of “poisonous” dictionaries, social media campaigns for “pure” Mongolian or a recent rally in Hohhot for Mongols to sign their names in Mongolian (instead of Chinese) on bank forms? Why do we see this outburst of anger now when the offending dictionaries were, in fact, published in the late 1990s and have been in circulation ever since?
In my view, it is the contemporary context of language shift and assimilation in Inner Mongolia that drives Mongols to feel increasingly protective about their language and to promote “pure” Mongolian.
The young generation in Inner Mongolia, a society that is rapidly urbanizing and where Mongols now constitute a minority in their own land, is switching to Chinese at an unparalleled rate. According to the title of a WeChat post: “the Mongolian language is facing an unprecedented crisis”. The post goes on to cite Hexigtogtah Č., a scholar at the Central University of Nationalities in Beijing, who shows that the number of textbooks published in the Mongolian language for primary school students dropped from 68,000 in 1992 to 21,000 in 2012.
Another indicator of language shift in the younger generation comes from the fact that the average Mongolian language test score in the university entrance exam is lower than it was in the early 2000s. During my fieldwork in Inner Mongolia in early 2016, one of my informants, a junior high school teacher said: “Nowadays it is very hard to find a satisfying essay from students; some high school graduates can’t write a proper essay Mongolian.”
“Pure” and “impure” Mongolian juxtaposed on WeChat
This decline of the mother tongue is largely caused by urbanization, as studies carried out by master students in the Department of Ethnology and Sociology in Inner Mongolia University have shown. They have found that the socialization processes of Mongol migrant children in Hohhot differ significantly from traditional ways (Sachirengui, 2013). They also illuminate the problems caused by the closure of primary schools in pastoral areas after “The Decision on Basic Educational Reform and Development” issued in 2001 (Uyanga, 2014) and the effects of the changes in pastoralism as a result of the development and “opening-up” of Ujumchin right banner (Bai, 2007). These studies all illustrate from different angles how urbanization and industrialization has sped up the process of Sinification and caused the dissolution of the Mongolian community vital to Mongolian cultural and linguistic transmission.
In sum, social transformation provides both the context and one explanation for the language purification efforts described above. While it is the key factor in rapid language shift and the related blow-back in the form of language purification movements, other factors also play a role, including cross-border influence from Outer Mongolia and social media use for ideological dissemination.
References
Bai, F. (2007). Neeltiin yabch deh übür mongoliin maljih oroni soyol-in hobiralt [Cultural Change in a Pastoral Region in the Process of Development]. (Masters thesis), University of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot.
Sachirengui (2013). Mongol nüüdel hüühediin niigemchileltiin tuhai sudalal [A Study on the Socialization Process of Mongol Migrant Children in Hohhot] Masters thesis, University of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot.
Uyanga. (2014). Hüdee-gin surguulii nigetkhen tüblürülsenii daraa üüsen asuudaliin tuhai sudalal [A Study on the Regulation of Primary Schools in a Pastoral Region]. (Masters thesis), University of Inner Mongolia, Hohhot.
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I have noticed this use of of loan words from English even in a lot of Indian languages. Although regional equivalents of these words exist, it is becoming common usage to use the English words, e.g., words such as but, telephone, etc. This could affect the way “pure” varieties of languages end up being lost to a more functional variety becoming more popular.
This article has shed light on the issue of how many cultures are being pushed towards using loan words from dominating languages thus, forgetting their native language. We should be aware of this and protect these cultures and languages. There is a clash of course, between wanting to maintain ones language and culture as well as fitting into the outside world. This is quite similar to case of Aboriginals in Australia, who find it hard to acquire jobs if they speak their own language as compared to English.
Thank you for sharing this interesting article. This post reminded me of what is happening in Morocco. It has become the dominate language there, French, not Arabic language. Even in the schools and universities, the main language is French. The problem in Morocco is because all the young people and children do not speak the mother tongue which is Arabic, only the elderly speak the mother tongue. Consequently, there is no longer a use of Arabic, specifically the Moroccan accent.
Thank you for this sharing. I feel sincerely sorry for the Mongolians as they are, to some extent, forced to escape from their original mother-tongue. However, it is true that it’s apparently difficult to retain your language as well as a culture since they are obviously superannuated. Actually, Mongolian is not the only case. There have been quite a lot of other languages that are at their edges of extinction since the influence of global electronic communication via the booming of the Internet and technology has been great keeping languages on the move. Thus, those languages which are incapable to keep itself on this language race will inevitably be left behind
I feel really sorry to the Mongolians who are somehow forced to “forget” their pure mother tongue little by little as the Chinese loanwords are dominating. Moreover, I personally am struck by the fact that less Mongolian textbooks are published and this phenomenon has a similar sense with the scarceness of books written in Javanese as Indonesian education has regulated all textbooks to be printed in Bahasa Indonesia. Books published in certain countries are closely linked to the language used in school, therefore, as Javanese is less spoken -and written- and only put as an additional subject at school, the books written in Javanese are definitely at risk.
In my opinion, it is necessary to learn and use pure Mongolian. People should use their own language to learn and protect their history and culture. Language study may be affected by political policy or educational reform, however, it is citizens’ rights to learn and use own language.
In China, the phenomenon that the ethnic minorities are assimilating by the Han nationality occurs not only in the Mongolian but also in other minority communities. My hometown is in Guizhou, where is a minority area like Mongolia. The young generation of the local minority has rarely said minority languages. Chinese is the only language that is used by them in their daily life. As mentioned in this article, the process of urbanization is the main cause of this phenomenon. With the process of urbanization, the context of the Chinese is in a dominant position in all aspects of their lives. Ethnic minorities receive Chinese education rather than their language. In addition, Chinese is the official language while minority languages are only available in certain places. Therefore, in order to adapt to the Chinese context, the number of speakers of minority languages has become less and less. At the same time, the language of a few ethnic groups is in a dangerous position.
The awareness of protecting a specific culture or language is a great thing. It seems there is a dilemma between maintaining a traditional language and the eager desire to take more participant in the out world. With worldwide increasing globalization and urbanization, people realize it is a trend to learn more about the outside world in order to achieve personal development, career advance or business success. It is a big challenge that how to get more from the outside world and at the same time retain his/her own culture and language. Take aboriginal Australian for example, who speak and keep their own aboriginal languages, they find it difficult to find a good job in cities such as Sydney or Melbourne. It is a global issue that getting beneficial from urbanization based on keeping specific tradition.
Thanks for sharing this article. It is a surprise to me as I did not realize that there is such a serious language conflict between Chinese and Mongol. However, it is not big news that conflicts exist between languages. Minor languages are more likely to be affected by dominant languages due to urbanization, socialization and globalization. Protecting own culture is important in contemporary society in order to retain global cultural diversity. However, negatively eliminating and restricting culture from other languages would not benefit the preservation of the own culture. Mongolian government should work on positive attempts to promote its own culture and expand its influence on the world.
I am convinced that it is not easy to entirely maintain a long-established culture or language use in the current era due to the neck-breaking speed of the urbanisation and modernisation. The code-switching between two languages seems to become more prevalent in the language use of the new generations. Besides, in my view, the internet and social media have a significant impact on the language use. In many posts in social media, it could be seen that there is a mixing way of using language to express a personal identity.
Anyways, burning books is not cool at all, it is hot.
Language is a part of social recognition, language has close intimacy with culture and civilization of particular country. Above given article raises genuine issue regarding language transformation. Mongolian people’s rage against inclusion of Chinese language in their dictionary is for the preserving their mother tongue. This article reminded me the language issue in Nepal, in my country there is massive impact of Hindi language in Nepali language. Nationalist organizations of Nepal have been raising voice against influence of Hindi language in Nepali language. Preserving mother tongue is going complex because young generation is quite not interested in preserve mother tongue it is because of modernization and globalization. Thus preserving mother tongue without effecting by other language is becoming today.
Thank you for sharing such an interesting post on the close relationship between language and culture. It is evident that both cultures and languages can have modification when the time passes by. The world is becoming more and more modern, which threatens traditional cultures and customs. I personally believe that young generations tend to immerse themselves into the new and modern world and put less importance to the values of traditions. This also explains the less and less interest in Mongolian lately. The fact that “pure” Mongolians are more likely to be left out did shock me and upset me a lot even though Mongolian is not my mother tongue. It is like a part of traditional value fading into ashes.
Mongolian in China can be considered a moderately-threatened language. Though it is the national language of Mongolia, more than half the world’s Mongolian speakers live in China, and most major dialect branches are spoken only in China. The spread of Chinese among Mongolian speakers, and the maintenance versus the loss of Mongolian among children in bilingual communities. It also demonstrates a new method for the quantitative study of language shift and intergenerational language transmission in language communities that are too large to be observable through ethnography alone. The loss of Mongolian has been much more gradual, and there is no identifiable “shifting generation” or “transitional generation”. Instead, the rate of shift among children raised by Mongolian-Chinese bilingual parents remains the same for all age cohorts born in the latter half of the twentieth century. Urban versus rural residence, however, plays an important role. The proportion of shifting individuals is much higher among children raised in large cities than among those raised in medium-size towns or rural areas, regardless of birth year. As China’s population becomes more urbanized, the shift from Mongolian to Chinese may accelerate in the near future. Even if the rate of shift stays the same, a steady proportional decline in each generation will still have a cumulative effect, resulting in an exponential decline in the population of Mongolian speakers.
It seems increasingly difficult to preserve traditions, customs and languages of small nations or ethnic groups. Generations of young people will perhaps always be enthusiastic to immerse themselves into other cultures which means that also inevitably use their vocabulary. It is perhaps the responsibility of older generations to try and maintain their language and culture, while also continuously education their younger ones about the importance of one’s cultural heritage. The article mentioned that there has been a sharp decline in text books published in the Mongolian language. Why does it happen? Does it mean that Mongolians are not interested in buying those text books, or in buying books written in Mongolian? Or are the books too expensive so they become unaffordable? It is a very sad statistic, but it might be the key to a change. High quality text books and literature could help reverse this situation that makes many Mongolians unhappy.
Thank you for your sharing. Language has a close relationship with cultures. It is understandable that Mongolian take a series of measures to protect their local language. The development of society and economy can promote the use of Chinese. But it is normal that a language will affect another language. Language is also changing because of the time. Protecting Mongolia is also a way to protect their culture. However, i do not think their ways are correct. The spread pf Mongolia needs to rely on local government and schools. Education of Mongolia is very important to continue using their local language. They need to make a plan which is efficient and feasible instead of burning dictionaries. From other perspective, Mongolian may need to consider benefits of Chinese and positive effects to Mongolia, taking examples by other languages to develop their local language.
I agree that as the urbanization comes in to play, the language has changed and people adopt new borrowed words from other cultures. This reminds me once when I was very young about the purification of Thai language. Thai linguists did not agree about that and they tried to create new Thai words to use instead of using English words as well. But that did not work well. Finally, people forgot about that and it became like a hilarious joke that the old generation people tried to do to do against the development of society. I personally think that there are two sides in the same coin: some people think that the language should be stagnant, but some people think that the language should be dynamic.
Thank you for an interesting post. After reading this post, I thought about the situation of Japanese languages. Much Japanese linguistics also agrees that urbanization and industrialization have caused changes to its national language. Japan has also borrowed several new words from western society as well. However, I strongly believe that the situation of Japan is less serious than the case study of this post. As a student who studies language and culture, this case study is an example that language teachers need to consider in their classroom. As a language teacher we need to question our self: to what extent should we acknowledge language as being pure?
Thanks Gegentuul for sharing. Let me know how the mongols protect their language. Language is the carrier of society. Protecting language protects the development of culture to some extent. The decline of Mongolian language level among Mongolian youth strengthens the determination of Mongolian to protect the language. But killing the dictionary is not the best way, there should be better actions to protect their language. For example, to strengthen the Mongolian youth language identity.
Hi Gegentuul, thanks for sharing how Mongols fight for protecting the purity of their mother tongue. I can understand the Mongolian language represents the cultural identity of Mongols. Globalization and urbanization indeed lead to difficulty in maintaining language purity. However, what they need to do is not to feel angry and to complain about the consequences of Mongolian-Chinese code-switching. I think the inner Mongolia government should emphasize teaching the Mongolian language in schools for the imposition of the mother tongue, and parents can teach children more about Mongolian characters and traditional customs at home.
Thank you for this attractive post. From my perspectives, the social movement of promoting pure Mongolian indicated their fear of losing their culture. We all hope our culture can be protected, and language plays a central role within this idea because it is used to educate generations by generations. I strongly sympathize Inner Mongolians. However, I believe that culture can also be developed with so-called ‘impure mother tongue’. Taiwanese is my home language, and it came from one of the Fujianese dialects and were influenced by Japanese. It has become impure for many years and generations, and this has also become a unique characteristic in Taiwanese. With learning this kind of language, we can also acknowledge the history in our country. I personally value and appreciate this feature in my home language because it shows the beauty of diversity in Taiwan.
Burning the books shows the understandable fear and anger these Mongolian peoples have in regards the threat of China and the Chinese language on their own identity and culture. Unfortunately, the world is changing too rapidly and certain cultures are at threat of being consumed by the larger and more dominant ones. While I understand the statement in burning the books, there must be a better way of protecting culture. Languages change constantly so maybe this is just part of that process as well.
Language is an integral part of cultural identity, and preserving their native language can signify a lot to a society that feels that is increasingly losing its identity to a more dominant one, such as the case of Mongolia and their neighbour China.
Codeswitching can be very natural to members of certain community segments, mostly if there is constant contact with another culture that uses a different language. This is how different varieties or creoles of a language can emerge. However, I sympathize with the case portrayed here of the “pure Mongolian” fight. It seems that certain members of the Mongolian community believe that with the loss of their language also there is a loss of their culture. Language purification is quite an ideological concept, and I believe is natural for languages to evolve and get mixed with other languages. Regardless, we need to be sensitive to what members of a specific community desire, and listen to their claims.
China is a multi-ethnic country composed of fifty-six ethnic groups. The language and customs of many ethnic minorities have been dissipated in the long history of history due to the great integration of the nation. As a member of the Han nationality with the largest number of people in China, I am honest and do not pay much attention to the demise of minority languages. I used to think that the demise of minority languages and scripts is a historical choice. However, with the deepening of learning and the development of self-thinking, I found that the demise of minority languages and languages is not a natural and historical principle, but a political push. I used to live in high school in a minority autonomous county in Yunnan Province. The people there are mainly Tibetans. There I found that Tibetan is a mature language both in speech and vocabulary. Most of my Tibetan classmates use Tibetan when they communicate with their parents and grandparents at home. But most of them have not written Tibetan. Even some Tibetan students can’t understand Tibetan and can’t identify Tibetan characters. However, there are also local protections related to Tibetan. There is a school that teaches in Tibetan and Mandarin. Tibetan grades can be used as college entrance examination scores. But as mentioned in the article, Tibetan language scores are not high. In addition, the choice of the university is also very limited. Only a few schools or a small number of majors are available for them to choose from. Therefore, entering Tibetan schools there has become the last refuge for students who have not achieved good grades in ordinary high schools.
Thank you for sharing the status of “pure” Mongolian. As stated above, due to urbanization and industrialization, pure Mongolian faces the assimilation of Chinese. Due to social and economic needs, the chance of using pure Mongolian is declined. Resulting from this, Mongolian schools may place less emphasis on teaching traditional and pure Mongolian. As a result, Mongolian mixed with Chinese are frequently saw in their society. This phenomenon may exist in other societies as well. This reminds me of the concept of the imposition of languages. Even though the influence of imperial powers on linguistic practices and languages are declined, the imposition of language can happen along with the economic globalization and pedagogies of globalization. For the sake of culture security, national pure language should be payed much attention. This can be stared from laying much emphasis on national language education at school.
It is often forgotten that language not only has a strong tie to identity and cultural values of a society but also serves as a tool of communication in trade, education development globally. Therefore, it is understandable that urbanisation can lead to linguistic intergration and pose a threat to native language purification. There is certainly a contrast between the needs for economic growth and maintenance of original language for inner Mongols, but other potential factors should also be put into consideration. The outburst of Mongolian citizens suggest policy makers to implement appropriate strategies to preserve the use of authentic Mongolian within urbaned communities.
Preserving the language is as important as preserving the nation’s culture, values and customs since the language is one of the fundamental factors. In Vietnamese today society, the instances of code-switching language can be found easily on social network and it is obviously a threat to the Vietnamese cultural identity. However, some people also proposed the perspective that such borrowed vocabulary cannot be translated properly into Vietnamese and the acts of using those code-switching words are acceptable. Hence, it is essential for the Vietnamese people to use original words in communication as much as they can to enhance the Vietnamese cultural identity.
Thanks for the interesting read Gegentuul,
I can understand this rather ‘incendiary’ (pardon the pun) act of protest by this group of Mongols if it is in reaction to fears that their language, and by extension their culture, is disappearing and slowly being replaced by Chinese. While I an only presuming, I can imagine that for young Mongolians growing up in this area, they might view acquisition of the Chinese language as a more promising means of acquiring employment and wealth in the future. Which is a practical conclusion to draw in today’s economic world, where languages hold different levels of ‘currency’ in terms of their ability to help people acquire wealth and capital. While acts of protests, especially with the aid of social media as a platform in today’s society, provide a means of drawing people’s attention to issues such as these, it is important that what happens next is constructive and not fueled too strongly by ideological fears. I hope that this group of Mongolians find a means of preserving their language in the face of language shift in their area, because I believe that to lose a language and culture is a terrible thing. So long as they can convince their younger generations of the importance of maintaining traditional customs and language then perhaps they’ll be ok. As a way forward, and depending on the population demographics, a bilingual approach to education that teaches both languages, and celebrates multilingualism and diversity could be a constructive move, if not too idealistic (I wonder).
My country is also a small country near China, so I could partly understand why they react fiercely towards the dictionaries. We always wish to resist impact of China and to claim the unique identities of the country due to some historical and economical issues. Because of the proximity in terms of space, code-switching is inevitable, and those Mongolians living near the border have to use Chinese loanwords to facilitate their business. Yet, in them retains the pride in their country that awaits to burst out when there is a chance. The development of social media enables the news about the endangered state of Mongolian to be wide-spread, creating a community of protesters. In my opinion, to protect their language, they need to have more sustainable plans and actions rather than just burn the dictionaries.
Change is inevitable. Change is not always good. But change will happen nonetheless. From my personal perspective, book burning and obstinance to linguistic evolution is a rather conservative and seemingly counterproductive approach to take to voice complaints. Not to be misunderstood, I understand the significance of maintaining one’s linguistic and cultural background but technology and globalization has had a profound influence on today’s youth, from every facet of the world. It would be undeniably complex to ask the next generation of Mongolians to only speak their mother tongue or to not speak the language they feel is necessary for themselves. I can understand wanting to maintain the education of their mother tongue in schools as a way of upholding traditional practices but language is ever-evolving and as more people from various backgrounds interact language will continue to adapt and change. In my opinion, the importance of maintaining regional native dialects in Mongolia and the linguistic preference of Mongolian’s youngest generation needs to be understood as two separate conversations.
Thank you Gegentuul for this interesting read. I can see why the Mongols would be concerned about their language diminishing. It is a part of their history, culture and lifestyle, thus parents and grandparents have every right to worry about their children’s’ growth and language exposure. Although burning dictionaries does seem like an extreme act to show their anger, but it also shows how much they care about their native language. It is their precious language, so I could see why they could not just sit down and watch the Chinese loan words take over their printed materials. Through this reading, I’ve learned that English is not the only “living language” that continuously changes, but other languages undergo changes too due to external factors. However, seems like people react to this differently, as seen with the Mongols.
My thoughts seem to take a different route from most people as this blog post reminds me of the two different approaches to dictionary-making: descriptive vs. prescriptive. Whereas prescriptive dictionaries “prescribe” the supposedly standard and correct language usage, their descriptive counterparts describe how the language is used in the practicalities including linguistic features and connotations that might be considered to be due to misconceptions. Politics aside, I think the dictionaries mentioned in the blog post might be said to reflect the evolution of language in Inner Mongolia, with its additional inclusions of Chinese loanwords.
I don’t think loan words from China make Mongolian words less pure. In Vietnam, we consider loan words as a significant part of our vocabulary, and these loan words are beautiful, to be honest. What makes Mongolian outraged is that they feel the power of China is overwhelming in their country, not just simply because of these dictionaries. However, it is understandable as there are people who deeply want their language (which represents their nation, culture, identity) to be distinguished from the other. Because it is traditionally dictated that a country will no longer have its sovereign once it lost its language.
To me, having loanwords from other languages is considered to enrich home language’s diversity if those borrowed words are adopted and used in a moderate and reasonable way. Indeed, the young generations do not take this issue seriously as they sometimes, for example in Vietnam, have a daily conversation using lots of English words even though Vietnamese words clearly convey the same meaning. However, excluding inappropriate attitude or having any intention to destroy “pure” languages, it is quite unfair to blame all on young people as this happens for a long time. Taking an example of the word “television”, it comes from ancient Greek but is used originally in French, English and other European countries. Also, “television” is adopted under different forms in many Asian countries such as “tivi” in Vietnamese or “televisi” in Indonesian.
I am originally from Mongolia, so I am a bit familiiar with this matter. I find that this issue is not only related to language heritage, and there must be other things to be considered. In mongolian language, there have been a wide range of loan words from Turkish (it is not obvious who borrowed), Tibetian, Manchu, Chinese, Russian and English as well and loan words are condered one of the main sources to enrich vocabulary of any language. However, in that case, I think the reason why outrage emerged is that the offending Chinese words were included in the official dictionary eventhough similar, replaceable Mongolian words exist in Mongolian language. Beyond the language issue, Mongolians reside in Inner Mongolia which is their homeland consituting minority and dominated by the Chinese (17% of the total population are regarded as a Mongolian in the Inner Mongolia according to the cencus) and they strive to preserve Mongolian language and culture in their homeland.
In my opinion, due to the development of globalisation and urbanisation, keeping a language pure is a difficult thing. In my country, Vietnamese people borrow an array of loan words from various languages such as French or English; for example, radio, cacao or cafe. Moreover, there are several words which are hard to convey the original meaning exactly and succinctly into Vietnamese; therefore, some Vietnamese people have to keep the pure word in English or French. In addition, in recent years, Vietnamese young generation have tended to use code-switching languages in their day-to-day dialogues; thus, this can make the value of cultural identity lose easily.
Personally, I think it is hard to keep a language pure, especially in the urbanization and globalization. Languages affect each other in different ways. The loan of words from other languages is simple because the original meaning of things stems from “that” language and cannot be replaced by an exact word in “this” language, hence, people choose to use that word, gradually it becomes a word belonged to their language. I assume that Mongolian people, as mentioned above, have the national self-respect, so they fight for pure Mongolian. However, the socialization processes of Mongol migrant children make it more difficult with the effect of Outer Mongolia and social media use.
Hi Gegentuul, Thank you for your interesting post about the Mongolian fight for their pure language. In my point of view, there are many factors that lead to the dominance of other languages in a particular language. For example, in order for one language to affect others, there should be an appropriate medium. The Internet is one of the powerful platforms that allows languages to develop. In other words, the world is now virtually small, for one person can text a message or make a video chat with others instantly. All they need is internet access. Moreover, the availability of the internet is now more widespread than ever before, so the effect of the internet on language development is even unpredictable.
This essay suggests that cultural interactions can have significant influence on particular languages, hence the speakers’ identities. This battle for ‘pure’ Mongolian, to some extent, resembles to Vietnamese language today. Some Vietnamese people are criticizing young generation for their code-switching several languages in their daily conversations such as English and Vietnamese. However, as Keelan and Thuong Trang said, Vietnamese is not ‘pure’ since the aftermath of long-term wars. In fact, Vietnamese people borrows a lot of loan words from several languages including English and French. Moreover, it is true that the young generations nowadays tend to use more code-switch and less Sino-Vietnamese (as Keelan said). A majority of them may even do not know what meanings those Sino-Vietnamese carry and how to use them accurately. Sometimes, it concerns me that whether such a way of code-switching or mixing several languages together in daily conversations leads to the loss of my cultural identity or not. It is really hard to say.
Language is synonymous with identity. What we are looking at here, in my opinion, is purely political with a linguistic flavour. Franco during the Spanish civil war forbade all dialects or languages to be spoken apart from the standard Spanish. This infuriated members of other language and the consequences were severe. Spanish represented the identity and image Franco wished to perpetuate and stablish. What if Franco favoured a different dialect? This takes out the linguistic element making it political. I dare say we have a similar situation in the case of this blog: alterior motives. Personally, I do not believe language fusion is a bad thing. Language is in constant flux, shaped and influenced by the happenings of the times such as the very language we are employing now; English.
The case of how the young generation of Inner Mongolia is switching to speaking Chinese reminds me of a totally opposite case of the Szekely Hungarians who, despite living in the very land of Romania, continue to identify themselves as Hungarians (this case was discussed by Ingrid Piller in her book Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice) as well as the case of the autonomous and monolingually Swedish-speaking region of Aland Island which belongs to Finland. I don’t think that it’s necessary that the prominent language always takes over and replaces the one with fewer speakers, but it is a matter of how people value and preserve their own cultures that can really protect their linguistic heritage.
I agree with the comment made by Thuong Tran about how ‘pure’ Vietnamese has become ‘impurified’ by English loan words that do not have an equivalent term in Vietnamese. However, that is not always the case since the young Vietnamese generation (or a great many of them) tend to more and more use English in their everyday speech as they get so immersed in the English-speaking environment (e.g. at their international schools) and spend most of their time on social media. In so doing, they somewhat sacrifice the opportunities to gain better literacy in their mother tongue and then many words (mostly Sino-Vietnamese, used by the older generation, such as “bài xích”, “cổ xúy”, “phiến diện”) seem no longer familiar and understandable today.
This article is interesting in that it tells how language can be influenced by factors such as interaction with other cultures. I think this is happening in many languages. With globalisation, for example, there are more loan words that are originated from English and European languages in Japanese. Many new English-origin words are listed newly in dictionaries each year. Some linguists are actually concerned about the loss of linguistic beauty of the ‘pure’ Japanese language, calling the phenomenon of language change ‘linguistic pollution’. However, I personally feel that it cannot be helped to some extent because languages have always been changing (and this is the nature) just as how people see their country and culture changes over time.
I’m thinking about the possibility that language purification effort comes from the other end of the language shift, which is, in this case, from China. In the context that more and more Mongol young generations switch to Chinese, who can make sure that their adoption is 100% Chinese standard? One may claim that standardised proficiency tests can measure the language levels of a Mongol Chinese learner; however, the proficiency may not be a reliable indicator to say that this person is using the ‘pure’ Chinese. So, would it be possible that some groups of Chinese who love their language and want to protect it from being ‘mixed up’ or ‘impurified’ by non-Chinese users will stand up to call for their mother tongue purification?
This leads me to think about our age of English as Lingua Franca where different regions/countries may have their own ways of speaking and using English. Is there any possibility that in the future, the ‘pure’ English users – with their great pride of the pure and standard English – will initiate a movement to purify their language? Even though this might be called, in a way, discrimination, who knows what will happen?
In Vietnam which is my country, there is also linguistic code-meshing phenomenon between English Vietnamese and Vietnamese English in recent years. Some people see these linguistic phenomenon normal, some criticize them because they said that we are losing our ‘pure’ Vietnamese and we should value traditional linguistic heritage and avoid code-meshing. However, there is some words whose meanings cannot be transliterated into Vietnamese in a succinct way so many linguistic professional performers decide to keep them in their ‘pure’ form in English, especially in specialized English. For example, the word ‘marketing’ when first emerged in Vietnamese market study, people tended to translate it into Vietnamese word like “tiếp thị”, but then they realized that this Vietnamese word cannot reflect all the meaning aspects of the English word “marketing”. Finally, they decided to keep “marketing” is marketing, not translate it anymore, and people use this word like a normal word and everyone also accepts that. For me, it is not too negative to accept a loanword from another foreign language because we cannot deter the nature of social changes. However, in terms of national linguistic ideology, English has never been officially recognized as a Second Language in Vietnam although there is a urgently necessity of English proficient level required from Vietnamese employers as well as FDI corporations.
I can appreciate their fight to protect their language. Yes, the habitants of Inner Mongolia tend to code-switch between Chinese and Mongolian, as well as integrate Chinese loan-words into their daily speech, but does this mean that the original Mongolian language equivalents should be replaced in printed dictionaries? I understand the political, educational and official domains in which Chinese in used, and its increasing use in Mongolia for ‘higher social positions’ (Schatz, 2012). However, I personally believe that language preservation should be of the utmost importance in situations of printing dictionaries or recording languages. If the loan-words are going to be acknowledged in the dictionary in order to represent current language use in a particular area, that is okay. However it upsets me that the traditional and ‘pure’ Mongolian words were left out, when they represent not only the history of a language, but a story and a culture.
References
Schatz, M. (2012). The creation of Sinism: Mongolian-Chinese language contact in Inner Mongolia. Retrieved from: https://www.academia.edu/2236051/The_creation_of_Sinism_Mongolian-Chinese_language_contact_in_Inner_Mongolia
Hi everyone,
The “purist” approach that the Mongolians chose to challenge assimilation suggests two qualities of language: its evolution is unavoidable, and it’s an effective tool for assimilation. Mongolian language not only mix with Chinese but also with other influences like Russian. However, the increasing influence of Chinese reflects the importance of the economical factor in language evolution. The power of assimilation in language is inherent from the fact that identity is embedded in the way a language is used, which isd enhanced with the development and spread of social media, like the author suggests.
A revival of pure Mongolian language would mean a political breakthrough or even breakdown of ideologies and policies that does not look to be in the foreseeable future for the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and its peoples.
The decline of the pure Mongolian language came to the attention of anthropologists in the early 2000 era. It began from the urban and upwardly mobile Mongols due to the Chinese language infiltration which affected Mongolians socially, economically and politically. By 2009 the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region had only 19,000 elementary school students enrolled to learn the Mongolian language. This signified a major decline and decrease of the pure Mongolian language by 82.27% from the 1980s to 2009. But by January 2018 the final school to teach in the Mongolian language was in the Bayangol Prefecture. However, simultaneously the final school was shut down in 2018. Bilingual households speaking pure Mongolian have also dropped below 16% and continue to fall.
Political controversy and contentious issues surrounding the pure Mongolian language are at the core problem of the language loss. Cultural degradation has been dominated by politics too. What was once a remarkable group of people who had a unique Utopian community and a nomadic existence is now a shadow of a closed-lipped society of forbidden language usage.
Bulag, U.E. (2003). Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China, American Anthropologist, Vol. 105, No. 4, Special Issue: Language Politics and Practices, p.p.753-763.
Schatz, M. (2012). The Creation of Sinism: Mongolian-Chinese language contact in Inner Mongolia – https://www.academia.edu
https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CERD/Shared%20Documents/CHN/INT_CERD_NGO_CHN_31909_E.docx.
Your post reminds me of a foreign correspondent episode aired on the abc in May, 2017. It also showed the effect of urbanization in Mongolia, however it focused on eagle hunting. The report showed that eagle hunting is a dying tradition, it is a skill that takes many years to master. The episode focused on a family where the father was passing his knowledge to his daughter. Traditionally only male members of their community are trained to hunt; but the male members of this family had moved away from the village to urban places for purposes of education and employment. Just as urbanization and industrialization have given way to a decline in the use of the mother tongue; centuries of traditional and cultural processes such as eagle hunting have also similarly been affected.
Information on the foreign correspondent episode can be found on the following link:
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-02/mongolian-girl-keeps-ancient-eagle-hunting-tradition-alive/8481956?pfmredir=sm
Where do language educators go with these issues? In situations where “pure” varieties are expected to be taught or spoken but heteroglossic varieties are used every day, language teachers, and I would argue, academics writing about the issues are in a somewhat precarious situation. There are strong sociocultural and social justice arguments for starting with the student/individuals and legitimizing and drawing on the varieties they speak in learning, i.e. in this case, “impure” Mongolian. On the other hand, the fear of language loss sets up equally compelling arguments for resisting mixing. How do we reconcile translanguaging with the movement for language revival and development? Revival and development should not have to mean freezing languages in past forms, but how do we work through these issues with minoritized languages?
I believe that social identity is a complex inferential and social process and if we want to understand as researchers and acquirers of language and culture why an acquirer’s claim to a social identity failed at some particular moment, we need to sort out the level that accounts for the failure. It makes good sense to understand social identity as a social construct that is both inferred and interactionally achieved through displays and ratifications of acts and stances, from the point of view of an infant or small child coming to understand social order. Failure to establish social identity may not be due to the acquirer’s lack of understanding of how to perform particular acts and stances linguistically but to a lack of understanding as to how in that particular community those acts and stances are conventionally related to particular social identities.
A deep insight into this special social problem. A nice reading material during a 20 minutes coffee break.