By Liu Dairong, Zong Wei and Zhang Jiansheng

The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China ensures that the people of all nationalities have the freedom to use and develop their own spoken and written languages. China's Law on Ethnic Regional Autonomy stipulates that the departments of all levels in ethnic autonomous regions employ the spoken and written languages or Putonghua in the locality in accordance with the regulations on the exercise of autonomy in those areas.

In 2015, China began to initiate the fight against poverty. “Decision of the State Council of the Central Committee of the CPC on winning the battle against poverty” is the guideline for the poverty alleviation all through the country. In the fight against poverty, enabling children in poor areas to speak Putonghua has also become an important part of poverty alleviation work, from which we can see that communicating in the common language: Putonghua is the prerequisite for carrying out economic and social activities on the path of modernization. The achievement in popularizing Putonghua has played a positive role in China's political, economic, cultural and other work. However, we have to see the endangerment of some weak dialects and the disappearance of some ethnical minorities’ languages. We all know, 2019 was the international Year of Indigenous Languages initiated by the UNESCO，which called for protecting and preserving the diversity of the world’s languages and cultures.

In China, under the support of national principles and policies, while we are vigorously popularizing Putonghua, we are also helping ethnic minority people revitalize their own languages at the same time. In the academic research community, the protection of languages, especially endangered languages, has also caught the attention of scholars. The main achievements are reflected in three aspects, the first is to theoretically explore the significance of the protection of nationalities' languages and endangered languages; and the second is the case investigation and study of specific nationalities' languages and endangered languages. Scholars have made rescue records and descriptions of many ethnic minority languages and endangered languages in China. The third is to make Digital Archives and descriptive research on ethnic minority languages and endangered languages. In a word, while the promotion of Putonghua has achieved good results, the study of minority languages and endangered languages in China has made remarkable achievements in terms of theories, rescue records and descriptions, audio collections and so on. Above all, in order to protect and revitalize languages which have lost vitality, family language planning is the key factor in language revitalization.

Taking one Ethnic Minority language as an example, Bai Language, which does not have a writing system, is comparatively easier to lose its vitality in daily use. This group of Bai ethnic people are living in Yinyuan Town of Yuxi city, Yunnan province, which is far from the main body of Bai ethnic minority in Dali prefecture. Through interaction with other neighboring languages in the process of modernization, the Bai language in Yinyuan has changed drastically in either pronunciation or vocabulary. According to our survey and statistics, in 2007, by using a Chinese language proficiency test, 99% of the Bai nationality people living in Yinyuan town are proficient in Putonghua, which showed that Putonghua has become a proficient communication tool along with their own indigenous language. The survey in 2017 showed that the average percentage of Putonghua skilled population is above 97% among the Bai people. Comparing the data from 2017 with that of 2007, we found that their overall proficiency level in their own indigenous language decreased by 12.4 percent. Among the 9 villages where Bai people are living, two villages where economy is comparatively more developed, people have more chance to do business or communicate with other nationalities. Accordingly, their Putonghua language proficiency is more advanced. Other 7 villages are located a little far away from the Yinyuan town, and they have less chance to communicate with Han nationality, although their Putonghua proficiency is good enough for communication. From 2007 to 2017, the communication proficiency of Bai language in the seven villages didn't show such obvious decrease as that in the two villages which are near the town.

The research group carried out another research in order to examine Bai people's language attitudes and the affecting factors as well. The research results show that Bai people have positive language attitudes towards both Putonghua and their own nationality language. They are loyal to their indigenous language in ideology, and they strongly wish their language can be passed on forever. But in practice, they do not know how to revitalize their own language. There is a big ideological and practical gap between generations. The first generation are more likely to communicate in Bai language, but the second and third generations are more likely to communicate in Putonghua. The third generation are usually students and they mainly use Putonghua in schools. After school, they communicate with their parents and grandparents in Putonghua. Parents and grandparents make concession and have to use Putonghua communicating with children due to the concern on their Chinese subject examination scores. So the first and the second generations' language practice is affected by schools' language policy when communicating with children, even though they want to maintain their indigenous language and pass it on to the next generations. So language policy in schools affects that of village language communities, and the language policy in communities affect that of families. In this area, Bai language has been thoroughly researched from the perspective of language protection, but we believe that language planning of family is the key factor in language vitalization. After a thorough research among the family members and the Bai Communities in this town, we found that economic status of Putonghua is contrastively higher than that of their indigenous language, though they are all proud of their nationality identity and they are all loyal to their own identity in ideology. The first generation feel that they are more at ease when communicating in their own nationality's language, and they all strongly hope their offspring can fluently speak their indigenous language along with Putonghua. But the most important factor is that 65% of the communication among family members is in Putonghua, 35% of the communication is carried out in their nationality language. So the economic status in their evaluation is the decisive factor. The language usage frequency in family domain is crucial to language vitality. So family language planning is the most important factor in language protection and language revitalization. Along with the guiding policies from the government, we should help families to make their own micro language policy.

(Liu is an associate professor at the School of International Languages and Cultures, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics; Zong is a Ph.D candidate at the School of Ethnology and Sociology, Ming Zu University of China; Zhang is a lecturer at the School of International Languages and Cultures, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics)