Our love and hate of dialects_美文_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Our love and hate of dialects

Call it the victim of progress. In the old days with no televisions or highways, we had little chance to talk to those on the other side of the mountain, so we stuck to our little quaint way of speaking. Now that we can reach another province in an hour, we've realized our special ways are part of our collective linguistic wealth. Lao She's Beijing-based novels, Northeastern comedy, Hong Kong movies, among others, would not be possible without the respective dialects.

In the tug of war between unity and diversity, the trick is in balance. Without a unifying spoken language, we won't be able to talk across provinces or even villages. But if we all talk exactly alike, we would have forsaken the little something that marks us for the richness of each of us.

There is not much a government can do about such linguistic development. But the push for putonghua is more and more like the family planning policy as I see it. It started with good intention but it may have outgrown its necessity. Unlike my generation, the young has no problem mastering the spoken form of standard Chinese, but they may regret they did not grasp a variety that could have enriched them in expressiveness.

Just imagine. China's comedy scene would be so much more barren if all the dialect-based routines disappeared.

Broadcaster:

Greg Fountain is a copy editor and occasional presenter for China Daily. Before moving to Beijing in January, 2016 he worked for newspapers in the Middle East and UK. He has an M.A in Print Journalism from the University of Sheffield, a B.A in English and History from the University of Reading.