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China to Legally Standardize Language Use
China's top legislature prepares to enact a law on language use nationwide.
A law draft on commonly used Chinese language was submitted Monday to the 16th meeting of the Ninth National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee for deliberation.
In explaining the draft law to the meeting, Wang Jiaqiu, vice chairwoman of the NPC Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee, said that a uniform language has an important bearing on the state's unification, national unity as well as its social progress.
The languages of all nationalities in China should be equally respected and freely used by the people, and any form of discrimination against them must be prohibited, Wang said.
While popularizing the mandarin Chinese, the central authorities encourage the people to learn all other languages, Wang said.
The 56 nationalities in China have a total of 73 languages, 55 of which having written forms.
In accordance with the draft law, the mandarin Chinese and the standardized writing characters should be used throughout the country. Meanwhile, minority languages can be used in the areas heavily populated by ethnic groups.
Many linguists and languages experts said that various dialects in localities have made it inconvenient for people to effectively communicate and the random alternatives of writing characters sometimes suggest wrong meaning.
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