The Dying Manchu Language

In the Manchu village of Sanjiazi, China, there is a population of a little over 1,000 people. Three-fourths of the people in this village identify themselves as part of the Manchu culture; however, only 18 people in the entire village are able to speak Manchu fluently. During the 17th century all the villagers could speak Manchu, but due to the drastic increase in the predominance of the Mandarin Chinese language and culture, the majority of the villagers abandoned their native language and started to learn Mandarin. By learning Mandarin, it was easier to get jobs, communicate with other people from outside the village, and understand what was going on politically and economically in the country. Throughout the generations, therefore, the number of people who learned Manchu kept getting smaller and smaller because of the language’s relative unimportance in society. To try to preserve the language, the Manchu people set up an elementary school that teaches the language. Only 76 people go to this school, however, which is obviously not enough people in order to save the language. Soon, the entire Manchu language will be lost, as well as the culture since the most of the Manchus have forgone their native customs and taken up Mandarin ones in order to fit in to Chinese society. There are no longer any Manchu-style homes in the village, less people own or wear ethnically Manchu dresses, and Manchu rituals are not practiced as often as they used to be. Sadly, it is inevitable that the Manchu culture be lost to history, ceasing to exist in the near future.

When to Save a Language

When deciding whether to save a language or to let it die, there are many factors to consider. First of all, there must be a significant number of speakers of the language – at least 20,000 or so. If there are not many speakers, then it would be very difficult to preserve the language and have it passed down to future generations. Another important condition is the presence of a written form of the language. If the language has a written form, it is a good indicator that the language is worth trying to save. If there is no written form, however, there is much less incentive to attempt to save it. Without a written form, there are no books, poems, dictionaries, documents, etc., that give a complete picture of the culture of the language group. In order to fully understand a language and its culture, linguists really need the language to be written down so they can immerse themselves in the culture and thereby figure out the best techniques to save the language. One more condition that is essential to deciding whether or not to save a language is the attitude toward it by its speakers. If the speakers really want to preserve the language, then there’s a good chance that they will focus on learning/maintaining their language throughout future generations. If the speakers feel it is just better to give in to the more dominant languages of society and forget about their own language, an attempt to save it would be futile since the natives would have no motivation to keep it alive.

Critical Thinking in Linguistics 115

Our Social Issues class incorporates the idea of critical thinking by making us ponder about how languages develop over time. By the professor giving us several examples of diglossic societies, mutually intelligible languages, and regional dialects, we the students can use this information to form our own hypotheses about how other languages have developed over the centuries. Since all this lecture information is relatively new to most of us, we can't rely on past information or experiences to think of ideas about other languages' histories. Instead, we have to "think outside the box" and come up with our own reasons as to why other languages have converged, diverged, or died out completely. This also brings in the idea of the accommodation of the uncertainty. Since we are not experts in the linguistics field, we cannot say for sure why and how languages have developed or faded away. We have to formulate our own guesses (although they may not be certain) and try to back up our ideas with the examples given to us in class.

The Pope and Germany Pre-WWII

In Daniel Jonah Goldhagan’s article, “A German Lesson: the Fallacy of One True Path,” Goldhagan makes an analogy between the pope’s way of thinking and the state of Germany before WWII. He makes this comparison so he can draw a parallel between the pope’s and Nazi Germany’s narrow-mindedness in regards to having one group of people dominate over all other groups. Before the war, Hitler’s idea was to elevate the Aryans to the highest and most superior race on earth. In order to do this, he and the Nazis had to exterminate all other races that stood in their way, no matter what the cost. Likewise, the pope regards Catholicism as the best religion in the world, and he “denigrates other religions as not being true religions or paths to salvation.” In addition, the pope’s mindset and the state of Germany pre-war are connected since both worked hand in hand in developing a very anti-Semitic society. Contrary to popular belief, the catholic church “supported the Nazis’ and fascists’ anti-Semitic race laws. … With regard to Jews, the church was not a fundamental antidote to the problem, but part of it.” It seems that the pope and the Nazis have more in common than most people think!