Fuzhou Dialect

Our language is shedding tears all over
Because its own children are deserting it,
Leaving it alone with its heavy burden.
Those who speak it are labelled out-of-date,
Although it runs faster than an eagle.
This tongue of mine I use to appreciate taste;
How can one taste with someone else's tongue?

> From a Wolof poem by Useyno Gey Cosaa

Diversity

Globalization has made us increasingly aware of both the unity and the diversity of our planet. Often than not, people narrow the term “diversity” to the aspect of its biological meaning. But in fact its idea goes much further beyond that. So, what I’ll be talking about in this section is mainly focused on the topics of cultural and linguistic diversity, which can be thought of as the totality of the “cultural and linguistic richness” present within humanity. The expansion of the global economy is blurring the distinct identities of local communities, and the development of the information society will ultimately bring about the cultural and linguistic homogenization. Therefore, diversity is at risk.

But what matters, one may wonder, if we abandon the language we are now speaking and change to a more dominant one?

Some may claim that languages are all alike, because they all have essential elements: sounds, words, phrases, sentences. However, how we say things, or how every language makes use of its essential elements, varies remarkably. In English, the verb “do” has five forms of inflection: do, doing, did, does, and done. In Fuzhou dialect, the simple sound [ma], when combined with different tones, can produce many meanings that are quite irrelative: mă is to grasp, mā is a grandmother or a horse, mà is a cat, má is to scold, măh is wheat, etc. Also, what we say is well adapted to our environments. One wouldn’t expect to find scores of words for different types of snow in the languages spoken in Sahara, or dozens of words for different types of sand in the languages of Siberia. In this sense, our languages have encoded the cultural knowledge that we have inherited from our ancestors, and each generation continues to add to this heritage. Therefore, every language is unique and unsubstitutable. However, by saying so I don’t imply that languages aren’t equal. They are different from one another, but no superior, no inferior, just different. Someone living near the equator could as well describe a certain kind of snow in his own language by using a much more detailed description instead of a single word, and the reverse is also true.

The world’s languages together represent an extraordinary wealth of human creativity, containing and expressing the total “pool of ideas”, the universe of thought produced by the human species. But such richness of humanity is fading away at a tremendous speed. To convince my reader of this discomforting fact, I only need to list some basic statistics (taken from Terralingua):

• There are 6-7,000 languages in the world.
• The median number of speakers of a language is probably around 5-6,000.
• Over 95% of the world’s languages have fewer than 1 million speakers.
• Some 5,000 languages have fewer than 100,000 speakers.
• Over 3,000 languages have fewer than 10,000 speakers.
• Some 1,500 languages have fewer than 1,000 speakers.
• Some 500 languages had in 1999 fewer than 100 speakers.
• 83-84% of the world’s languages are endemic: they exist in one country only.

Fuzhou dialect

Linguistically speaking, Fuzhou dialect is not a dialect, but a de facto independent language. Some people also call it Mindong or Foochowese. But I still prefer this term because it is the most widely accepted one. Spoken in and around Fuzhou city, it is the second largest language in Fujian province (secondary to Minnan). For a detailed information about Fuzhou dialect, please refer to its Wikipedia entry.

As is mentioned above, over 95% of the world’s languages have fewer than 1 million users. So Fuzhou dialect, having about 10 million speakers, appears to be amongst the lucky few. But in spite of that, striking evidence of its gradual decline can be easily noticed. According to a survey conducted by Fuzhou Evening Paper in October 2006, less than half of the children living in Fuzhou city proper are able to speak this language. Truly, we can say that Fuzhou dialect is at risk.

My mother is a Fuzhou dialect speaker, and so are my nurserymaids. Therefore, I’m pretty sure the first word that came out of my babbling mouth was of Fuzhou dialect. Sarcastically, however, I avoided every chance to use it in my later life, taking it for granted that it was an outdated language belonging only to the old and the poorly-educated. Also, the adults around me, though talking and yelling in Fuzhou dialect everyday, showed little regard for its fate. I can clearly remember how my parents used to disapprove of my speaking Fuzhou dialect, and how my school teachers banned the use of it in class. No wonder, in the first twenty years of mine, my poor Fuzhou dialect was no more than a handful of basic words and fragmented sentences.

A man who has abandoned his mother tongue is a man who has forsaken his cultural identity. But it was not until I entered the University had I utterly realized that. As something within my spirit awakened, the awareness that I couldn’t proficiently speak Fuzhou dialect grew so painful that I determined to gain that ability back. In the following years I read books and dictionaries, learned the Romanized scripts, and compelled myself to talk with native speakers. Finally, the passion for studying and reviving Fuzhou dialect has secretly become what defines me.

But even after years of diligent drill, I am still unable to speak Fuzhou dialect as fluently as I can speak English or Mandarin Chinese, which has to be ascribed to the poor language acquisition back in my childhood. Of course, we can’t do a thing to change our past, but by changing people’s prejudiced attitude, we are certainly able to change our present and future. In the belief of this, I wrote down all these words. We must promote our mother tongue Fuzhou dialect, we must pass our cultural heritage to the next generation, and we must fight a good fight for linguistic and cultural diversity. It’s not an academic issue; it’s a moral issue.

What you can find in this category

At present, you can find some Fuzhou dialect learning resources, the learning material of Foochow Romanized, and the glossary of Fuzhou placenames in my website, and more stuff is coming soon.

Last updated: 2009/04/07