Language contact and Chinese nationalism

Abstract

Languages come into contact for a variety of reasons. In China (including both mainland and Taiwan), where Mandarin-based modern Chinese is the sole official language, Mandarin has been in intensive contact under the drive of nationalism with other languages, be they minority languages or Sinitic languages in the past several decades. Consequently, varied degree of language shift is taking place among a large population in mainland China and Taiwan. With first-person experience and observation during fieldwork on Tibeto-Burman languages, it is found that multilingualism in minority areas in Yunnan has started to give way to Chinese. The shift to modern Mandarin typically undergoes three stages: a) child bilingualism in modern Chinese and a native minority language, b) predominate use of modern Chinese or a local dialect of Mandarin, and c) monolingualism in standard Chinese. All three stages can be found in different communities in Yunnan. This three-stage language shift is equally applicable to non-Mandarin Sinitic languages such as Shanghai and Min: a) child bilingualism in modern Chinese and non-Mandarin Chinese, b) predominate use of modern Chinese, and c) monolingualism in standard Chinese. In these Chinese topolects, a new, typically reduced, variety of the original may co-exist with standard Chinese in the second stage, which represents transitional bilingualism. The contact and competition between Mandarin and Southern Min in Taiwan also follows this model by and large. As such, the development from child bilingualism to transitional bilingualism and eventually to monolingualism under linguistic nationalism may be regarded as a general model for making monolingual speakers of standard Chinese.