When he tried to speak to his cousin’s children in the local dialect, Qi was surprised. The decline in local dialects among the younger generation has become more apparent in recent years as China’s president, Xi Jinping, has sought to strengthen a uniform Chinese identity. But the popularisation of a standard national language is often at the expense of regional languages, including dialects of the Han majority and ethnic languages such as Mongolian and Uyghur. It is not just ethnic languages that are being affected. In 2020, a local political representative urged the Shanghai government to invest in promoting the local dialect.

Source: The Guardian January 16, 2022 22:07 UTC