www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

USEUROPEAFRICAASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
China
Home / China / Society

Saving dialects with pop culture

China Daily | Updated: 2017-11-08 07:15

Saving dialects with pop culture

Qian Wenzhong (left), one of the founders of the Zurong Dialect Film Festival, and film director Gao Qunshu (right) pose with one of the award winners at last year's festival. [Photo/Xinhua]

Preservation campaigns have been aided by the boom in artificial intelligence

One night in late October, Zhao Yuhe found herself standing onstage at a film festival in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, flabbergasted to have just received the best actress award. The 83-year-old told the audience that she was surprised to have won, because she is a farmer, illiterate, and cannot speak Mandarin.

While her lack of language skills and education might have resulted in trouble finding jobs or communicating with her compatriots, it was not an issue at the Zurong Dialect Film Festival, which began as one of the campaigns to preserve language diversity that are becoming increasingly popular in China.

The annual festival saw 582 films featuring various dialects submitted during this, its second year. The number of entries, many of them high quality, had doubled from last year and were sent in from all over the country.

Zhao won for her role in Mobile Phone, a film about deterring juvenile crime in Guangdong. The awards committee praised her portrayal of a left-behind senior citizen who struggles to survive.

The film features the Leizhou dialect, a subbranch of the Min language group spoken mostly by people living in Fujian and Guangdong provinces.

Among the 16 other award winners were films featuring Tibetan and Cantonese.

Although widely known as "Chinese" overseas, Mandarin - or Putonghua, which means "common language" - is not the only one spoken in China. Due to its size and demographic diversity, the country has 130 languages, 10 major dialects of Mandarin and countless minor vernaculars, according to government statistics. The Ethnologue: Languages of the World goes even further, listing China as having 299 living languages, of which 275 are indigenous.

However, like many countries, urbanization and ever-growing connectivity are causing some dialects to die out, or risk becoming extinct.

"Films, along with songs and other performing arts, are crucial in maintaining linguistic diversity and preserving cultural heritage," said Cao Zhiyun, a member of the Zurong film festival's awards committee and head of the National Language Resources Protection Project.

The State-sponsored project collaborates with 250 Chinese universities and research institutes, and has recorded nearly 100 languages spoken in China since its launch in 2015. In January, the central authorities issued a directive, stressing the importance of preserving dialects and local cultures.

Cao, a linguist specializing in Mandarin and its dialects, and also vice-president of Beijing Language and Culture University, said dialect preservation is no longer solely a government endeavor. It has also gained wide public support in recent years.

Grade schools and kindergartens in many parts of the country have introduced the teaching of some subjects in local dialects. The number of talk shows and documentaries promoting dialects is steadily rising as well.

Preservation campaigns have also been aided by the recent boom in artificial intelligence technology.

IFlytek, a leading language input software provider with a particular strength in voice recognition, launched its own dialect protection project recently, inviting users to visit its mobile app and read from a selection of set texts in their mother tongue.

About 666,000 people participated in the first week alone.

Contributors are ranked by the number of text recordings they have contributed. The person who tops the list on Dec 7 will win an iPhone X, the company said.

Users can also leave a short personalized recording of their voice, which can be accessed via the app's "search for a dialect" section. The section has a "like" feature to encourage social media-like enthusiasm for dialects.

"After collecting voice samples, we want to use technology to study the dialects and boost their use among the younger generations," said Wu Junhua, from iFlytek.

He said that, after Mandarin, the company's voice recognition system performs best in Cantonese, the primary dialect in Guangdong and also widely used in Hong Kong. The system can understand 80 percent of the Cantonese spoken by its users. Tibetan and Uygur are two other languages it handles well.

The system can recognize 21 languages and dialects, Wu said.

In China, the market for dialect-related cultural products and services remains huge.

Talkmate, a Chinese online education startup, offers courses in various dialects as part of the company's partnership with the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger project, which lists 144 languages in China as ranging from "vulnerable" to "extinct".

"Even if one day there are no native speakers of a certain dialect, people can still learn and revitalize it with the help of various apps like this," Cao, the linguist, said. "This is quite an innovative way to preserve languages."

Xinhua

Editor's picks
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
 
主站蜘蛛池模板: 国产三级毛片视频 | 免费永久观看美女视频网站网址 | 九九99精品| 最新怡红院全部视频在线 | 日本三级s级在线播放 | 欧美一级看片a免费观看 | 美女被免费网站在线视频软件 | 男人的天堂免费视频 | 国产欧美日韩亚洲 | 美女性视频网站 | 亚洲精品www久久久久久久软件 | 日本三级香港三级人妇gg在线 | 欧美成人性色生活片天天看 | 欧美一区二区三区视频 | 美女黄色在线网站大全 | 色久天堂网 | 日本免费一级视频 | 亚州一级毛片在线 | 亚洲欧洲日韩综合色天使不卡 | 三级精品 | 亚洲孕交 | 在线观看精品自拍视频 | 中国老太卖淫播放毛片 | 黄色美女免费看 | 日本波多野结衣在线 | 一本色道久久88亚洲综合 | aa级毛片| 免费看成人www的网站软件 | 欧美一级三级在线观看 | 性xxxx奶大欧美高清 | 中文字幕波多野不卡一区 | 亚洲品质自拍视频 | 亚洲欧美日韩另类在线 | 国产成人综合网在线播放 | 国产欧美日韩一区二区三区在线 | 一区二区三区免费看 | 久久有这有精品在线观看 | 国产片一级aaa毛片视频 | 久草a视频 | 毛片在线免费播放 | 加勒比综合网 |