snaps | mandarin, mandarin, mandarin ::
:: taken at a middle school in Chuzhou, a small town in Anhui province. The first photo below is the wall that surrounds the school’s running track; 人人都说普通话 means “everyone speaks Mandarin.” The second photo is of two classroom doors. The door on the right reads 请说普通话 with pinyin (QING SHUO PUTONGHUA) for standard pronunciation, meaning “please speak Mandarin.” The door on the left reads 请写规范, meaning “please write standard (Chinese) characters.” The third and forth pictures are just close ups of the second.
I am glad to see educators in lower-tier Chinese cities at least making an effort to push Mandarin. I’ve spend some time at middle and high schools in Shanghai where Mandarin still seems to only be an occasional thing. Sigh. // AjS
May 15th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I think that the right to speak local languages should be encouraged, rather than discouraged.
Shanghainese and other 本地话 are not dying languages yet, but eventually may be.
Having a communal language brings communities together, although it can be used to exclude, as Shanghainese do on occasion.
Would you rather everyone spoke Mandarin to the exclusion of everything else?
As I tell the staff sometimes, a la le ge sang hei, gang e wu…