The language spoken by the Chinese Miao ethnic group in southwest China's Guizhou Province is in danger of disappearing, a local political advisor has warned.
"Native people in Miao villages communicate in their own language less and less," said Han Kan, vice chairman of the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of the Guizhou Provincial People's Political Consultative Conference, citing a report made by his organization.
In the Tianzhu County of the Qiandongnan Autonomous Prefecture of Miao and Dong Nationalities where Miao people live in a compact community, only 32 out of 112 Miao language-speaking villages use their own language, according to the report.
In Qiandongnan's Taijiang County, where the Miao population accounts for 97 percent of the total, 40 out of 180 Miao villages no longer use the Miao language.
In Danzhai County, also in Qiandongnan, only 60 percent of the people - mostly over 50 years old - speak their own language. In 1999, the figure was 85 percent.
The shrinking of the Miao language has aroused the concern of folk experts.
"With no effective inheritance mechanism, the Miao language will be hard to preserve," Han said.
Protecting the intangible cultural heritage of ethnic groups is a long and complicated process. All local governments should be fully aware of the significance of such projects, he said.
He proposed that governments set up special organizations and assign professional workers to do the work.
The Miao ethnic group, with a population of nearly 9 million, scatters in Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan, Sichuan, Hubei, Guangdong and Hainan provinces and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The Miao people had no their own writing systems before 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded.
Due to a long history of exchanges with people of Han nationality in China, most Miao people can speak and write "putonghua", or standard Chinese.
(Xinhua News Agency July 27, 2006)
