Struggle for Acceptance:My Experience and the Fate of 'Ghost' Languages

in the Greater Tibetan Region

TunzhiLaTrobe Univesity

2014.11.2

Ancient

Present

Future

Identity

‘Our Language’

Identity crisis

A Tibetan birth

Return to my roots

TermsDistribution

Social domains

Seasonal workers

Religious ritual

Official meetings

Educational settingsLanguage contact

TermsDistributionSocial domains Language ContactUNESCO’S factors

The ‘Dge bcu khrims’ movement

Maintenance of Horpa language

Creation of writing system

Documentation of its oraltraditions

My relationship with Horpa language

dzi.dzi.χə.naའཇའ་ཚོན། ndʑa

ལྷུན་གྲུབ། θə.ndʐə

Birth or Rebirth: A Tibetan Birth

Language is just a way of expression

• It was a collective life• Our Ake Tonpa stories were similar to those of other Tibetans• We danced our dance to Tibetan songs• I was taught that everything has life, and therefore even picking

flowers was not a joyful thing to do as a child• My brother and I competed to see who couldchant the ‘Six Sacred

Syllables’ most in a week.• Most evenings were occupied with two things: either telling of ‘The

Smart Tibetan’ story or sitting around and taking turns to turn theprayer wheel that has the mantra of Manjusri printed on it. My mombelieved doing that would make me smart and knowledgeable.

• My dream of becoming a monk was inculcated and nurtured in the local language

The beginning of era of TVs

• The appearance of TV in the family and community in 1999 markedthe beginning of new life.

• We no longer chanted scriptures,instead we were arguing aboutdifferent characters in TV series.

• We no longer wanted to hear stories from our ancestor,instead wecried for the little brave soldier killed by the Japanese army.

• It was also the first time I saw my father beating my mom, becauseshe stayed up so late to watch a TV series that she could not wakeup on time to make breakfast when my father was ready to leave forwork

• We replayed fighting scenes between the cowardly Japanese and the brave Chinese. I got very angry when I was on the Japanese side.

• By the time I was in grade four, all I wanted was to become a soldier, since then, and until middle school I wore a soldier’s hat.

Identity Crisis

ཡིག་ནོར་ཆེན་མོ་བ།

错别字大王King of Misspellings

The ghost language Speakerའདེའི་སྐད།

dʐa.mda.waབྲག་མདའ་བ།

Re-socialization into the ‘mainstream’ Tibetan culture

Language Shift in 1950s

• Access to roads/ 318 National road• Availability of educational facilities• Intermarriage• Communal life• General attitude towards ‘minorities’• Religious rituals • Cultural celebrations, songs and Tibetan circle dances

Language shift is the process in which a speech community in a contactsituation gradually abandons one language in favor of another (Fishman

1991)

Restabilization of language endangerment situation in 1980s

• Communal life ended in the 1980s• Brag mda’ farmers remained in their community and contact

with outsiders become less frequent• A local primary school was established• Only 11 out of 370 villagers who could read and write• The first college student from the village graduated in 2008

• However, other communities closer to the national road had more contactwith outsiders.

• Cross-cultural marriage became a solution to poverty• Schools were established and many students left their home communities to

go to schools in town.• Increasing numbers of people began seasonal works far away from their

home communities, e.g, construction sites. • They remain largely trilingual; Kham Tibetan, Sichuan Chinese and Ergong• But Ergong was used only when talking to people from Brag mda’ village

• In 2005 I found the name of ‘Our Language’ - Ergong• My relationship with ‘Our Language’ became personal.• Finding a name for ‘Our Language’ was like finding my own identity• I began learning more about Ergong from literature• Surprisingly, villagers not only refused the name but also thought I was

making a fool of myself going to college to learn about a language that theythought has no value• That initial direct confrontation with villagers has pushed me to look closer

at the phenomenon of language shift in our community

Horpa

Ergong

Daofu/Dawo/Rtau

Geshen Zha

Dejiao Hua

Minya

Bawang

Danba

Nyarong-Minyag

Huo ‘er

Hor

Background information

• Horpa is a rGyalrongic language of the Tibeto-Burman family

• It is spoken by about 45,000 people in three different counties in western Sichuan Province, PRC.

• Language status: 6a (Vigorous)The language is used for face-to-face communication by all

generations and the situation is sustainable. (Ethnologue 2014 )

• Language code: ISO 639-3

尔龚（Ergong）• ཡར་སོ།• Our language

Current Status of Ergong

• In the past five years 69 local young men and women left the village to live with their spouses in other communities

• There were 42 cases of marriage between local villagers and people from other placeswhere the wedded live in local community

• Local primary school was ended and children have to go to the county town to beginschool where they grow up speaking Kham Tibetan and Sichuan Chinese

• 35 villagers found government jobs• ‘Tibetan Language Movement’

• absolute speaker numbers: 35,000• relative speaker numbers: 45,000• intergenerational transmission

• Pressure from both Tibetan &Chinese languages; local villagers wish their children to speak good Tibetan or Chinese.

• literacy and education;• Due to lack of writing system formal education in Horpa is not

possible • quality and quantity of documentation;

• Horpa is not being documented, • government policy and social attitudes regarding the languages;

• Local villagers don’t have positive attitudes from the wider Tibetan community as diversity is not much appreciated within the Tibetan ream.

• community attitudes to their languages; and responses to new domains. • Sense of belong to local community and as a part of communal

life is much highly regarded among villagers and Horpa is an important feature that distinguishes from other communities

བོད་སྐད་གཙང་མ།་Tibetan Language Campaign

• Encourages people not to speak mixed languages

• Lamas refused to be present at weddings or funerals as traditionally required if villagers didn’t speak ‘pure Tibetan’—not mixing with other languages, including Horpa.

• If you are heard speaking mixed-language people will laugh at you

• Local villagers are pressured to speak Tibetan

• Diversity within the Tibetosphere is not appreciated

Discussion: Ethnolinguistic Identity

• The Horpa language is perhaps the last marker of Brag mda’Community. • Physical cultural characteristics and practices are identical to

neighboring Tibetan communities.

• Access to roads/education/work and intermarriage are the primaryreasons for accelerated shift to Tibetan and Sichuan Chinese

• The general attitude among the Brag mda’ Community is thatshifting to Tibetan and Chinese is a natural process and cannot bestopped.

• Ethnolinguistic Identity and Ethonolinguistic Vitality of Brag mda’are village-specific

Creation of writing system

• There are numerous examples of successfully creating writing systems for languagesthat don’t have one, but Horpa is exceptional;

• Cultural and ethnic sense of Tibetan is strong, so creating a writing systemin other than Tibetan alphabet would not be readily accepted by local people

• But the Tibetan alphabet can’t, in their traditional pronunciation, represent allthe contrastive phonemes Horpa has.

Documentation of oral literature

• Due to lack of writing form,ethical and cultural teachings are all transmitted orally,therefore Brag mda’ villagers have accumulated vast oral literature, e.g., songs,legends, cultural norms, ethical teachings

Future work