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The Language Planning of the People‘s
Republic of China—LiYuming
PKU NEWS 2007--11—20
http://ennews.pku.edu.cn/news.php?s=195644240
Peking University, Nov. 20, 2007: On the topic of ‗the Harmony of the Civilizations
and Prosperity for All — Diversity in the Development of Human Civilizations‘, Beijing
Forum 2007 was successfully held during Nov 2nd to 4th in Beijing, China. After the
open ceremony in the Great Hall of People on the morning of Nov. 2nd, 2007, the
panel of ‗Language Identity and Language Change in Collision and Dialog Between
Civilizations‘ was held in the Zhejiang Hall of Great Hall of People on the afternoon.
In this panel, Li Yuming, Deputy Director of the Language Commission of the
People‘s Republic of China, gave a speech entitled ‗The Langrage Planning of The
People‘s Republic of China‘ on the 2007 Beijing Forum in the Zhejiang Hall of the
Great Hall of People of China, Nov. 2nd, 2007.
Professor Li showed that, there are three stages of Language Planning in China. The
first one is from October 1949 to January 1986, targeted at solving the remaining
problems from previous historical periods. Premier Zhou Enlai framed the tasks in
1958: ―the simplification of the Chinese characters, the popularization of Putonghua,
and the designing and implementation of the Chinese Pinyin Scheme‖. The second
stage is from 1986 to 2005, aimed at the regularization, standardization and
informationalization of the languages in China and the writing systems. And the third
stage begins from 2006, strives for the harmony of social functions of language.
According to the correlative documents and laws, the status of various linguistic
varieties has been summarized. All ethnic groups are equal, and Putonghua and
standardized Chinese characters are standard spoken and written forms of the
national language. Moreover, the corpus planning of many ethnic minority
languages, the standardization of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar of
Putonghua, and the standardization of Chinese characters are also achieved.
Professor Li also told us about the function planning of Chinese. The functional
levels include national, official, educational, mass media etc. And the linguistic
varieties to fill these functional slots are Putonghua, ethnic minority languages,
Chinese dialects, foreign languages and traditional Chinese characters.
Edited By : Jiao Jie
Reported By: Jiao Jie
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