Linguistic biographies of Wutun speakers in Qinghai

Workshop on Minority Languages of the Chinese Tibetosphere, Uppsala University, November 3rd - 4th, 2014Erika Sandman (University of Helsinki) & Cairangji (Independent Scholar)

Introduction• The Wutun language (Ngandehua, ’our language’), is a distinct

local form of Northwest Mandarin.

• It is spoken by ca. 4000 people in Upper Wutun, Lower Wutun and Jiacangma villages in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Huangnan Zangzu Zizhizhou 黄南藏族自治州 ), Tongren County (Tongren Xian同仁县 / Rebgong), Qinghai Province, which is part of the language union called the Amdo Sprachbund.

• Due to long-term language contact with Amdo Tibetan, Wutun shows heavy Tibetan interference in all levels of linguistic structure: phonology, lexicon, morphosyntax and discourse (Janhunen et al 2008).

• The Amdo Sprachbund comprises ca. 10-15 languages spoken in eastern Qinghai and southern Gansu provinces, also known as the historical Amdo region of ethnic Tibet.

• These languages represent four genetic groups: Sinitic, Bodic (Tibetan), Mongolic and Turkic (cf. Janhunen 2007).

• Varieties of Northwest Mandarin and Amdo Tibetan are dominant regional languages and lingua francas, while Mongolic and Turkic languages and some varieties of Northwest Mandarin are spoken in a more local level.

The language environment of Wutun speakers• The languages spoken in Tongren area• Ngandehua Wutun• Suanhua (Amdo) Tibetan• Hahua (Mandarin) Chinese• Helahua Bonan (Manikacha)• Salahua Salar

• The dominant regional language and the second language for almost all the Wutun speakers is Rebgong Amdo Tibetan.

• The knowledge of other varieties of Northwest Mandarin and Standard Mandarin has become increasingly common among younger generations.

• The Mongolic language Bonan (Manikacha, ’our language’) is spoken in four neighboring villages, but Wutun-Bonan bilingualism is rare.

• Other languages spoken in the region: Salar

Linguistic biography

• A biographical narrative that focuses on the language choice, linguistic preferences and competence of the multilingual speaker (Verschik 2002: 40; Nekvapil 2003: 63; Pavlenko 2007: 163).

• The key questions include how the languages were acquired, how they were used and how and why they were abandoned (Pavlenko 2007: 165).

What can be gained from linguistic biography research?• Three intertwined notions (Pavlenko 2007):• Subject reality (e.g. speakers’ thoughts about language learning,

language attitudes, ethnic identity)

• Life reality (e.g. reconstruction of sociolinguistic circumstances of bi- or multilingual speech community)

• Text reality (e.g. how bilinguals construct their stories in different languages, how language learning experienced are reflected in the plot)

• Linguistic biographies are socioculturally constructed strories rather than collections of pure facts, and they must be examined in relation to their social, historical and cultural contexts.

The current project

• Biographic interviews of the multilingual speakers from Tongren county

• To gain more knowledge about how the multilingual speakers• perceive their linguistic environment• acquired the languages they speak• use different languages in different communicative contexts • feel about using different languages• view the future of minority of languages

The interviews

• Nine members of the Wutun community born in between 1937 and 1998

• Three men, six women

• Seven interviewees who are born in Wutun and regard Wutun as the language they feel most confident speaking

• Two Amdo Tibetan speakers who are married to Wutun speakers• A man born in 1982 in Jianzha County, married to Wutun woman• A woman born in 1986 in Gudei village (Tongren County),

married to Wutun man

Research questions

Background information•Name •Date of birth•Place of birth

The Language Environment•What languages are spoken in the area? •Where are the different languages spoken?•What names do you use for those languages? Record all the names for the languages. •Which language has the most speakers? The least? •Which languages can you commonly hear? •Are mixed marriages between the speakers of different languages common? •If yes, which languages are spoken in mixed families?

Family•What languages are spoken in your family?•Describe each family member and talk about their language competences. Which languages do they speak? Which are they good at? Which languages do they like/ dislike to speak? •Are there any differences in the ways how your parents speak (or spoke)? Do you speak more like your father or your mother? How about your grandparents? Did they speak the language differently from each other? Have your parents/grandparents made any remarks on how their parents/grandparents spoke?•In your household, how much time do you spend speaking each language?

Tasks•What language do you use for …. (farming, cooking, talking to neighbors, household rituals, visiting the monastery…. list as many activities as you can).

Education

•Ask about education in different stages: preschool, primary, junior middle school, senior middle school, university. As about:• language students use with each other• language students use with teachers• language teachers use with students• how strict were the teachers about language? • when did people learn different languages?• what languages were studied as subjects at school? In what way they

were taught?• attitudes of non-Wutun speaking students towards Wutun students• easiness or difficulty of learning Tibetan versus learning Chinese

Encounters•Describe successful language encounters, when they communicated successfully in another language.•Describe language failures, when they couldn't communicate in a different language.•Do others use any negative names, like 'dre skad, to talk about Wutun? Have you ever been insulted for speaking Wutun? Are you ever embarrassed to speak Wutun?•Jokes based on the different languages? •Do Wutun-speakers have any problems when speaking Tibetan or Chinese?•Do you have any funny terms to refer to other languages? Future of the language •How do you see the future of Wutun language?•How important you consider your children/grandchildren to learn Wutun/ Tibetan/ Chinese?•Do you see any changes going on in Wutun? What kind of changes? Do people of different ages speak the language in different ways?

A linguistic biography of young Wutun woman: preliminary observations• The speaker Y lives in Jiacangma village, where she was born

in 1995. Both of her parents were born in Jiacangma.

• Because of attending the school, she has been living in Rebgong (the County Center of Tongren) for four years and in Xunhua for three years.

Language environment

• Languages spoken in the area: Wutun, Chinese, Tibetan, Bonan, Salar

• Languages she speaks: Wutun, Tibetan, Chinese

• Mixed marriages between speakers of different languages are common in Jiacangma.

• Many Tibetan women are married with Wutun men, both Wutun and Tibetan are spoken in mixed families.

• There are also mixed marriages between Han Chinese men and Wutun women.

Family and household tasks

• Parents of the speaker Y are both from Jiacangma.

• They mainly speak Wutun at home, but sometimes her father also speaks Tibetan to her mother.

• Chinese in never used at her home.

• The primary language for household task such as cooking and farming is Wutun, but both Tibetan and Wutun can be used when visiting monastery or when the monks come to chant in the family.

Education

• Preschool, primary school, junior middle school, high school

• The primary language of education was Tibetan.

• Wutun was mainly used when speaking with classmates from the same village.

• Tibetan was used when speaking with teachers and Tibetan classmates.

• Both Tibetan and Chinese were studied as subjects. In primary school there were also a few English classes.

• In preschool most of the students were Wutun speakers, and she did not speak much Tibetan with her classmates. She used Tibetan only with the teacher.

• Since primary school, there were more Tibetan students in the class and she spoke Tibetan with them.

• In preschool and primary school Tibetan teachers encouraged Wutun children to speak Tibetan, but children were not punished because of speaking Wutun.

• In primary school, Chinese was taught in Tibetan. In junior middle school there were also Han Chinese teachers and her Chinese skills improved significantly.

• It was difficult to speak both Tibetan and Chinese in junior middle school.

• She found Chinese easier to learn than Tibetan.

• In junior middle school, the Wutun students used Tibetan so actively that there was no need to tell them to speak Tibetan.

Language attitudes

• Ambivalent attitudes of Tibetan students towards Wutun students

• Derogatory names referring to Wutun speakers, such as Dordo, Dordoma

• Fights and conflicts with Tibetan students

• A secret language: because Wutun was difficult to understand for them, Tibetan students were afraid that Wutun students were secretly saying bad things about them.

• In high school in Xunhua, the Wutun language was unknown to other students.

• “A funny language that is a mixture of both Tibetan and Chinese”.

• On the other hand, Wutun students also made close friends with Tibetan students and some Tibetans wanted to learn some Wutun.

• Despite of being insulted sometimes, she did not feel embarrased to speak Wutun.

• “I am not Dordo, I am more Tibetan like you!”

The future of the Wutun language

• She thinks that the language will not disappear in the near future, but the number of the speakers will decrease because there are many mixed marriages between Wutun and Tibetan speakers and learning Tibetan and Chinese is considered very important among Wutun speakers.

• She would like her children to learn Wutun, but she thinks

that learning Tibetan is even more important and she is

planning to use Tibetan with them very often.

Further research questions

• The language choices in mixed families: are mixed marriages a threat to Wutun language?

• The increasing influence of Chinese

• Ambivalent language attitudes

References

Janhunen, Juha 2007: Typological interaction in the Qinghai Linguistic Complex. Studia Orientalia 101: 85-102.

Janhunen, Juha & Marja Peltomaa & Erika Sandman & Xiawu Dongzhou 2008. Wutun. [Languages of the World/Materials 466]. Muenchen: Lincom Europa.

Nekvapil, Jiří 2003. Language biographies and the analysis of language situations: on the life of the German community of the Czech Republic. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 162: 63-83.

Pavlenko, Aneta 2007. Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 28 (2): 163-188.

Verschik, Anna 2002. Linguistic biographies of Yiddish speakers in Estonia. Folklore 20: 38-52. Available online at http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol20/

Accessed on 30th Oct 2014