Name: Qi Wang

Course: ESL
Instructor: Lyndsey Reed
Date: 12/8/2016

Why are Many Local Languages in China but Just One

Form of Written?
China is located in the east of Asia and one of the oldest civilizations
in the word with about 5000 year history. China, boasting of a territory
and 56 nationalities, is a country characterized with multi-culture. Each
national people inhabit different areas in China. With the developing of
geography and history, there are mainly ten kinds of local languages in
China, more than one hundred different localism in total. However, there
is only one form of writting Chinese characters.
According to Ulrich Neininger (n.d.). Qin Shi Huang was the first
leader to unify the country, who assumed the throne in 246 BC. Qin Shi
Huang conquered all opposing states and unified China in 221 BC,
establishing the Qin Dynasty. Before seven countries were unified, each
country had his own culture, including languages, words and thoughts. To
make the politics stable and make the economy prosperous, also make his
position stronger, Qin Shi Huang adopted a series of political measures.
One of the influential measures is Burying the Scholars Alive: On the Origin of
a Confucian Martyrs Legend. Qin Shi Huang abolished old characters of

different seven countries and created a new character. To achieve the

goal, Qin Sin Huang burned all the books, because the books were written
by different characters and expressed different ideas. Qin Shi Huang
required all people to be loyal to him and took orders from him. After
burned books, he asked some talents created new characters and wrote
new books to deliver unified thought to consolidate his power. In
addition, the appearance of the unified character has a great influence to
history and culture. Using the unified characters is very convenient for
people to write, communicate and learn knowledge. This is the earliest
source of characters in China and it develops to current Chinese
characters. The government has given the standard how to write
characters.
Before Qin Shi Huang unified the country, The Qin state, the Han
state, the Zhao state, the Wei state, the Yan state, the Chu state, the Qi
state had already owned perfect cultural system that every country has his
own particular language, thought and civilization. Even though Qin Shi
Huang unified the character, people were still used to speaking just like
before. In ancient time, the traffic locking is a big problem for people,
because in different country, the width of pavement id different and the
width of carriage is aslo different, and not everyone could afford the
consumption of carriage. So it was very difficult for people to travel.
People hardly had opportunities to communicate with others who were in

faraway places. As time goes, this is why it forms to unique local

languages. Depending on the region, the ten mainly local languages are
Mandarin, Jin, Wu, Huizhou, Gan, Xiang, Min, Hakka, Yue, Ping. As
Edward M, G said, local language is contemporary Chinese media. The
local language is an important part of Chinese culture.
People come from south China and people come from north China,
when they talk in local languafe, they can not understand each other.
Because their pronunciation quite different. To solve the problem, China
government popularizes Mandarin, which is the standard language in
China. Schools are asked to teach students mandarin, so the popularity
degree of mandarin is pretty high, almost every Chinese can use mandarin
to communicate easily. This promotes the development of trades, the
politics, the economy, the education, the culture and so on. In the
meantime, local languages already become an important part of Chinese.
Local people are used to communicate in local language and local
language is deserved as a traditional culture. It is powerful to use
mandarin to communicate to each other, bur it is convenient to use local
languages to communicate with local people. People usually speak local
language in family, they are used to speaking local language.
As one of the oldest countries, the languages culture record the
history process of China. The only one form of written reflect the
intelligence of the ancients eld. The unified characters accumulate the

development of civilization. It is necessary to have unified characters for

the country owns the popularity more then 1.37 billion. Abundant local
languages give expressions to colorful geographical cultures. The forming
of local languages are influenced by the region, the climate, the nation
and many other causes. Local languages are a symbol of geographical
culture.

References
Neininger, U. (n.d.). Burying the Scholars Alive: On the Origin of a Confucian
Martyrs Legend. Retrieved from http://ulrichneininger.de/?p=461
Edward M, G. (2006). Rendering the regional: local language in contemporary
Chinese media. Retrieved from
http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/23077
FIELDS, L. (1989). THE CH'IN DYNASTY: LEGALISM AND CONFUCIANISM.
Journal of Asian History, 23(1), 1-25. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41930747