ENGLISH

Multilingualism in China: The Politics of Writing Reforms for Minority Languages 1949—2002

By Minglang Zhou

Book information

Publisher
Mouton de Gruyter
Year
2003
ISBN
3110178966
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
13 MB (13344619 bytes)
Series
Contributions to the Society of Language 89
Pages
484\485
Topic
Linguistics Foreign
Time added
2017-09-04 23:47:51
Parauk;Hmong;Mong;Central Bai;Southern Bai;Hani;La

Description

Minglang Zhou's highly erudite and well-researched volume on the policies concerning writing reforms for China's minorities since 1949 provides an original and well-reasoned summary of a complex process. It documents how different script reforms meet dramatically different fates according to local preferences, history, cross-border ties, and the vitality of previously-used scripts. It convincingly shows that no single variable is decisive in the success of a script, and that language planners' fixation with technical details is doomed to failure, without careful coordination of extra-code factors. It also documents the little-known Sino-Soviet cooperation in the area of writing reforms. In a style accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students, Zhou's book is of interest to language planners, sinologists, applied linguists, writing theorists, and ethnologists.

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