NPC deputy devoted to minority languages inheritance and protection

At this year's two sessions, Fan Yiping, a deputy to the National People's Congress and the deputy director of the film and literature creation center of Guangxi University for Nationalities, brought several suggestions on strengthening the inheritance and protection of minority languages.

"Language is the most important to ethnic identity," explained Fan.

China is a unified multi-ethnic country with diversified culture and rich language resources. Guangxi has the largest population of ethnic minorities in China, inhabiting 12 ethnic groups including the Han, Zhuang, Yao, Miao, Dong, Mulao, and Maonan.

During his investigation on minority languages, Fan found that although some promotion and protection of some languages have been carried out at the national and local government levels, members of ethnic minorities are not very enthusiastic about inheriting their own languages and good policies are still difficult to implement effectively.

Fan regarded use and inheritance as the best protection for minority languages.

He suggested that in addition to promoting bilingual teaching in the living areas of ethnic minorities, ethnic languages can also be included into college entrance examinations, civil service recruitment, and professional title evaluation to increase the enthusiasm of ethnic groups to learn their own language.

He also suggested giving more support to the protection, inheritance, and research of various ethnic minority languages, as well as encouraging qualified colleges to set up professional courses in minority languages.