<DOC>
[108th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:87398.wais]
TEACHING AND LEARNING TIBETAN: THE ROLE OF THE TIBETAN LANGUAGE IN
TIBET'S FUTURE
=======================================================================
ROUNDTABLE
before the
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 7, 2003
__________
Printed for the use of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.cecc.gov
______
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
House Senate
JIM LEACH, Iowa, Chairman CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska, Co-Chairman
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming
DAVID DREIER, California SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
FRANK WOLF, Virginia PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
JOE PITTS, Pennsylvania GORDON SMITH, Oregon
SANDER LEVIN, Michigan MAX BAUCUS, Montana
MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
BYRON DORGAN, North Dakota
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
PAULA DOBRIANSKY, Department of State*
GRANT ALDONAS, Department of Commerce*
D. CAMERON FINDLAY, Department of Labor*
LORNE CRANER, Department of State*
JAMES KELLY, Department of State*
John Foarde, Staff Director
David Dorman, Deputy Staff Director
* Appointed in the 107th Congress; not yet formally appointed in
the 108th Congress.
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS
Tournadre, Nicolas, associate professor of linguistics, the
University of Paris 8, Paris, France........................... 2
Germano, David, professor, Tibetan and Buddhist studies, the
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.................... 4
Rabgey, Losang, a commonwealth scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the
school of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,
England........................................................ 8
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Tournadre, Nicolas............................................... 28
Germano, David................................................... 34
Rabgey, Losang................................................... 38
TEACHING AND LEARNING TIBETAN:
THE ROLE OF THE TIBETAN LANGUAGE IN TIBET'S FUTURE
----------
MONDAY, APRIL 7, 2003
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The roundtable was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:30
p.m., in room 2255, Rayburn House Office Building, John Foarde
[staff director] presiding.
Also present: David Dorman, deputy staff director; Karin
Finkler, Office of Representative Joe Pitts; Andrea Yaffe,
Office of Senator Carl Levin; Lary Brown, specialist on labor
issues; Steve Marshall, senior advisor; Susan Weld, general
counsel; and Andrea Worden, senior counsel.
Mr. Foarde. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to another
issues roundtable of the Congressional-Executive Commission on
China. One of the things we have tried to do consistently over
the past year is to start on time and to end on time. The time
has come for us to begin. Of course, as always with hearings
and roundtables on Capitol Hill, people come in and leave and
what have you. That's part of the rules of the road up here and
part of what we have to live with. Welcome to all who are here
in the audience and welcome particularly to our three
panelists.
This afternoon we are going to take a look at some very
interesting questions about Tibet and particularly the role of
the
Tibetan language in Tibet's future. I think it is true to say
that Chinese officials and Chinese news media often portray
Tibetans as moving briskly toward a modern prosperous future,
one of universal literacy and full integration into the Chinese
cultural and economic mainstream.
A great many Tibetans paint the future less
enthusiastically, citing concerns about whether their most
fundamental self-identifiers, particularly their language, will
survive the profound changes underway throughout the Tibetan
areas of China. So, to look at these questions, we have asked
the three distinguished panelists to join us today. We
appreciate your sharing your expertise with us.
We will work on the principle that we established a year or
so ago and go usually ``window to wall.'' So, we will began
this afternoon with Nicolas Tournadre. Dr. Tournadre is an
associate professor of linguistics at the University of Paris
8, and a member of the Laboratoire de Langues et Civilisations
a Tradition Orale of the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique and co-director of the Tibetan Language Collection
and the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library at the University
of Virginia. He is an expert on Tibetan linguistics, knows
classical Tibetan, standard Tibetan, as well as several other
dialects. During the past 15 years, he has spent more than 3
years on the Tibetan plateau conducting research and collecting
data about the Tibetan language and its dialects. Professor
Tournadre is the founder of the association, Schools on the
Roof of the World, which has built four schools in Tibet and
supports writers of the Tibet Autonomous Region [TAR] as well
as in Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures [TAP] outside the TAR. He
is the author of several books on the Tibetan language, among
them the ``Manual Tibetain Standard (1998) '' and a forthcoming
English language ``Manual of Standard Tibetan (2003).''
Welcome, Professor Tournadre, please. I should say that each
panelist will have 10 minutes to make an oral presentation.
After 8 minutes I will give you the signal that you have 2
minutes remaining. If for some reason you don't have all the
time you would like to make your points, we will try to catch
them up in the question and answer session after each panelist
has presented.
So, please go ahead.
STATEMENT OF NICOLAS TOURNADRE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF
LINGUISTICS, THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS 8, PARIS, FRANCE
Mr. Tournadre. Well, thanks a lot everybody for being here.
I think it is a very important issue we are debating. I want to
thank especially my old friend, Steve Marshall, for inviting me
and my colleagues.
The first thing I would like to say is that there is a real
threat of extinction or very serious decline of the Tibetan
language and the Tibetan culture within two--or at the most
three--generations. That will be happening very soon. During
the last 15 years, I have personally witnessed this decline.
So, it goes in a very, very rapid way in Tibet.
Languages are not neutral. They convey very specific social
and cultural behaviors and ways of thinking. So, the extinction
of the Tibetan language will have tremendous consequences for
the Tibetan culture. The culture cannot be preserved without
it.
Why is it important to preserve this culture? Think about 5
or so million people surrounded by more than 1.5 billion
Chinese-speaking people and why is it important. It is
important because the Tibetan language and culture are
extremely original. Forget about linguistics, medicine, or
architecture; just take literature. Tibetan is one of the four
oldest and greatest in volume and most original literatures of
Asia, along with Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese literatures.
So, that is a very good reason for the heritage of humanity to
keep this culture.
The second point is that for the Tibetan economy it is very
important in nearly every sector. The Tibetan language is very
important. Right now the rate of unemployment in Tibet is
extremely high. A lot of rural Tibetans, whether nomads or
peasants, are almost like foreigners in their own country and
they don't have the linguistic ability to find jobs. When they
come to the cities, their culture is marginalized and devalued.
So this leads also to the marginalization and devaluation of
the people themselves. Without the Tibetan language, it is
clear that Tibet won't be Tibet any more.
The third point is that Tibetan language and culture are
extremely important for the secularization and modernization of
the Tibetan society. Right now, a lot of young Tibetans go to
monasteries because that is one of the few places left for
traditional culture. If they had a possibility to really study
their own culture in middle school, a lot of them would prefer
to study in lay schools.
The Chinese Government is not unaware of this situation.
The proof is that, in May 2002, the Chinese Government endorsed
new regulations about the Tibetan language. That's the first
instance of regulations protecting a so-called ``minority
language'' within the People's Republic of China. So, of course
it is encouraging, but at the same time, it shows that the
threat is extremely heavy. It is very urgent.
Now, I will try to touch very briefly on the causes of the
decline. Among the causes, I would say there are two non-
linguistic causes, the main ones probably. And there are three
causes which are related to the language itself.
The first one is certainly a political cause; that is, for
instance, the people are not really allowed to have meetings in
Tibetan. They are theoretically allowed to, but actually in
practice there is a very strong pressure not to have these
meetings in their own language. So even when 20 or more
Tibetans are meeting together, they speak in Chinese. The
second reason is educational. All middle school education is in
Chinese, even though books and manuals do exist in mathematics,
physics, and chemistry in Tibetan. They have done an enormous
amount of work, but it is pointless, as they are not used.
Then there are three specific linguistic reasons. Dialectal
variation is still extremely high. For instance, the use of
standard spoken Tibetan is still limited, especially in
Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan. There is also another reason
which is what I call severe diglossia. The high variety is
literary Tibetan, and the low variety is spoken Tibetan. There
is a big distance between those two which is much greater than
between literary English and spoken English. Learning literary
Tibetan is nearly like learning a different
language. Of course, not that extreme, but it is very difficult
for children.
There is also another hindrance. This is the emergence of
Tibetan-Chinese mixed languages, which are called in Tibetan
``rama lugka '' [ra-ma-lug skad], which is a very dangerous
phenomenon because it impoverishes Tibetans and, of course,
Chinese as well. So people are not fluent in either of the
languages. The last reason is the linguistic gap between the
urban and the rural Tibetans. There is really a complete cut
within society, a complete gap.
However, I am still a little optimistic. I think if we
exert pressure, and take measures, and implement different
projects, we can still ameliorate the situation. I don't think
it is over. A civilization of 1,300 years of literature cannot
disappear like that. I do believe it is still possible to do
something.
One of the real problems is the current lack of prestige of
the
Tibetan language. Because of the reasons I mentioned earlier,
the Tibetans now think ``Tibetan is not useful to fill one's
stomach [`bod skad brgyab na grod khog rgyag gi ma red'].''
That's why they believe it is better to speak Chinese.
Now, I will return to three or four basic propositions. The
general idea is, of course, to promote the Tibetan language and
culture in the educational system and to establish a real
Tibetan-Chinese bilingual education, not as it is now, a
monolingual Chinese society, but a real bilingual society. It
also means advertising the new Chinese law and exerting
pressure so that it is really implemented.
I also think promoting standard spoken Tibetan is extremely
important because, as I said, there is a high rate of
unemployment and also an incredible level of illiteracy. It is
important to promote standard spoken Tibetan, which is the
vernacular language, and to reduce the difficulties caused by
diglossia. It is possible, for instance, to fund projects that
will publish classical texts in the vernacular language. That
is one thing. There are even some very concrete things we can
do from the West. For example, the creation of literary prizes
and awards for Tibetan writers. The support of artists and
writers who would travel in the countryside and meet the
peasants and organize cultural festivals. We could also support
radio broadcasting so that they could broadcast the classics of
Tibetan and foreign literature. Pay teachers in Tibet so they
can collect tapes of traditional music and folk tales that have
not been recorded. Help to create calligraphy competitions and
spelling competitions. These are all very concrete steps.
Anything that makes the Tibetans feel that their language and
culture does have
prestige.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tournadre appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Foarde. Let's pick up those fascinating ideas during
the question and answer session. Thank you very much.
Our next panelist is David Germano. Professor Germano is
associate professor of Tibetan and Buddhist studies at the
University of Virginia, and director of the Tibetan and
Himalayan Digital Library. He has published a variety of
articles and one edited volume on diverse topics in Tibetan
studies. He has spent a total of 7 years conducting research on
Tibetan cultural areas on a variety of topics. Over the past 4
years, Professor Germano has established collaborative contacts
with the Tibetan Academy of Social Sciences and Tibet
University for a long-term collaborative exchange and for
research projects. In this context, he has co-directed large
international research expeditions in each of the last 4 years
and has been concentrating on building a broad international
consortium of universities to work on interdisciplinary topics
facilitated by digital technology.
Professor Germano, welcome.
STATEMENT OF DAVID GERMANO, PROFESSOR, TIBETAN AND BUDDHIST
STUDIES, THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA
Mr. Germano. Thank you. I would like to begin by thanking
the Commission for hosting this topic, and particularly to
thank Steve Marshall for inviting us and his role in arranging
it. He is an old friend who I haven't seen for maybe a decade?
Yes. In Lhasa.
In my talk, I would like to briefly cover four areas in the
way of background information and to say first of all, that I
concur completely with Professor Tournadre's remarks. The four
areas are, first of all, a basic background in the current
situation in the Tibetan language; second, the value of the
Tibetan language in modern Tibetan culture; third, possible
futures--negative and positive; and fourth, general
recommendations for how specifically the American Government
could actually have a constructive role in these futures.
So, first of all, in terms of the background situation of
Tibetan language, it is important to understand that Tibetan is
not simply a language the way that modern English is a
language, with a broad range of speakers who easily understand
each other in accordance with common vocabulary, grammar, and
so forth. In accordance with the old linguistic adage that ``a
dialect is a language without an army, and a language is a
dialect with an army,'' Tibetan can be thought of as a series
of languages, rather than dialects. They are often mutually
incomprehensible.
For example, I have a Tibetan visiting right now from
Northern Kham, or Sichuan Province, who first came and my wife
is from Lhasa, a native speaker of Tibetan--and he understood
little of what we said. It took a couple of weeks, but
gradually we began to establish a basic understanding. So, the
divergence of dialects is extremely great. There is no standard
Tibetan.
However, there is an emergent proto-standard Tibetan that
is spoken widely in the diasporic community, as well as in the
Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is based on the Lhasa language.
It is a language which is a good basis for the emergence of a
standard Tibetan that could be used across Tibetan regions in
addition to people's regional dialects.
This standard Tibetan, which has been emerging over the
past two or three decades continues to not be a standard in
many parts of Eastern Tibet, which means that Tibetans often
rely on a second language to speak amongst themselves. So, when
a Tibetan from Kham [Sichuan] or Amdo [Qinghai], meets a
Tibetan from Lhasa, they might very well rely on Chinese, more
typically. So the lack of this standard Tibetan across the
entire region of Tibetan culture continues to be a pressing
necessity. And there is another old adage which is, ``any
standard is better than no standard,'' an issue particularly
compelling in relationship to languages and communities.
Second, literary Tibetan has a long and distinguished
tradition going back at least to the seventh century, typically
referred to as classical Tibetan. The most important thing to
keep in mind about classical Tibetan is that it is a remarkably
conservative tradition in terms of spelling, grammar usage,
vocabulary, to the point that someone who is conversant in
modern classical Tibetan can actually pick up 10th century,
11th century, 12th century texts and read them fluently.
Obviously, something not true at all, for example, in English.
Unfortunately, most of the dialects are not equally
conservative in pronunciation and their own vocabulary. So,
classical Tibetan, as Professor Tournadre mentioned, is many
ways dramatically divergent from spoken Tibetan. The spelling
and pronunciation are dramatically divergent lexical items, and
so forth. This makes classical Tibetan unnecessarily difficult
to learn. It also entails that many standard colloquial spoken
terms have no standardized spelling or use in literary Tibetan.
A modern literary Tibetan has begun to emerge in creative
writing, newspapers, academic essays, and the like. This
emergence of kind of modern literary Tibetan has yet to become
fully a transregional vernacular, literary Tibetan that could
be understood by children easily, learned, easily used in kind
of daily communications, as well as essay writing, all the way
down to logging onto the world wide web and so forth.
So, this continues to be an important issue on the literary
front, namely the degree to which a vernacular, transregional,
literary Tibetan is emerged and encouraged. In the absence of a
kind of systematic support from the government, it continues to
be a problem.
Another issue I would like to note in the way of background
is that, often Tibetans you meet are completely fluent in
spoken Tibetan, being native speakers, but they lack specific
colloquial competencies. It is not simply an issue where they
are pressured in terms of a specific context, and they switch
over to Chinese and so forth, but often they are actually
unable to use Tibetan in specific professional or intellectual
environments. They don't know the vocabulary. They have no
habituation of how to talk, and so forth.
So, when you enter in things like computer science,
mathematics, biology, certain governmental context, they
literally don't know how to talk. Thus in addition to the issue
of being fluent in spoken Tibetan, there is the issue of target
colloquial competencies, a particularly important issue in
Tibet these days.
A final issue in the way of background is the use of
Tibetan in digital contexts. The lack of a standard
international Tibetan encoding, which means Tibetan scripts
could be used on the Internet, computer operating systems, and
so forth, has had a devastating impact on the use of Tibetan in
digital and Web contexts from educational sites, to commercial
venues, to social arenas like chat rooms.
So, the second topic is ``who cares? '' Really, who gives a
damn? Nicolas and I happen to love Tibet and have spent our
life devoted to it, but why don't Tibetans just speak Tibetan
at home and speak Chinese in professional contexts, and use
Chinese for all written needs? On the other hand, why don't
they just give up Tibetan all together and simply speak
Chinese, a standard option across the world in terms of
minority cultures in relation to the politically and
economically dominant languages in their national context? I
can only provide a couple of brief thoughts on that subject.
First of all, the first situation, namely Tibetan becoming
a domestic language and Chinese becoming the professional
language and a literary language, is one that simply consigns
Tibetans to oblivion and to perpetual second class status. Even
studies within China itself have shown consistently that
Tibetans who train and test in Chinese medium contexts
persistently perform worse than when they are able to train and
test in Tibetan. By using their own mother tongue for training,
education, and testing, they perform markedly better on
standard intelligence and other tests than they do when they
are forced to use Chinese. So, this bilingualism of a private/
professional variety will always leave them at a disadvantage
in educational and professional circumstances.
Second, what about simply becoming Chinese? They could
become, in two or three generations--in fact, we can all see
the pathway very clearly marked--native speakers of Chinese.
Here I think we enter perhaps more philosophical
considerations. First of all, it creates a traumatic
discontinuity with the 1,300-year history of their own literary
culture, with different intellectual disciplines, professional
environments, ways of life, and so forth. More importantly, a
people's sense of identity, place, and time, it has been
argued by intellectual after intellectual over the last
century, is inextricably bound up with their language. So, by
losing the Tibetan language, the specifically Tibetan identity
and world, the culture, insights, values and behaviors, is
essentially consigned to the past.
Third, possible futures of Tibetan language--in my 2
minutes remaining--I would say first of all, in two or three
decades, we are looking at the possible disappearance of
Tibetan where reading and writing becomes the province of a few
isolated monasteries. When urban Tibetans rarely speak Tibetan,
and even in rural Tibet, spoken Tibetan comes under increasing
pressure. That is clearly a very possible, if not likely,
trajectory where we might go from this crossroad.
I also think there is another possibility, a possibility in
which standard Tibetan could become widely spoken, where
standard Tibetan could become again a medium for educational
and commercial context, and a newly generated vernacular
literary Tibetan could become one that is meaningful in
educational and personal context, which brings me to my
conclusion, my fourth point, conveniently, which is that we can
make a difference. I have met with people from the American
Government who have said, ``Oh, it's hopeless. It has long
since gone past a crossroads, and even if it wasn't hopeless,
the situation is so corrupt and problematic in
China's Tibet, that you can simply do nothing, even by throwing
funding and other kinds of support in there, it simply is
counter-productive.''
I would like to say that for those of us who have lived for
years in so-called ``China's Tibet'' and spent our lives
devoted to issues of Tibetan culture and language, our common
consensus is that this is the most profoundly mistaken view you
could possibly take. The willpower, the ability, and commitment
is there on the part of Tibetans and Chinese in China to make a
difference on issues pertaining to the Tibetan language. The
government's stated policies on the subject are often positive,
even if there is little practical follow through or support.
These various government organizations--as for example,
Professor Tournadre and I have shown over and over--in
establishing long-term collaborative contracts, that are
willing to have others help in implementing these policies,
even if they, themselves are not actively implementing them. Of
course, that is easier said than done. What it boils down to,
simply, is funding. Of course, we all agree on the importance
of medical and economic health for Tibetans, but we also cannot
lose sight of the equal and essential importance of Tibetan
language and culture. It is important to support the evolving
nexus of foreign experts in Tibetan language and
culture who have a commitment to the support of educational and
linguistic environments back in Tibet. What is important is not
simply an exchange where Tibetans are taken out of Tibet and
brought to the United States, but investment in Tibet, working
with dedicated professionals in the institutions which survive
our departure and presence.
So, with this, in conclusion, I think these emerging
partnerships, if adequately supported, offer another vision of
a better tomorrow, not one in which Tibetan triumphs over
Chinese, but one in which Tibetan and Chinese can co-exist. The
value of this is basically the preservation of a Tibetan
difference, a unique identity shaped over centuries, which is
now in direct danger of succumbing to the forces of sameness.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Germano appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Foarde. A model presentation, Professor Germano, not
least because you were right on time.
I know that academics are used to talking for 45 or 50
minutes at a time, and 10 minutes is not very long. So, you've
both done marvelously. Thank you for that.
Our final panelist this afternoon is Losang Rabgey. She is
a commonwealth scholar and Ph.D. candidate at the School of
Oriental and African studies at the University of London, where
she specializes in gender anthropology and the transnational
Tibetan diaspora. She plans to defend her thesis in the spring
of 2003, and we wish her well with that. Her field work focuses
on oral life histories of Tibetan women in India and the West.
She has presented her work at universities, including
Middlebury College, Harvard University, the University of
California at Santa Cruz, and New York University. Losang has
lobbied at the United Nations and co-founded an NGO that is
building a rural school focusing on women's education in Tibet.
She now broadcasts a Tibetan language radio show on women's
issues, and is a staff member at the International Campaign for
Tibet here in Washington.
After her parents fled Tibet in 1959, Losang was born in a
refugee settlement in Northern India. Her family soon migrated
to Canada, and by the late 1970s founded the Potala Tibetan
Performance Arts Group. In 1987 Losang traveled with her family
to Tibet, including to her father's village in Eastern Tibet.
Welcome and thank you for joining us this afternoon.
STATEMENT OF LOSANG RABGEY, A COMMONWEALTH SCHOLAR AND PH.D.
CANDIDATE AT THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES,
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, ENGLAND
Ms. Rabgey. Thank you for the opportunity to address this
Commission. In addition to my doctoral research in feminist
anthropology in the Tibetan diaspora, I am also writing and
pursuing research on Tibetan language issues, such as the
production and consumption of Tibetan media. The following
presentation though, is intended to be a very brief background
for those who are interested in Tibet, but not necessarily
specializing in the area.
In the course of working on a new primary boarding school
in Litang county, I was struck by a number of paradoxes. Since
my last visit, a new subdivision had been built in Litang. The
broad paved streets and electric wires appeared typical of any
new
subdivision. However, all the new homes were built in
traditional Tibetan architecture. Street after street, the
sight of large comfortable Tibetan style homes resting in the
neat rows was a sight I did not expect and which I frankly
found impressive. The city's planners could easily have
followed most other Tibetan towns and cities by constructing
non-descript concrete homes and apartment blocks. Yet, despite
this subdivision, I was at the same time also struck by the
number of public signs only in the Chinese language. Most signs
for streets, shops, hotels, restaurants, and so on are still in
Chinese and rarely in Tibetan.
In another example of the paradox, in attending a number of
meetings with local county educational officials, I was
impressed by the Tibetan dress protocol insisted upon by the
county head. The county head, himself, insisted that all
Tibetans attending official meetings must wear their ``chuba''
or traditional robes. He himself is never without his ``chuba''
and is even rumored to have sent some Tibetans home to retrieve
their robes before re-joining a meeting. Yet I was also struck
by the fact that at these countless meetings, much of the
conversation was being held in the Chinese language. The
population in Litang includes many more Chinese settlers now
than a decade and a half ago. The majority of the local
population and county officials remains Tibetan, and although
these officials are educated in both Tibetan and Chinese,
Chinese has become the language of official business.
So, therefore, the paradox is that while there is a clear
consciousness of the importance of Tibetan culture and
language, there are profoundly important ways in which this
consciousness is not being realized. Simply adding Tibetan
language to the curriculum or solely advocating a bilingual
education will not necessarily suffice. This is clearly a
complex problem requiring a complex solution.
On our first return to the Litang area 15 years ago, it was
clear that basic education was a critical need in the area.
Aside from the monastery, there was, in fact, little local
interest in education as parents then feared their children
would only learn Chinese. But in recent years, with the opening
of the region, schools and other projects have become possible.
We recently began to raise the necessary funding for the
capital expenditure for the school and worked with local
governments to set up the school's infrastructure and
administration. The school currently consists of 210 students
ranging from ages 7 to 12, a principal, 10 teachers, and other
staff members, including guardians for the younger children.
Due to the scattered geography of the hamlets and villages of
the area, the children could not travel on foot on a daily
basis, and it was, therefore, necessary to build a boarding
school. The project began 2\1/2\ years ago and opened its doors
in September 2002.
From the outset of our working relationship with Litang
County education officials, we stated that we had two very
clear interests. First, we expressed our committed interest in
working for a bilingual school that focuses on Tibetan language
as the medium, but which also teaches the Chinese language
well. Second, in recognition of the long overdue attention
needed for girls' education, we expressed serious interest in
seeing gender parity in the student body. The local education
officials were also very interested in
Tibetan language acquisition along with Chinese language
instruction. Chinese is taught as a second language with the
main
medium being Tibetan.
In terms of the curriculum, the students followed the
standard curriculum of the other Tibetan schools in the county:
history, math, science, physical education, Tibetan, and
Chinese. The availability now of Tibetan-language textbooks is
a tremendous resource. However, much more can be done in the
field of writing and translating books into Tibetan language to
interest and encourage Tibetans of all ages to read more in
their native language. Like many other rural and nomadic
Tibetan areas, the school in Chungba Valley has had the added
challenge of dealing with a particular sub-dialect of the Kham
dialect of Tibetan. As such, the school has one teacher who
speaks the local dialect and can, therefore, facilitate the
learning process using a vernacular the children already know.
Currently, there is an active effort going on to identify more
teachers who speak the local vernacular to facilitate the
students' critically important early learning years.
At this early stage in the project, we have introduced a
number of practices that are relatively new to schools in the
Litang area. First, classes run 6 days a week, there are
tutoring sessions during midday break for students wanting
further instruction, and also, remedial classes are available
for those students who need extra guidance and assistance with
their lessons. In order to help compensate the teachers for
their long work hours, they are offered a significant increase
above their standard teacher salary.
Although the majority of these 210 children have never set
foot in a school before, they have learned quickly to adapt
themselves to their studies. In the preliminary examinations in
December, they placed first in the county, and were actually
tested twice to make sure the results were accurate.
In considering the issue of Tibetan language and bilingual
education for Tibetans in Tibetan areas today, I find it quite
interesting that in a number of ways, there are parallels
between the situation for Tibetans in diaspora and for those
inside Tibet. I am from the first generation of Tibetans to be
raised in the Western diaspora. Growing up in working class
neighborhood in a small town in Canada with only a few other
Tibetan families, there was no context whatsoever for Tibetan
culture. My parents, therefore, faced the typical immigrant
challenge of transmitting a distant culture to their children.
We managed to learn and then retain the Tibetan language by
following a strict rule of speaking only Tibetan in the home.
The Tibetan linguistic environment home was supplemented by
occasional Tibetan lessons at an informal Sunday-school taught
in turn by various parents in the community. Whether Tibetans
live in Washington, DC or Beijing or a town like Litang, the
issue of retaining Tibetan language and finding a way to make
it a seamless part of life is a challenge. When Tibetans from
Tibet visit the United States or other Western countries, they
are often dismayed to encounter many Tibetan children here who
can no longer speak Tibetan, sometimes even after years of
language education in India.
A parallel situation is found in large Chinese cities such
as Beijing, where many of the young Tibetans may understand
some Tibetan, but cannot speak, read, or write in their native
language. I have even encountered Tibetan children in Tibetan
towns who do not speak Tibetan. They tend to be children who
attend Chinese medium schools and speak Chinese at home with
their parents who are middle class.
So over the years, I have engaged in conversations with
many
Tibetans educated at universities in Tibet and China. It is
their experience and feeling that the current system produces a
cyclical effect. Tibetans who study Tibetan language become
teachers who, in turn, eventually become language teachers to
teach more teachers. So, although there is a clear and growing
need, for Tibetan language teachers, my point here is that
Tibetan must become a language that is used in fields other
than just teaching and government work.
There is burgeoning literature on Tibetan education written
in Chinese by both Tibetan and Chinese researchers. I am sure
members of the Commission are following that conversation and
to anyone who is interested in this field, I recommend watching
the extent to which the points are being pushed. A primary
opportunity and challenge ahead for Tibetans is to become not
only bilingual, but also bicultural. To teach and learn either
Tibetan or Chinese to the exclusion of the other will
eventually present obstacles in the future, yet being bilingual
is also not enough. Tibetans need a Tibetan cultural and
economic context in which to express, use, and further develop
their language and communities. The need for Tibetans who are
conversant and comfortable functioning in Tibetan and Chinese
societies will clearly be an asset to their communities.
I would like to conclude by stating that Tibetans are now
at a critical juncture. Whether inside Tibet or in diaspora,
Tibetans have never before faced a period of such rapid social
change. It is in the hands of the current generation of
Tibetans and those interested in Tibet to set the ground work
for positive and productive change. The opportunities are
tremendous. Clearly, Tibetans need education, but in order to
meet that need, Tibetans need resources and support.
There are a host of organizations, at the local government
level, Tibetan and foreign NGOs, and so on, that need the basic
capital investment necessary to build schools, clinics,
vocational training centers, adult learning centers, libraries,
and so on. Tibetan trainers also need training. There is a
tremendous shortage of Tibetan human resources at all levels,
but the energy, commitment and
intellectual resources are there. But funding is needed to
train a generation of Tibetans who are eager to make a solid
contribution.
The opportunity to learn and travel affords researchers not
only added perspective, but also gives them further
responsibility to engage with the realities they encounter.
There are the realist nay sayers who present rationalized
accounts of why educational engagement in Tibetan areas is
hopeless. Some point to Inner Mongolia and even Manchuria, but
if I did not believe there was hope, I would not be here
seeking support for the survival of Tibetan language and
education. As a researcher, a refugee/immigrant, and as a
Tibetan with roots in a rural mountain village, the issue of
the future of Tibetan language and education is clearly a path
that needs to be traveled.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Rabgey appears in the
appendix.]
Mr. Foarde. Thank you very much.
We will let our three panelists catch their breath for a
minute, while I make an administrative announcement or two. Our
next issues roundtable will be after the spring district work
period that is coming up this month. It will be on Monday,
April 28 at 2:30 p.m., right here in this room.
The subject will be corporate codes of conduct and the
behavior of U.S. companies in China. We will be sending an
announcement out a bit later this week to our e-mail list. So,
if you want to be always in the know about what we are doing
here, please visit our Web site and subscribe to the e-mail
announcement list. You will get information week by week on our
upcoming hearings and roundtables. You also can get the same
information by visiting our Web site frequently, and that is
www.cecc.gov.
Now we are going to go to the question and answer session.
As we have in the past, each of the staff members sitting up
here will get the chance to ask questions and listen to the
answers for 5 minutes each until everyone has completed a
round. And we will do another round until we are all out of
steam, or 4 o'clock rolls around, whichever is first.
So, let me begin by addressing a question to Losang,
please. Are Tibetan parents, particularly in rural areas, more
interested in having their children educated in just the
Tibetan language, or do they see benefit in being educated in
both Tibetan and Chinese?
Ms. Rabgey. The example that I am most familiar with is the
particular valley in which I work. There I would say that there
has been a very significant shift in the parent's attitudes.
Fifteen years ago, the parents did not want their children in
schools. They were very worried about losing their Tibetan
cultural identity by sending children to the schools. Here they
would learn primarily Chinese.
I think a lot has happened in the time in between, and the
request for the school to be built actually came from the
people living in that valley. So, there was a strong interest.
Parents are clearly interested in having their children
educated, for starters, then given the choice, to have them
educated primarily in Tibetan. But, they realize it is of
critical importance to teach more than one language, namely
Chinese, as well.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you. Very useful. David Germano, I am
really interested in this whole idea of literacy in a standard
Tibetan dialect, and I wonder if you could go into that just a
little bit more deeply just to make sure that we all
understand. It seems to me that, from what you said, the Lhasa
dialect, or Lhasa language is kind of becoming a de facto
standard Tibetan because of its use in Lhasa and around the
Tibetan Autonomous Region, and then also in the diaspora. Did I
understand that correctly? Could you comment a little bit on
that, please?
Mr. Germano. Yes, Lhasa Tibetan has very particular kinds
of features about it, which are not continuous with standard
Tibetan, but standard Tibetan is essentially based on Lhasa
Tibetan, minus a number of the particular features unique to
Lhasa City. Standard Tibetan, or so-called ``cikay'' [spyi
skad], has emerged in the past three or four decades, based on
the one hand on the diaspora community where Tibetans from
different areas mix together and have to communicate with each
other, but also in terms of achievements in terms of modern
media, entertainment, television, radio broadcasting, and so
forth, in the Tibetan Autonomous Region itself.
So, for example, a couple of years ago, Nicolas and I were
in the far western reach of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and
it really struck us how easy it was to communicate in standard
Tibetan with people throughout that region. Something
definitely not true 10, 15 years ago. I've lived extensively in
Kham and Sichuan, which is far Eastern Tibet, and even there, I
will stumble upon people who actually learned from Voice of
America or something. And they speak quite good standard
Tibetan. I'll be amazed because I'm kind of stammering my way
through Eastern Tibet, and someone starts talking standard. I
say, ``Oh, you've been to Lhasa.'' They say, ``Oh, no. I listen
to VOA all the time.''
So, the challenge is basically extending that outside of
Tibet Autonomous Region into the further reaches of other parts
of cultural Tibet. There are some considerable issues to deal
with that.
Mr. Foarde. This brings up my third question, which I was
going to address to Professor Tournadre, but maybe to both of
you. What can the U.S. Government do to help this process
along, if it is a desirable thing? Are there other programs
that the U.S. Government might support, done by private
individuals, or private non-governmental organizations that
would help in some of the things that you both recommended in
your presentations?
Mr. Tournadre. I think it is really possible to do
something to help the development of Tibetan language and
culture. Basically, through funding the people who really know
the situation of the language and the culture there, and not
general NGOs who know little about the language and culture. We
have been working for many years now in Tibet, cooperating with
various organizations such as the Tibet Academy of Social
Sciences and Tibet University. And of course, we can help
independent projects or associated projects run by Tibetans,
and we can channel this help. I think this is probably the best
way to help. Among other things, have people organize the
various propositions I mentioned earlier and many other
projects of this kind. The main thing is to give money to
Tibetan intellectuals, artists, and writers. We can help
through our network to achieve these projects.
Mr. Germano. I would just add that--I've been working
intensively since 1999 on building United States-China
partnerships to deal with Tibetan studies. In a mere 4 years,
Professor Tournadre and I and some other professors from
Chicago, Oxford, and so forth, have built a series of
initiatives that are formally embedded within the very
institutional life of China, namely Tibet University and Tibet
Academy of Social Sciences and so on.
On two particular issues I would place special stress.
First is computing issues. We have been linking computer
scientists in America with people in China to actually begin to
build the tools that would allow Tibetans to use their on
language in script over the Web and in the digital context.
Second, we have been working with professionals in the
Tibet Autonomous Region on helping to try to further the
standardization of a spoken Tibetan and a vernacular literary
Tibetan. But so far, we have been using funding that is really
designed for curriculum material back here. We have had almost
no funding that is about doing something there.
So, I would suggest in addition to supporting NGOs and
other such operations, supporting committed academic
professionals who actually know the language, literary, spoken,
and have a deep commitment to helping improve the situation
there.
Mr. Foarde. Very useful. Thank you very much. My time is
up. I recognize my colleague, Dave Dorman.
Mr. Dorman. First, I would like to thank each of you for
coming today to provide some very useful testimony on a very
important topic. I think all of our Commission members will
find it useful dialog.
I would like to ask each of you to address the educational
system, in a bit more detail. I think it would be useful for
the Commission members to understand the staff make-up in the
Tibetan education system. You mentioned that Tibetans are
choosing education as a career field. To what extent are the
staffs of elementary schools made up of Tibetans? Or if they
are non-Tibetans, what is their fluency in Tibetan, or their
ability to teach Tibetan? As for the middle schools, I think
one of you mentioned that although a Tibetan curriculum exists,
it is rarely taught. Is that because the teachers themselves
are not capable of teaching a Tibetan curriculum? And as we go
into higher levels of education, to what
extent is Tibetan literature and culture a serious subject of
study, either in Tibet or outside of Tibet in China? And I will
look to any or all of you to address this question in any way
you would like. Thank you.
Mr. Tournadre. First I would like to come back to something
that was said by Ms. Losang Rabgey, when she talked about
Litang architecture and style of clothing. Everything looks
Tibetan and that is the Tibetan paradox. However, as the
Tibetan put it: it is ``dzuma'' [fake]. Tibet is very visual
and it appears very colorful, but what is much more important--
and why a lot of people like Tibetan culture--is its spirit.
And that is now being lost. It is, of course, very hard to
transmit the content of this spirit in 10 minutes. There is
another very nice expression used in Tibet: It is like an
``empty statue.'' Buddhist statues--they need to be filled up
and get a special blessing to be activated, but if they don't
get that they are like ``empty statues.''
Coming back to the question of education, it is the same
thing. Normally, Tibetan is used in primary school. However, in
the cities now it is being taught less and less. Since the
beginning of the 1990s Tibetan language has lost a lot of
strength, even at the primary school level. In Lhasa, there are
even schools which really begin with Chinese as the first
language. Another problem is regional discrepancy. Again, in
Lhasa, Chinese is really prevalent. In some rural areas,
primary schools teach mainly in Tibetan. When these kids arrive
in Lhasa, the main city, or the main prefecture seat, it is a
catastrophe because they were taught the main
scientific subjects in Tibetan--mathematics, physics,
chemistry, natural sciences, etc.--and all of a sudden they
have to switch to Chinese. Their marks are completely down.
When students enter the University they have exams in Tibetan
and in Chinese. The Tibetan students get only one mark although
they have to work in two languages, alongside the Chinese
students, who need to pass only Chinese. So the Tibetan
students are at a big disadvantage. There is no incentive to
know the Tibetan language, so most people don't care about it.
At Tibet University, the Tibetan language department has
been replaced by a bigger department called the ``Tibetan
culture department,'' so there is no longer a Tibetan language
department in Tibet University! Also, apart from Tibetan
literature and some rare courses in history or other social
sciences, all scientific subjects are taught in Chinese.
On the other hand, if you go to remote areas there is no
possibility of learning in Chinese. Since most of the pupils
don't know Chinese they cannot move up the social scale;and
only about one percent of the kids graduate from high school,
the lowest rate in China.
Mr. Foarde. We are going to--let's come back to that, but
we are going to need to go on and let a couple of our other
colleagues ask some questions here. I would like to recognize
Andrea Yaffe, who represents Senator Carl Levin, one of our
Commission members.
Ms. Yaffe. Thank you very much for being here. I have kind
of a broad question. I believe historically, if not currently,
the Chinese Government had a practice of moving ethnic Chinese
to Tibet in order to dilute the Tibetan culture. I'm not sure
if that is still going on, but I am wondering what the impact
of the highway that is now being built into Tibet will have on
the continued dilution of the Tibetan culture? That's for
anyone.
Mr. Germano. I would say the major--I mean, I am not an
expert on the subject, but I would say the major cause for
migration is economic, and the government doesn't really have
to intentionally migrate any Han Chinese into Tibetan areas,
because the migration simply happens for economic reasons.
There would be ways in which to discourage it, and those
certainly haven't been implemented by the government.
I would say, if you are talking about the railroad being
built into Lhasa, that the general consensus is that it will
have a seriously negative impact on the Tibetan situation.
There will be an easily affordable way for literally hundreds
of thousands of Chinese to migrate immediately into the
heartland of Tibetan culture. What that will result in will be
that Lhasa itself, which is already at the very best half and
half, if that, basically becoming largely a Han Chinese city,
and then from there on outward. So, I think just the pressures
of population percentages will have an extremely damaging
effect.
Mr. Foarde. Would somebody else like to----
Mr. Tournadre. Some Chinese intellectuals, friends of mine
who live in Tibet, have even told me they are confident that
the new train to Lhasa will mean the end of Tibetan culture.
This shows that even some of the Chinese feel like this and are
concerned about the disappearance of Tibetan culture.
Ms. Yaffe. My second question is--one of you mentioned that
one of the sources of the continuance of Tibetan culture is
through the monasteries. I am wondering--I mean, obviously, for
years the Chinese Government has had a practice of really
trying to control the religion of Tibet. I'm wondering what the
current state of religious freedom is there, and if the
monasteries are still open to the continuing of Tibetan
culture?
Mr. Germano. Well, as the religious studies professional--I
can answer that. I spent much of my adult life in religious
communities and monasteries and other types of religious
communities, particularly in Tibet and parts of China. I would
say it is tremendously variable. I mean, some areas like around
Lhasa are extremely tightly controlled in terms of the
intellectual activities, the number of residents, the type of
residents, and so forth. Other parts such as Sichuan, and
Qinghai and traditional Tibetan cultural regions, you have a
lot more freedom, relatively speaking, where you have large
monastic environments and they are able to pursue their own
kind of practice and intellectual concerns.
So, it is very variable, but the situation does shift
dramatically, such as the recent crackdown in Sichuan among
some large Tibetan communities that I spent time with. But, I
would say overall that--although I have spent my life studying
Tibetan and Buddhism and so forth, and teaching it, the kind of
personal epiphany I had was in 1997, I believe, when I was in
Lhasa for about 8 or 9 months and my daughter was going to
school behind the Potala, in kindergarten. As I watched and
pondered my personal future and the future of Tibetans, what
really struck me was that it is not the monasteries, it's the
schools that are the real crux.
The real heroes in Tibetan culture are not the monks, and
they are not the political protestors. They are the teachers.
And that is where we should be putting our efforts and energy.
So, I think Tibetan religion is very important, but despite
lots of problems, the real crux of the matter is Tibetan
language on a broad based social context.
Mr. Foarde. Let me recognize our friend and colleague Karin
Finkler, who represents Congressman Joe Pitts on our
Commission.
Ms. Finkler. I think it was Professor Germano who mentioned
that the Chinese Government's stated policies on the subject of
Tibetan language are positive, even if there is little
practical support. Could you clarify what those policies are,
and how the U.S. Government could interact with those policies
so there is a practical effect on the ground?
Mr. Germano. Well, I think it is the kind of policies that
Nicolas Tournadre was talking about, where we have publicly
stated policies in print form and elsewhere that are about
protecting, enhancing, and developing Tibetan language. If one
was simply to read these policies and public statements, one
would see a very rosy future for Tibetan language and Tibetan
culture.
So, they are on record as having very positive, proactive
kinds of policies about Tibetan languages. The problem is on
the ground, the actual execution of them is often minimal. But,
what I think many of us have found who work with the Chinese
Government, and educational institutions, is they are willing
for those policies to be implemented from external support, if
they are convinced that those people are working in a
responsible fashion toward goals that they don't see as
antagonistic to their own. And that's, I think, the important
thing to note. That one can move forward on the basis of those
policies, if one does so in a way that is attuned to what is
actually happening in the fabric of Chinese politics and the
educational life.
Ms. Finkler. Anybody else?
Mr. Tournadre. Just one response to the previous question.
Mr. Foarde. Sure.
Mr. Tournadre. Coming back to the question of the
relationship between the monastery and Tibetan culture: it is
important to understand that the general cultural level in the
monasteries is reduced because the great lamas are either
outside Tibet or are not allowed to teach in the big
monasteries.
So why are so many young Tibetans going there? Apart from
religious, economic, and personal reasons, it is mainly because
the monasteries are among the few places where Tibetan is
spoken and the literary language is used.
Mr. Foarde. Good. Do you have a comment now on Karin's
question?
Mr. Tournadre. No.
Mr. Foarde. Somebody else?
Ms. Rabgey. First of all, I agree with what Professor
Germano has stated. I think that if the local Chinese officials
are confident that the NGOs are academic institutions and are
working with a similar interest in furthering Tibetan
education, or development of the Tibetan language, I think
there is room for cooperation. External support of that process
would be tremendously helpful.
Ms. Finkler. Could you be a little bit more specific on
that? Does that mean an NGO that the Chinese Government already
works with on educational issues, or what does that mean?
Ms. Rabgey. It includes work within the academy, between
academic institutions, with NGOs working on economic
development that would further support a Tibetan language
community, and nonprofits that work in the very local levels.
There are a number already working inside Tibet who have made
tremendous headway, and I am sure there will be more to come in
the future, especially as more and more Tibetan regions open
up.
Mr. Tournadre. A lot of NGOs are working in Tibet in the
fields of the economy or health care. That won't help so much
to preserve Tibetan culture itself. That is why it is so
important as Professor Germano mentioned earlier, to help
Tibetan scholars, writers, artists, or associations that are
directly working with the people who are concerned about
Tibetan language and culture. Of course, promoting health care
and developing the economy are also very important, but that is
a different issue, although it is also connected.
Mr. Germano. To be very specific, in 2000, Nicolas and I
proposed a series of initiatives in Lhasa to--which all went
through the highest ranks in the government to be approved--
establish new materials for the study of Tibetan language,
colloquial language and literary language; generating new
computing software, which allows for the transcription of video
and audio content in Tibetan script and Chinese translation and
English translation; and then going around to different regions
of Tibet documenting traditional forms of Tibetan literature,
Tibetan practices, and producing them in these materials for
dissemination outside of China, as well as in Tibet.
We have had, essentially, full support on that. And now we
are about to finalize a contract with Tibet University on the
same fronts. We also helped establish a center at the Tibet
University
computing science faculty, with 16 ethnic Tibetans--no non-
Tibetan whatsoever in the department as of last year--who have
a center for developing Tibetan language computing solutions,
full rhetorical support from the government. But, they are
waiting for more practical support, which we could be of help
with.
Mr. Foarde. I would next like to recognize our staff expert
on Tibet and issues having to do with Tibet. He is your friend,
and our colleague, Steve Marshall.
Steve.
Mr. Marshall. I think all of this is wonderful and
fascinating, and it is really great to hear everybody talking
about it. I would like to ask one question very quickly and get
a very sharp, clear answer from each of you, and then go on to
another question.
May I infer from what each of you have said that this kind
of proactive education can be carried out in Tibetan areas
without risk to either the students, or the teachers, or the
funders as long as politics are left aside?
Mr. Germano. Yes, if the people know what they are doing.
Mr. Tournadre. Yes, it could be carried out without risk.
In Tibet, as well as in the whole of China, there are many
things you can do if you know the people and they trust you, if
your activity is not political or anti-Chinese. As far as we
are concerned, we believe that preserving Tibetan language and
culture does not mean acting against Chinese culture. We
believe the two cultures can live side by side and even enrich
each other. There are many countries in the world where two--or
more--languages and cultures are living together; for example,
Spain, Canada, and Switzerland. And these cultures are not
necessarily in competition.
When you work in Tibet, you need to have connections with
the right people in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and
Prefectures, people who know how to operate within the Chinese
and Tibetan contexts.
Ms. Rabgey. I think it is possible. I think you have to
develop very good local community networks. I think you have to
be careful and transparent with what you are doing and develop
trust.
Mr. Marshall. Thanks. Let's get a little bit more detailed
now. There is a rural/urban divide here. The rural area is
where most Tibetans live, where they get their primary
education. The urban areas are where people go to carry out
professional careers. Where is the emphasis at this really
critical stage of the struggle? Should we be focusing more on
trying to get Tibetan kids a good start and a primary
education, or should we be looking further down the road, and
trying to find professional level education for them in Tibet?
How do we balance this? Anybody, please?
Ms. Rabgey. This is not my primary area of research, as I
stated at the outset, but my personal feeling on this is that
all of these different things have to be happening at once. If
we don't have professional level education, and just solely
focus on the primary, middle, and high school levels, where are
these people going to go next? If we just focus on the other
end, you know, same situation. I think we need all of this
happening at once.
Mr. Tournadre. Yes, that is basically what I was going to
say, and that is what I have done. On the one hand, with the
association ``Schools on the Roof of the World'' helping to
build four schools in rural areas; and on the other hand, and
in cooperation with Professor Germano, we have helped writers
and scholars at the other end of the scale, in urban areas.
So, I think we have to do both. At this time it is really a
very urgent question, and we have to help at any level.
Mr. Germano. I would say that too often people make that
kind of split between the rural and urban in Tibet. And that is
exactly what the problem is. They look at urban environments as
if only a few people live there, there are only a few cities of
size. Thus they deduce that we should focus on the rural
environment. Or of course, the opposite is just as profoundly
mistaken. What is necessary is an understanding of how urban
and rural communities are involved in complex patterns of
interdependence, and thus support should address that deep
interdependence.
It is basically the middle school where it all falls apart.
The middle school needs new curricular materials that are
compelling. They don't need these kinds of artificial, well
intentioned, but poorly made materials. They should have local
significance, and yet also educate the people in terms of
broader national and international needs. They should use new
technologies.
These materials need to be implemented in the middle
school. It needs to be bound up with the university system.
Part of what we can contribute is helping to envision new
partnerships, as strange as it might seem. I think often those
of us who work in China, find that we spend much of our time
introducing Tibetans to each other.
Mr. Marshall. Thank you.
Mr. Foarde. We will come back to these questions, because
they are very interesting, and give Steve another chance here.
First, I would like to recognize Susan Roosevelt Weld, the
general counsel of the Commission.
Ms. Weld. Thanks, John. I remember, I guess it was you,
Nicolas, who mentioned how to raise the prestige of the Tibetan
language and the Tibetan culture in the eyes of the Chinese
people. And I presume that's got two sides to it. One would be
the Chinese living in Tibet, and then the Chinese and official
circles inside of China.
Now, this law is actually very interesting, what you
summarize of it. It says everybody who is resident in Tibet, no
matter what group they belong to must take Tibetan, I believe
it says that?
Mr. Tournadre. Right.
Ms. Weld. So, if there were an exam which students need to
pass to go into higher education, and to pass they would have
to take Tibetan and excel in it, and if that were enforced,
would that solve some of the problems? In other words, how
could the law be altered and be more effective in your view?
Mr. Tournadre. Well, the recent regulation on the Tibetan
language in China is great. It says in article 1 that ``Tibetan
is the common language of the Tibetan Autonomous Region.'' The
problem is that it is not enforced. It is not implemented. The
main issue is how to implement it. I think we have to get
people to know about the regulation, talk about it, broadcast
it everywhere. These regulations are going in the right
direction. But without incentive, these regulations remain
empty. The law was passed last May; however, as far as I can
see, there has been no change whatsoever.
We can also help to raise the prestige of the Tibetan
language, through financial help. Prestige is actually linked
with economic status. If the Tibetans start to think that
knowledge of Tibetan language and culture bring them some
advantages in the social and economic realms, they will turn
back to their own culture. Right now, a lot of people think it
is absolutely useless. So helping to fund all kinds of small
projects is obviously very important.
The help should not neglect the nomads and peasants. The
nomads are now facing an incredible challenge to stay on the
high plateau and keep their way of life. That is extremely
important, not to forget them, even though it is much more
difficult to work with them than to work with intellectuals,
artists, or scholars.
As everywhere in the world, in Tibetan rural as well as
urban society, prestige is largely linked to money.
Ms. Weld. When you look at China as a whole, as a rule of
law issue, many of the most enlightened bits of legislation
don't have a cause of action embedded in them so that a citizen
could enforce them. Would that be helpful, if there were
regulations under which say, the Tibetan parents could sue the
school district?
Mr. Tournadre. I believe so. Now the people in China are
really beginning to use the law and sue even their
administration. That is the case in the big cities--Shanghai,
Guangzhou, Beijing. The people find ways to have the law
enforced. So I am sure since the law exists, it can have very
important consequences. It is a powerful tool. Now it is very
important to do everything we can to have this law enforced.
And we will find the means. What you suggested is certainly one
of them, and Tibetans will go for that.
Mr. Foarde. Let's go on to recognize Andrea Worden. Andrea.
Ms. Worden. Thanks, John. I actually have a related
question. I'm wondering, even before this new regulation was
passed, to what extent, just anecdotally or otherwise, do Han
Chinese living in the TAR learn Tibetan, in particular, Han
officials?
Mr. Germano. That's in some ways an easy question to
answer, and in other ways more difficult. The easy answer is
rarely. It is very difficult for Tibetans to work through
administrative issues or other government issues using Tibetan.
We are all familiar with the phenomenon of Han Chinese who are
even born and raised in Lhasa and simply don't speak a word of
Tibetan.
That said, there are examples of Chinese in the Tibetan
administration and Tibetan Autonomous Region who are fluently
bilingual. And there are certainly Chinese children who, if
they are positioned right or wrong--depending upon your
perspective--in terms of playmates and so forth, who do grow up
speaking Tibetan. But it continues to be relatively rare.
The much greater positive phenomenon among urban Chinese is
the fascination and even obsession with Tibetan culture that I
have experienced for the last 15 years repeatedly. Whether that
is good or bad, maybe that depends on your attitude toward
Disney and other related issues--because Tibet is the Chinese
Disneyland but I see that not necessarily as negative. I see a
lot of Chinese with very sincere appreciation and interest in
Tibetan culture, as well as a more ludicrous side to it.
In terms of the language, it is still relatively unusual
that you meet a professional who actually has competent command
over spoken Tibetan, although there are some.
Ms. Worden. I had the good fortune to visit Tibet in 1987;
so, it has been quite a while, but when I was there, I met a
few young Chinese artists and intellectuals who had left east
coast China, and essentially relocated to Lhasa. I am wondering
to what extent there is such a community now in Lhasa, or
outside Lhasa, and to what extent they may also be helping the
cultural and linguistic issues you discussed?
Mr. Tournadre. Yes, certainly, I think this community is
growing because there is a real fascination for the Tibetan
culture. A lot of Chinese intellectuals or educated people,
especially from the big cities--Chengdu, Beijing, Shanghai,
Lanzhou--come to Lhasa, and they are getting in contact with
Tibetan intellectuals and artists. These Chinese show a genuine
interest and concern for the Tibetan culture. This is a new
phenomenon. This gives some hope. Some of them are even trying
to learn Tibetan even though the number of Chinese living in
Tibet who speak Tibetan is certainly much less than 1 percent.
Mr. Foarde. Let me recognize our friend and colleague, Lary
Brown, who works on labor issues for the Commission, but also
has an interest in these issues as well. Lary.
Mr. Brown. Thank you. I would actually like to follow up on
Andrea's question. Those Chinese that wish to learn Tibetan,
where do they go to learn? Are there facilities there to teach
Tibetan to Chinese, or where do they go?
Mr. Germano. Well, that is something we have an interest
in, because the ``Manual of Standard Tibetan,'' which was
originally in French we have been working on rendering it into
English and there is a proto-Chinese translation of it as well.
One of the things we would be interested in--is different
initiatives toward building trilingual materials to help in the
targeted acquisition of different kinds of Tibetan competency
by Chinese native speakers.
I think at the moment, that is a bit of a problem.
Essentially in the secondary school system, the best schools
are Chinese medium only. At the university level, there are
opportunities, but they are relatively limited. And the Chinese
Tibetan curriculum materials are not that impressive.
Mr. Tournadre. I have an anecdote on this topic. Last
summer a scholar from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
was writing an M.A. about Tibetan culture, and he came to see
me to get a version of the ``Manual of Standard Tibetan'' in
English. He told me that in China there was no good manual to
learn Tibetan. So, as Professor Germano just said, we really
hope there will soon be a Chinese version. Obviously, so far,
the Chinese who would like to learn Tibetan have a lot of
difficulty getting information about the language, especially
manuals, software, and so on. Thank you.
Ms. Rabgey. Just anecdotally, I have encountered a few
Chinese intellectuals, academics, who have entered monasteries
to seek teachers for private tutorship. That is one source.
Mr. Brown. I have another question for Ms. Rabgey. You
talked about the problems when students go to the elementary
school that you helped set up in being able to use standard
Tibetan, and the need for teachers who can bridge the gap
between their local dialect and the standard form of the
language. How long after a student begins at that school does
it take them to gain a command of standard Tibetan so they can
began to learn in the standard language and no longer need help
in their native dialect?
Ms. Rabgey. This is exactly the question we are asking
ourselves, because it is brand new and we are going to have to
learn as we go to see how in this exact little village, in this
precise valley, how long that process will take. I'm sure it
varies from place to place depending on the distance from the
local dialect to the standard, and depending on how many
teachers we can get who actually speak the standard. So many
factors are involved, right now it is too early to tell in this
particular example.
Mr. Brown. Thank you.
Mr. Tournadre. I just wanted to add a point about that,
because it is connected to my research on Tibetan dialects in
the five countries where the Tibetan language is spoken. What
is extraordinary is the tight connection existing between
literary Tibetan and all the Tibetan dialects. If they learn
the phonological reflexes between a given dialect--Amdo, Kham,
etc.--and the literary language, some Tibetans manage to learn
another dialect or standard Tibetan within 3 to 6 months. I
have met a lot of people who did not know a word in standard
Tibetan and managed to learn it correctly in a couple of
months. Of course, I have also met the opposite case, people
who stayed in Lhasa 10 years and are still unable to speak
standard Tibetan. Usually, it is because they are not
interested in learning the standard language and would rather
speak Chinese anyway, or because they don't know the literary
language.
Mr. Brown. What I would like you to do, is to talk about
creating space for a language within a culture in a social
setting. Would any of you care to take us through a Tibetan
newsstand? I would like to know what magazines are there? What
newspapers are there? What languages are they written in? What
style? Is it classical Tibetan? Is it standard modern Tibetan?
You know, what is out there now and what are Tibetan people in
Tibet actually reading?
Ms. Rabgey. I'll take the first crack at that. My work is
not Lhasa or in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, and it is very
different situation inside TAR and outside of TAR. There are
similarities and parallels, of course, but in the Litang area I
was really struck by the difficulty in accessing anything in
print in Tibetan. There was one government bookstore that had
some materials in Tibetan and Chinese. There were, I think, a
total of two newsstands, and I went through them and the
majority of the publications were all in Chinese.
So, this is really an important question you are raising.
Tibetan needs to become an easily accessible language, with
interesting language sources of practical daily use.
Mr. Tournadre. Yes, I think that it is an important
question. I raised this issue in front of a Chinese delegation
of high officials. I said that it is very difficult--nearly
impossible--to buy newspapers in Lhasa--I'm not talking about
Litang. They acknowledged this fact, but one Tibetan official
finally raised his hand and mentioned that it was possible to
buy newspaper in Lhasa's main post office. There are basically
15 newspapers in Tibetan in the TAR and TAPs. Journalists
working for these newspapers meet every couple of years and try
to coordinate their work. In Lhasa, there are only two or three
newspapers, among them the main one, ``Bod jongs nyin re tshag
par''--Xizang ribao--``The Tibet Daily.'' Even this one, as I
said earlier, is very difficult to find--never mind newspapers
from Qinghai or Sichuan, which you can never, ever buy in
Lhasa. Before, there were subsidies to these newspapers and
they were distributed for free in all the institutions. That is
not the case any more. So getting news and newspapers in
Tibetan is a real issue in Tibet. That is also a field where
one could help. Of course, there is no real tradition of buying
a newspaper every morning before going to work, but if they
could find quality and cheap newspapers in Tibetan they would
probably start to read them. They are eager to read.
Mr. Germano. I think even if you get them the content is
tedious, frankly. I mean, it makes USA Today look like
Shakespeare. That is a real problem.
Mr. Tournadre. It is still written in modern literary
Tibetan, and not in standard Tibetan which is close to the
vernacular and would be easy to read.
Mr. Foarde. We are coming very close on our time, but we do
have a little bit of time left, and so I would like to address
one further aspect. Our Commission members are interested in a
variety of subjects generally having to do with human rights
and the development of the rule of law in China with respect to
Tibet--a number of issues that you have raised broadly today,
but there is one we haven't gone into, and I would like to take
just a few minutes to address it, that is the effect of the
problems that are occurring today with the Tibetan language on
the study and practice of
Tibetan Buddhism.
Now, some people would say, why should it matter? How
essential, for example, is a particular language for spiritual
faith or spiritual study? For example, a great many Christians
do not know
ancient Biblical languages of any sort, yet they study
Christianity and practice Christianity in there own language.
They study Bibles and other Christian religious works published
in dozens of languages, and they still consider themselves
Christians, and they still have cultural affinity toward
Christianity. Are we likely to see that kind of adaptation
among Tibetan Buddhists, or is the Tibetan language so integral
to it that it is impossible to be a Tibetan Buddhist without
having a command of Tibetan? Any or all of you, please?
Mr. Germano. That is a very complex question. On the one
hand, Buddhism is originally an Indian tradition which has
spread all over Asia, to China, Tibet, Mongolia, Japan, and so
forth. It is a pressing question that people--at least
academics--just spend their day sitting around thinking, is
there Buddhism at all, or is there just these things you find
in Japan and China and so forth?
So, I think regardless of how you feel on that bigger,
philosophical kind of question, Tibetan Buddhism is Tibetan. It
is bound up with the place Tibetans live in, the environment,
the weather, the climate, the patterns, the landscape, and the
language. These are joined together at the hip. Now, certainly
one can become affiliated with Tibetan Buddhism. There are
literally hundreds of thousands of Chinese, I would say, who
consider themselves to be
Tibetan Buddhists by one profile or another. Lots of Americans
consider themselves to be such as well.
But it is not the same thing. It is not the same as a
Tibetan who's practicing Buddhism in his or her own traditional
language and ways and patterns. It's not that it is
meaningless, but when you are thinking about the future of
Tibetan Buddhism as something that has been promulgated and
maintained by the Tibetan people, I believe it is joined up at
the hip with the Tibetan language. What happened in
Christianity has all sorts of parallels, but they are parallels
stretched over a 2,000-year history with the rise of vernacular
European languages, the issue of Latin as a High Mass language
and so forth.
Tibetan is now at one of these junctures. If we value the
particular forms that are bound up with Tibetan culture,
Tibetan landscape, and Tibetan people, then yes, the Tibetan
language is absolutely crucial. Otherwise, it is something
else. And that something else is not necessarily good or bad.
But, if you care about that 1,300-year history of Tibetan
culture, that won't be here any more. Something else will be
here.
Mr. Tournadre. I would just add one point. There is no
Bible in Tibetan. Tibetan Buddhism is an atheistic religious
philosophy dealing primarily with the nature of Mind. In fact,
there are thousands of Buddhist commentaries that are written
only in Tibetan. They are not available in Chinese or in
English. Maybe 5 percent of Tibetan literature has so far been
translated into other languages. So in order to practice
Tibetan Buddhism and to enjoy the philosophical aspects as well
the poetic dimension of all this enormous literature, there is
no other way than to learn literary
Tibetan.
Mr. Foarde. Let me give the final question for today to
Steve Marshall. Steve.
Mr. Marshall. I wish I had another hour to follow up all
the loose ends. I would like to ask the last question about
this idea of ``genuine bilingualism,'' something that is truly
two distinct languages used for distinct purposes, rather than
just a chaotic mix that changes on a daily basis.
Professor Tournadre, since you brought that up in your
paper, perhaps you would like to mention it first. I would
appreciate hearing from all of you.
Mr. Tournadre. The trend now is the emergence of a mixed
Tibetan-Chinese language that people call ramalugka [ra ma lug
skad], ``half sheep half goat language.'' This is a phenomenon
that is analogous to ``Spanglish'' or ``Singlish''--Singapore
English--and so on. It is a very dangerous tendency, because it
means the people have a shaky knowledge of their native tongue
and also of Chinese. They can't speak either language
correctly. On top of that, you must really know three languages
to get around in Tibetan cities. You have to know Tibetan,
Chinese and ``ramalugka.'' In some situations, with scholars
and intellectuals, you must speak ``pure Tibetan;'' in the
street and in the market you must speak ramalugka--mixed
Chinese and Tibetan--if you take a Chinese cab, or at school
and in the various government agencies, you have to speak
Chinese. It is a very complex sociolinguistic situation.
There is no genuine bilingualism in Tibet. When I speak of
``genuine bilingualism,'' I refer to the situation found in
some European and North American countries such as Switzerland,
Spain or Canada, where people really know the two official
languages and are able to use them in a professional context,
or any other social context. When they are with their own
community, they use their mother tongue, and when they meet
with people of the other community, they will switch to the
other language.
Right now in Tibet, there is an incredible difference in
the prestige of Tibetan and Chinese. There is, of course, a
small community of Tibetan intellectuals who still very much
value their native language and literary Tibetan; but that is
not the case with the general population. However, I do believe
it is possible to create full bilingualism at any level of
social life in Tibet.
Mr. Germano. Yes. I would say speaking as someone whose
knowledge of Chinese is limited to food stuffs, i.e., my years
of experience in China has a allowed me to order my food with
competency. I am very acutely sensitive to when they are
speaking Chinese and I don't know what they are talking about
at that point.
I think anybody who has spends a lot of time in Tibet
encounters four different gradations. One is you have people
who are perfectly bilingual. They speak one or the other and it
is perfect. I remember I was in a Tibetan place with Nicolas a
few years back and there was this hotel manager out in the
middle of nowhere, and he just spoke perfectly. And when he
switched, his body switched, his behavior switched, everything
switched. When he spoke Tibetan, it was perfect. When he spoke
Chinese, it was perfect. I know lots of people like that.
On the other hand, you have these people that Nicolas has
been referring to as neither goats or sheep. They are the ones
who every other word they are saying some Chinese thing, then a
Tibetan verb. And you feel like a ping-pong match or something.
And these are the ones who are really just mixing these two up
haphazardly.
And then you have people who just have a moderate
competency in Chinese and use it haltingly, and otherwise are
primarily fluent in Tibetan. And then lots of rural Tibetans
have no competency whatsoever in Chinese.
So, I think the thing to aspire to is more something where
people value that kind of perfect bilingualism back and forth.
And then others use Tibetan or Chinese in a kind of halting
manner, when they need to. The part that is really problematic
is those who are neither goat nor sheep.
Ms. Rabgey. On the issue of bilingualism, genuine
bilingualism, I guess, what I would add is that I think it
needs to be linked with a bicultural context. A context in
which Tibetans cannot just speak Tibetan and then function in a
Chinese society, but function in a Tibetan culture. That has
many other ramifications.
Also, I think it is always important to keep in mind that
most Tibetans are still rural and nomadic. That is going to be
a huge demographic factor we have to keep in mind in any kind
of work we do their. The kind of work that Professors Tournadre
and Germano are doing is tremendously helpful and absolutely
needs to keep going, but we also have a lot of brick-and-mortar
work to do, literally. That is just a current demographic
reality of Tibet.
I was struck by what David just said, the need to value
this perfect kind of bilingualism. I think that is so
important, and the children are not seeing that. They don't
have necessarily enough of the role models to be able to mimic
that kind of perfect bilingualism. I think it is something to
strive for, and again, the teacher, training, and resources,
the human resources question, I think is very important.
Mr. Foarde. Thank you. We've unfortunately now reached the
end of this afternoon's roundtable. Each of you, and all three
of you, have given us a lot of serious food for thought. I am
struck by how you have given us illumination of an issue that
we looked at in a different way before today. So, thank you
very much, all three of you, Nicolas Tournadre, David Germano,
Losang Rabgey.
We will reconvene for another roundtable on corporate codes
of conduct on April 28, in this room at 2:30 p.m., and I look
forward to seeing all of you there. Thanks very much. Good
afternoon.
Whereupon, at 4:05 p.m. the roundtable was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Nicolas Tournadre
april 7, 2003
The Dynamics of Tibetan-Chinese Bilingualism: The Current Situation and
Future Prospects
Published in ``China Perspectives,'' number 45 January-February 2003,
Hong Kong. Translated from the French original by Peter Brown.
The ecolinguistic situation in Tibet is complex and unstable, in a
constant State of flux. Not only do two great literary languages,
Tibetan\1\ and Chinese, find themselves side by side, but there are
also numerous Tibetan dialects, as well as around 20 other Tibetan-
Burmese and Mongolian languages, spoken on the high plateau. This study
will consider only the current situation of Tibetan and Chinese,
leaving aside the other languages that play only a minor role today. We
will examine the sociolinguistic factors at work as well as linguistic
policy, in order to try to gain an understanding of the development of
Tibetan and Chinese in the region.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Nicolas Tournadre and Sangda Dorje, Manuel de tibetain
standard, Asiatheque, 1998, Paris, republished in 2003 (Manual of
Standard Tibetan, Snow Lion, New York, forthcoming).
\2\ This text was presented at the Franco-Tibetan Conference on
Tibetan Studies held in Peking from October 14th to 16th 2001. Only the
part concerning the regulation on Tibetan, which was passed in May
2002, has been subsequently added.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before the Chinese Communists took over in 1950, Tibetan was the
only official language in the territories under the Lhasa government's
administration. Chinese was completely unknown to the Tibetan
population except to a very few Tibetan intellectuals and traders. The
linguistic situation was more complex outside of the areas controlled
by the Lhasa government in so far as Chinese-speaking peoples had
already been settled there for a long time, living side by side with
the Tibetans,
especially in the border regions.
One of the first tasks of the new Chinese government in the Tibetan
areas was to carry out the enormous task of translation into Tibetan of
many modern texts, particularly those of a political and technological
nature. Through this monumental work stretching over several decades, a
great many neologisms were coined to translate the new scientific,
technical and political concepts that had been completely
unknown in Tibetan up until then. It also led to the publication of
bilingual dictionaries. The neologisms were in the main made up based
on calques or expressions drawn from the vocabulary of classical
Tibetan. The number of literary borrowings from Chinese has remained
very low. Tibetan has benefited considerably from the input of Chinese
in these areas, exceeding many of the South-East Asian languages in its
lexical inventions.
In spite of these positive factors, we have been witnessing,
especially since the early 1990s, a very marked decline of Tibetan in
almost every walk of life. The real threat hovering over Tibetan has
not gone unnoticed by the Chinese authorities. The government of the
Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) has just issued a regulation which aims
to protect the language entitled ``Decree on the study, use and
development of Tibetan.'' \3\ The simple fact that the government is
acting to protect Tibetan through the introduction of legislation
underscores the gravity of the situation. We will briefly analyze a few
articles of these regulations, and in the sections that follow, paint a
picture of the ecolinguistic reality of Tibet through some
representative examples.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\3\ In Tibetan the regulations are entitled bod skad yig slob
sbyong dang bed spyod gong `phel bcas gtong rgyu'i bod rang skyong
ljongs kyi gtan `bebs. bod ljongs nyin re'i tshags par [Regulations on
the study, use and development of Tibetan], The Tibet Daily, 6th June
2002. [also published in the Chinese-language version of the same
newspaper of 5/6/200, ``Xizang zijiqu xuexi, shiyong he fazhan zang
yuwen de guiding,'' Xizang ribao].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the first regulation protecting tibetan in china
A set of regulations on protecting the Tibetan language was adopted
by the People's Congress at the seventh sitting of the fifth session on
May 22nd 2002. They were published text in Tibetan translation on the
front page of the Tibetan Daily (bod ljongs nyin re'i tshags par) on
June 6th 2002, as well as on the sixth page of the Chinese language
version of the same newspaper (Xizang ribao).\4\ It was also partially
reprinted in English on May 24th 2002 by Xinhua. Comprised of 19
articles, these are the first regulations of their kind aiming to
protect the language of a ``minority nationality'' in the People's
Republic of China. It corresponds to the amendment of an earlier draft
bill (tshod lta'i lag bstar gyi khrims) voted by the NPC at the fourth
sitting of the fifth session on September 9th, 1987.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\4\ The difference in priority of information between the Tibetan
version (front page) and the Chinese one (page 6), as well as the
immediate circulation over the internet incline us to think that we are
dealing with a public relations ploy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article one states that ``Tibetan is the common language of the
Tibetan Autonomous Region.'' \5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Chinese: zang yu wen shi zijiqu tongyong de yuyan wen zi.
Tibetan: bod skad yig ni rang skyong ljongs kyi spyi spyod skad yig
yin. Of course, this regulation applies only to the Tibetan Autonomous
Region and not to the Autonomous Prefectures of Qinghai, Sichuan,
Gansu, and Yunnan provinces which cover a territory that is almost the
size of the Autonomous Region and whose Tibetan-speaking population is
larger than the latter's (2 096 718 for the Tibetan Autonomous Region
and 2 478 259 for the Autonomous Prefectures. Cf. Catriona Bas,
Education in Tibet, Policy and Practice since 1959, Zed Books in
association with TIN, p. 265). However, the linguistic situation in the
ten Autonomous Prefectures is quite comparable to that of the
Autonomous Region, Chinese being equally dominant in public life there.
Of course, there are differences and particularities in the
ecolinguistic situation of the Prefectures, but we will not go into
these in this present article.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``Tibetan and Chinese have equal administrative status in the
Tibetan Autonomous Region'' (art.3).
``The Chinese and those belonging to the other minorities living in
the Tibetan Autonomous Region must learn Tibetan'' (art.8).
``Those bilingual in Chinese and Tibetan will receive priority in
recruitment to administrative positions'' (art.10).
Some articles are striking in their ambiguity and lack of detail
and realism. For example, what is the significance of the first
article? Is it merely a pious wish or bureaucratic formula, when we
know that in Lhasa as in most cities of the Autonomous Region, it is
very difficult to catch a taxi, go to the market or to any public
office if one speaks only Tibetan.
Also, what is the meaning of article 4, which stipulates that for
important meetings, both languages, or even just one of them (!) can be
used. Yet, as long as it is possible to use only one language, there is
scarcely any doubt that Chinese will be the one chosen. Another feature
of this regulation is the absence of any coercive measure or meaningful
incentive.
The previous bill voted in 1989 was more coercive. In particular,
it required Tibetan children to learn Tibetan. According to the new
regulations, the choice is left up to the family and young Tibetan
children may choose to learn only by enrolling in Chinese classes\6\
and sit their examinations only in Chinese. If they enroll in Tibetan
classes,\7\ the Tibetan language becomes compulsory but, in Lhasa, the
curriculum is completely in Chinese (mathematics, physics, chemistry,
biology etc.). In the county capitals, up to senior secondary level
(ninth class out of the 12 years of the curriculum), the textbooks for
scientific subjects have been fully translated, but only some teachers
use them.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Chinese: hanzu ban; Tibetan: rgya rigs 'dzin grwa.
\7\ Chinese: zangzu ban; Tibetan: bod rigs 'dzin grwa.
\8\ From the beginning of secondary education (the sixth year of 12
in the Chinese curriculum), instruction is given in Chinese in the
majority of schools. This is the case in the districts of the Region,
as it is in those of the Tibetan Autonomous Prefectures of Qinghai,
Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan provinces.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The entrance exam to university in no way encourages students to
choose Tibetan, as they must also take a Chinese exam and are given a
single overall mark equivalent to the mark they get for Chinese.
The 2002 regulations are admittedly a positive step forward, but
one can have doubts about their implementation, as they are accompanied
by no coercive measures or strong incentives. Moreover, they operate on
a purely theoretical level, with no pragmatic dimension. No mention is
made of the problem of dialects, nor of the standardizing of the spoken
language. The regulations similarly remain silent on diglossia
(literary and spoken Tibetan), which does constitute an enormous
barrier to the learning and spread of Tibetan.
Since being passed, these regulations have gone largely unnoticed,
even within the Tibetan population, and it has had no noticeable
impact. Official meetings and documents are still in Chinese--which
remains the language of the education system and of public
administration.
the ``devaluation'' of tibetan
In China, the period of the cultural revolution turned out to be
one of terrible regression in all fields of cultural endeavor, but in
certain regions of Tibet this regression also affected the written
language of Tibetan which was quite simply outlawed for several years.
After this dark period, Tibetan was able to take off again in the
1980s. A number of literary journals sprang up and many popularizing
works appeared. Pilot schools in which scientific subjects
(mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) were taught in Tibetan
were set up in various regions in Lhasa, Zhikatse (Chinese: Rigaze) and
in Lhokha (Chinese: Shannan). In 1991, official Chinese statistics
clearly showed that Tibetan high school students were obtaining better
results in scientific subjects when they were taught in their mother
tongue. These results were even announced on television in both Tibetan
and Chinese.
However, since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in
the use of Tibetan and, conversely, a bolstering of Chinese which is
becoming dominant.\9\ This new trend can in part be explained by a
series of measures which were taken particularly in the field of
education. These include an increase in the amount of time for Chinese
in the curriculum, and its introduction at an earlier and earlier age
(at the present time, it is taught right from the first class of
primary school in the main cities). Young Tibetans are confronted with
numerous cultural challenges: From the earliest age, they have to learn
three writing systems--Tibetan (which only offers few professional
openings in present-day society), Chinese (which is the most difficult
system in the world), and the Latin alphabet (which is used to learn
Chinese phonetic transcription as well as English). That is not the end
of the challenge since young Tibetans have recently had, in addition,
to learn to count in Chinese, a language that they know only
imperfectly and which they do not in general speak at home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Even if Tibetan is occasionally present, its status is de facto
purely optional.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At university, all the scientific subjects and most of the social
sciences are taught in Chinese. On the whole, in offices and
institutions, only the texts written in Chinese are officially
recognized, although theoretically Tibetan also has an official status.
More serious still is the fact that all office meetings take place in
Chinese and not in Tibetan, and that even when those taking part are
all Tibetan themselves.
The lack of interest in Tibetan can be observed through several
external signs. Thus, although there is a law requiring bilingual
street signs and notice boards, this regulation is not always respected
in certain regions. In Lhasa, the regulation is applied, but the
billboards in Tibetan are very often written in characters that are
much smaller than their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, the signage is
often spelled with mistakes in Tibetan, whereas that is rarely the case
in Chinese. One incident was reported concerning a large street sign in
Lhasa that in Chinese said chuanzang gonglu--``Sichuan-Tibet Road''--
and in Tibetan (on account of poor calligraphy) khron-bong gzhung lam--
``the Sichuan donkey road.''
We could multiply such examples which suggest a decline of Tibetan.
The lack of interest that Tibetans show in their own language is
apparent both in their attitude and speech, as we shall see in the
following section. They justify this lack of interest by saying that
Tibetan does not allow them ``to fill their stomachs.'' It is
indisputable that Tibetan is of practically no professional value.
There is, however, one area that brings some qualification to what
we have just said: the media and, in particular, television. Over the
past five years, Tibetan television has put considerable effort in
developing programmes and films and represents one of the rare fields
in which Tibetan is promoted. Nevertheless, the
Tibetan-language television lags far behind the many Chinese channels
that offer programmes that are much more varied and attractive.
the sociolinguistic and tibetan-chinese mixed speech
In the cities, over the past decade, the mixture of Tibetan and
Chinese has become considerably more pronounced. In Tibet, this
phenomenon is referred to by the term ``speaking half-goat half-sheep''
(ra-ma-lug skad). This Tibetan-Chinese mixed speech is so widespread
that many young people in the urban areas are incapable of forming a
sentence in Tibetan without using Chinese words, despite the fact that
most of the time the Tibetan equivalents exist. Borrowings from Chinese
concern more particularly certain linguistic categories (essentially
substantives and more infrequently verbs and adjectives, etc.) and
lexical fields. We will give a representative (but non-exhaustive) list
of these fields.
<bullet> The Days of the Week--In speech, Tibetans almost always
use the Chinese terms xingqi yi, ``Monday,'' xingqi er, ``Tuesday,''
etc., instead of the traditional terms gza' zla-ba, ``Monday,'' gza'
mig dmar, ``Tuesday,'' etc. For the time being, most people nonetheless
understand the Tibetan terms.
<bullet> Numbers--Numbers, and particularly telephone numbers, are
almost always given in Chinese. When someone gives their phone number
in Tibetan, apart from the surprise element, it seems that Tibetans
often experience difficulties as they translate the Tibetan numbers
back into Chinese. Dates are also often given in Chinese, especially
when they correspond to the international calendar. On the other hand,
when dealing with the Tibetan lunar calendar, the dates are given in
Tibetan.
<bullet> Place names--The majority of names of streets, cities,
villages and regions are provided in Chinese, even when these names are
clearly attested in the Tibetan
tradition. For example, people will say Shannan instead of Lhokha (a
region in southern Tibet), Qinghai instead of mtsho-sngon ``Kokonor,''
Kangding instead of dar-btsen-mdo (Dhartsendo, a city in Kham
province), sela lu instead of sera lam, ``Sera Road'' (an important
thoroughfare in Lhasa leading to the monastery by the same name), etc.
<bullet> The Names of Official Institutions--Institutions and
offices are generally referred to by their Chinese name. That is the
case even for the most important institutions related to Tibetan
culture. For instance, if you speak to a Tibetan taxi driver in Lhasa
by referring to addresses like: bod-ljongs slob grwa chen-mo,
``University of Tibet'' or spyi-tshogs tshan-rig khang, ``Academy of
Social Sciences,'' there is a good chance that he will not understand
unless you opt for the Chinese terms, respectively Xizang daxue and
Shehui kexueyuan. Even the Post Office is generally designated by its
Chinese name youdianju and not by its Tibetan names sbrag-khang or yig-
zam.
<bullet> The Majority of Technical Terms--Although many terms have
been formed as indicated above, they are hardly used except by a
minority of educated Tibetans. For example, television is more often
called dianshi than brnyan 'phrin, a refrigerator bingxiang rather than
'khyag-sgam or a computer diannao rather than glog-klad 'phrul-'khor,
which is however a calque on the excellent Chinese made-up
expression ``electric brain'' to which Tibetans have added the word
``machine'' ('phrul-'khor). In some areas like that of motor parts, the
technical terms are sometimes non-existent and in any case it is their
Chinese equivalents that are always used.
The list is not, of course, exhaustive and has tended to get bigger
over the past few years. Indeed, among some speakers we can observe
massive borrowings of Chinese terms, while their grammar remains
Tibetan. It is important to stress here that the problem is not only
the high number of borrowings from Chinese but the constant switching,
which is more or less conscious, between Tibetan and Chinese within the
one conversation, or even the one sentence. This is perfectly
comparable to the situation of certain North African immigrants in
France, who are forever mixing French and (dialectal) Arabic in their
conversation.
It is worth noting that many speakers in Tibet know both languages
well enough to be able to express themselves in one or the other
without mixing them up. It therefore seems that the practice of
``speaking mixed Tibetan-Chinese'' (ra-ma-lug skad) as well as code
switching are essentially related to sociolinguistic factors. Indeed,
as has been observed for other languages (Anglo-American and Spanish,
Russian and languages of the ex-Soviet Union, etc.), moving from one
language to the other or the mixing of both languages corresponds to
particular situations and environments. The choice of switching or
speaking ``pure'' Chinese or ``pure'' Tibetan is most often significant
and corresponds to definite social behavior patterns. Let's take as an
example illustrating both mixed speech and code switching. The
following dialog was related to me by a Tibetan teacher who went to see
the (Tibetan) accountant of his work unit (danwei) about getting a
bonus. The Chinese expression is given in bold and the Tibetan in
Italic.
A: shenfen-zheng ga-par yod ``Where is your identity card? ''
B: 'dir yod ``Here it is''
A: haoma mar bris ``Write down the number [of the card here]''
B: ang gi chung drags nas mthong gi mi 'dug ``The number is
[written] too small, I can't read it.''
A: wo bu shi qu qian de! ni ziji xie! ``I'm not the one who has
come for money! Write it yourself!''
As can be observed in this short dialog, the accountant is using
two Chinese borrowings shenfen-zheng (identity card) and haoma
(number). The client responds in Tibetan without any borrowing and in
particular uses the word ang-gi ``number.'' His interlocutor then goes
into Chinese. It seems here that the language-switching is motivated by
the irritation of the accountant who does not think it to be part of
his job to fill in the document.
One may without fear of contradiction suggest that the search for a
certain complicity or consensus is, in some situations, going to
trigger the move to Tibetan, whereas Chinese will, conversely, be
associated with ``power'' and ``the norm.'' Things are however not
quite as straightforward. Generally speaking, code switching and the
massive borrowings reflect a linguistic or sociolinguistic insecurity.
In fact, many Tibetans are not completely comfortable in either of the
two languages.
The sociological context described above occurs in the cities, but
in the countryside we find a very different situation. The majority of
peasants and nomadic stock breeders who still make up 80 percent of the
population, generally have a poor knowledge of Chinese and are often
illiterate in Tibetan. When they go into town, these peasants and
nomads are faced with an ``ecolinguistic system'' that is foreign to
them. In order to function in urban society, one must really be fluent
in Tibetan and Chinese as well as Tibetan-Chinese mixed speech. The
Tibetan peasants who do not know or only badly the latter two codes are
accordingly marginalized. For example, when dealing with any public
institution (hospital, administration, bank, etc.), their poor
understanding of Chinese and of ra-ma-lug skad is a serious handicap.
language levels: another sociolinguistic partition
In order to complete the sociolinguistic table and present Tibet's
ecolinguistic system in all its complexity, we must not forget the
question of language levels. Tibetan has in fact one of the world's
most complex honorific systems. The existence of language levels is an
areal feature that one finds especially in languages such as Japanese
or Korean. The honorific register that is called in Tibetan zhe-sa
appears in the form of personal pronouns, nouns, verbs, verbal
auxiliaries, and even certain adjectives and adverbs. Four types of
honorifics are to be distinguished: the ordinary, the higher, the
humilific and the double honorific. Honorifics are used in central
Tibetan (U) as well as in the dialects of the west (Tsang), but they
are not very present in the eastern dialects (Amdo and Kham).
During the cultural revolution, the use of honorifics was very much
looked down upon, and even considered dangerous, as it marked one's
belonging to certain social classes. For more than 10 years, the
honorific was therefore banned, but it made a comeback in the early
1980s. The 10-year interruption in the use of zhe-sa, as well as
changes to society and the influence of Chinese have, however, had an
impact on the concrete situation of honorifics, with a new type called
zhe-sa rkang-chag (clumsy honorific) being introduced. For example, the
honorific corresponding to the ordinary register expression chu `thung
``drink some water'' (informal) is chab mchod ``drink some water''
(formal), but at the present time an important part of the population
in fact says chab-chu mchod-gnang, an ``irregular'' form from a
traditional perspective, as on the one hand, it mixes honorific and
crude language and, on the other, through hypercorrection, it adds a
superfluous honorific. The correct use of honorifics is considered to
be quite prestigious and, conversely, imperfect mastery of them puts
the speaker at the bottom of the social scale.
the causes of decline and marginalization
As we have seen above, the sociolinguistic situation in Tibet is a
very complex one. Nonetheless, it is possible to identify the main
factors that have contributed to the creation of the current
ecolinguistic system. Undeniably, linguistic and educational policies
are playing a considerable role in the way in which Tibetans conceive
of their own language. By excluding Tibetan from the administrative
spheres and giving Chinese a predominant position at school and
university, by offering only a handful of professional openings based
on a command of Tibetan, the authorities have contributed to giving
Tibetan the image of a ``useless'' language. The Tibetans, who have a
very pragmatic approach and a great sense of adaptation, have quickly
turned away from their own language.
Another important factor is the presence on the High Plateau of
numerous dialects that can be classified into three main groups: \10\
U-Tsang, Kham-Hor and Amdo that do not allow proper mutual
comprehension. The speakers of Amdo often choose to speak Chinese in
order to communicate with people from Central Tibet, although they use
the same literary language. For a few decades now, there has been
discussion about the need to define a standard Tibetan. In the
diaspora, and to a lesser extent in China itself, standard Tibetan
(Tibetan: spyi skad; Chinese: gonggongyuan) based on the language of
Lhasa has been developing spontaneously.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ In fact, there are two other major groups: the Ladakhi-Balti
and the Dzongkha-Sikkimese, but they are spoken outside of China.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1999, a very important book entitled Bod kyi spyi skad skor gyi
ched rtsom phyogs bsgrigs [A collection of articles on Standard
Tibetan] \11\ was published in Peking with contributions from the
leading Chinese experts in Tibetan language and culture, and coming
from all the traditional regions of Tibet (Autonomous Region, Qinghai,
Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan provinces). All the writers (46 in total), with
one or two exceptions, called for giving official status to standard
Tibetan based on the language of Lhasa. The regional and central
authorities have for the time being remained deaf to this call that
would however have important consequences for the economic and cultural
development of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and the
Autonomous Prefectures.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Bod kyi spyi skad skor gyi ched rtsom phyogs bsgrigs
(Collection of articles on Standard Spoken), Bod yig brda tshad ldan du
sgyur ba'i las don u yon lhan khang gis bsgrigs (Committee for the
Standardization of the Tibetan Language), mirigs dpe-skrun-khang,
Peking, 1999.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, one may also cite among the important factors the
extraordinary prestige in Tibet of Chinese, which is rightly seen as a
great literary and scientific language. This prestige is also due to
the fact that all technological innovations come in Tibet through the
Han.
the consequences of the present linguistic policy
In April 2001, Jack Lang, the then French Minister of Education,
made a speech on regional languages in France which began thus: ``For
two centuries, the political authorities [in France] have fought
against regional languages . . . .'' Through this speech, the French
government launched a campaign to rehabilitate and develop regional
languages, considering them henceforth as forming part of French
cultural heritage. None of the regional languages spoken in France\12\
are, however, comparable from a cultural viewpoint to Tibetan, one of
the oldest and greatest literary languages of Asia, alongside Chinese,
Sanskrit, Japanese and Mongolian. We must remember that, of the five
thousand languages spoken in the world, only about thirty have an
original writing system. Among the latter, few have been in existence
for over a thousand years, as has Tibetan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\12\ None, apart from Occitan, has an historic literary language.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It seems that the education experts in China have not weighed up
the heavy sociolinguistic consequences of a linguistic policy that
targets only the development of Chinese and neglects Tibetan. In less
than 50 years, Tibetan, which is currently part of the cultural
heritage of China, has become an endangered language, condemned to an
irreversible decline, if not to outright extinction within two
generations, if the present linguistic policy is maintained. The
responsibility of the regional and central governments in this is
obvious. Spoken Tibetan, associated as it is with a major literary
language and which benefits from the growing interest of the West, will
not of course disappear body and soul, but considerable damage may well
be inflicted on it. Moreover, the development of ra-ma-lug skad
(``Tibetan-Chinese mixed speech'') in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and
the Autonomous Prefectures is detrimental to the learning of Tibetan
and Chinese alike.
In the long term, the sociolinguistic resentments and behavior
patterns of peoples are unpredictable, as is shown by the totally
irrational decision of the Republic of Yakutia (Russian Federation)
which in 2001 opted for English as its official language to replace
Russian. That would not have happened if the Russian authorities had
developed a Russian-Yakut (a Turkish language) bilingualism instead of
counting on Russian monolingualism (the Russians arrived in Yakutia 400
years ago).
In order to enable proper integration as well as sustainable
economic and cultural development in Tibet, it is vital to put in place
a truly bilingual Tibetan-Chinese education system which would foster
real harmony between the two cultures. In Europe, the cohabitation of
different languages within the one State (French, German, Italian in
Switzerland or Spanish, Catalan and Basque in Spain) could perfectly
well serve as a model.
Over the past few years, Chinese has become crucial to Tibet\13\
from both an economic and cultural point of view. However, the fact
that the Tibetan language is being neglected may well have disastrous
consequences for Tibetan society in the medium to long term.
Conversely, developing standard Tibetan and making it official could
considerably improve the situation in the field of education,
particularly for people on the land and for nomads.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ Both in the Autonomous Region and the Autonomous Prefectures
of the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is therefore urgent that the Party's cadres and the education
experts in China rethink their linguistic policy in the Tibetan-
speaking regions. It is likely that the present regulation concerning
Tibetan will have no significant impact and that only a far-reaching
reform introducing a real Tibetan-Chinese bilingualism will be capable
of changing the ecolinguistic situation. If this does not eventuate,
the Chinese government's responsibility in the predicted disappearance
of Tibetan will not be easily brushed aside.
______
Prepared Statement of David Germano
april 7, 2003
A Brief Survey of Issues Relating to Tibetan Language in the 21st
Century
This brief document was prepared by David Germano as informal notes to
contribute to a discussion on ``Teaching and Learning Tibetan:
The Role of the Tibetan Language in Tibet's Future'' as part of
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China on April 7,
2003. The notes are written for an audience with no prior
background on the subject.
The goal of these notes is to summarize issues pertaining to the
current situation of Tibetan language in Tibetan culture with a
focus on China, the value of Tibetan language in its colloquial
and literary forms to Tibetan culture, possible futures
negative and positive, and recommendations as to what the
American government can do to facilitate the more positive of
these possible futures. I have organized the notes into four
corresponding sections.
1. the situation of tibetan language in tibetan culture in the 21st
century
First, a few background facts are necessary to coherently
understand anything about the current situation of Tibetan language,
which can summed up in terms of the dialects of Tibetan and classical
literary Tibetan. ``Tibetan'' is not simply a language along the lines
of modern English consisting of a broad range of speakers who easily
understand each other in accordance with standard spoken forms enforced
by modern media, lexical materials and educational system. Indeed, one
could easily speak of the so called ``dialects'' of Tibetan as separate
languages, following the old adage that a dialect is a language without
an army (and, correspondingly, a language is a dialect with an army).
The divergence of dialects is great even in a very small geographical
area, and are often mutually incomprehensible to speakers without
considerable experience traveling. The lack of a transregional spoken
``standard'' comprehensible universally leads to Tibetans often falling
back on other languages--Chinese, English, Hindi, Nepali--to
communicate with each other, a problem especially striking in Tibetan
parts of China. In the last several decades, there has emerged a proto-
standard spoken form based (but not identical to) Lhasan Tibetan. This
language, which some hopefully term ``general'' or ``standard''
language (spyi skad), is understood widely in the diaspora community,
as well as many parts of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. However it
remains poorly understood, if at all, by most inhabitants of other
areas, including Kham (mostly now administered by the Chinese province
of Sichuan) and Amdo (mostly now administered by the
Chinese province of Qinghai). The lack of a robust standard Spoken
Tibetan thus continues to encourage the reliance on other Chinese as a
transregional form of communication among Tibetans from different
areas.
Second, literary Tibetan has a long and distinguished tradition
going back to at least the seventh century, and has produced a massive
corpus of diverse literature including biographies, histories,
philosophy, technical manuals, census data and so forth. Since the
eleventh century this literary tradition--now typically referred to as
classical Tibetan--has been remarkably consistent in orthography
(spelling), lexical items, and grammar, so that a competent reader can
range widely from the eleventh century to the present. Particularly
notable is the remarkably conservative
orthography, which means words are typically spelled now as they were
in the eleventh century. Unfortunately, most of the dialects are not
equally conservative in their pronunciation, such that the spelling of
classical Tibetan is in many cases
dramatically divergent from the pronunciation of corresponding terms in
modern spoken Tibetan. This makes literary Tibetan unnecessarily
difficult to learn, and also entails that many colloquial, spoken terms
have no standardized spelling.
Classical Tibetan continues to be used, though increasingly
confined to monastic arenas, and a handful of elite scholars. A modern
literary Tibetan has emerged in creative writing, newspapers, academic
essays and the like, though the continuities with classical Tibetan
remain strong. The most pressing issue in terms of literary Tibetan
relates to overhauls which might make literacy in Tibetan--and
especially its day to day use as a means for note taking and
communication--more straightforward and compelling to ordinary
Tibetans. While certainly there are broader government, education and
commercial realities which hinder Tibetan literacy, there are also
compelling internal issues. There has been a partial emergence of
vernacular literature, in which spoken terms and grammatical
constructions are increasingly coming to the fore, while orthography
often privileges regional spoken pronunciation over classical literary
forms. These literary forms can be easier to learn for reading and
writing for local Tibetans, given the greater continuity with their own
speech, while content can also be more compelling for a broader
audience. On the other hand, an increasingly vernacularization of
literacy also undermines the impressive preservation of a transregional
form of literacy over a huge geographical area for ten centuries, not a
small consideration.
In this connection, it should be noted that often Tibetans are
completely fluent in spoken Tibetan, but lack specific colloquial
competencies. In other words, they are unable to have a coherent
discussion in Tibetan when it concerns specific professional or
intellectual contexts, and especially when tied to bodies of
literature. In these contexts they will code-switch to other languages.
Part of the problem here is that though an impressive industry has
emerged in creating specialized dictionaries providing a swelter of
neologisms for new terminology in computer science, mathematics,
biology and other specialized subjects, the lack of standardization of
such terminology, the failure to implement them in the standard
curricular resources, and the general failure to support Tibetan as a
medium of learning and exchange in the associated disciplines all has
conspired to make such neologisms largely theoretical in import. The
key crisis in the education realm is the lack of middle school and
onwards curricular materials which are well written, in Tibetan, of
compelling content with local significance, and actually use
consistently in the educational system.
Another important issue to note is the use of Tibetan script in
computer contexts, as computers and the Internet begin to make deep
inroads into Tibetan society. The lack of a standard, international
Tibetan character encoding--in other words, a set of fonts that can be
used in major operation systems and software while perfectly
convertible back and forth--has had a devastating impact upon the use
of Tibetan in digital and Web contexts form educational sites to
commercial venues to social arenas like chat rooms. This situation has
squandered tremendous resources on jury-rigged solutions of limited
use, and been another strong factor in frustrating the use of Tibetan
language in written contexts.
In summary, in addition to government and educational policies in
China--which have been formally supportive of Tibetan but not
sufficiently so in practice (an understatement)--there are internal
issues: the problem of dialects and a ``standard'' spoken form, the
problem of conservative orthography and literary forms in contrast to
vernacular literatures, the lack of digital support and other factors
that are unresolved problems contributing to the decline of Tibetan as
medium for spoken and written exchange. The overall result of these
policies and linguistic realities is that Tibetan has reached a
crossroads where its future is in serious doubt.
2. the value of tibetan language to modern tibetan culture
So, who cares? Some would consider that what really matters is
issues pertaining to Tibetan physical well being (health care,
sanitation, etc.), economic well being (new jobs, economic
development), and autonomy (especially over issues of immigration and
cultural freedom). There are many, however, among Tibetans and non-
Tibetans who see the future of Tibetan language as inextricably bound
up with
Tibetan culture. It is not an issue of whether many need to master
Chinese as well--Tibetan language can thrive in a bilingual
environment, has been shown in many other socio-linguistic contexts.
The issue is the importance and necessity of the continued vitality of
spoken Tibetan in its regional forms, the continued emergence of a
standard spoken Tibetan that is transregional in character, the
development of new forms of literacy that can be acquired and used by
the broad public, and the development of new high quality and
compelling materials in the classroom, entertainment and the Web
written and spoken in Tibetan.
To put it bluntly, why shouldn't Tibetans simply speak Tibetan at
home, but speak Chinese in professional contexts and use Chinese for
all written contexts? Or even give up Tibetan all together and simply
become Chinese linguistically in all ways? These are complex questions
that demand more space than I can provide in this limited context. I
would simply like to make several major points. Firstly, all studies
within China itself have shown what should be obvious--Tibetans simply
don't perform newly as well on educational tests when they are trained
and tested in Chinese medium contexts rather than trained and tested in
Tibetan medium contexts. Thus bilingualism of the private/professional
variety will always leave them at a disadvantage, and doomed to be
second class citizens in educational and professional circumstances.
Just as importantly, such bilingualism, or a whole scale
linguistic conversion, create a dramatic discontinuity with a thirteen
hundred year history of their own highly literate culture. These forms
of expression, insights, wisdom, and particularities, fashioned over
centuries in intimate relationship to their environment and ways of
life will be lost forever, except as conveyed back to them in the
language and forms of other cultures. A people's sense of identity,
place, time is, as has been argued by intellectual after intellectual
over the last century, is inextricably bound up with their language.
The lexicon, grammatical structures, figures of speech and many other
linguistic habits and traditions encode and reinforce a wide variety of
forms of knowledge, notions of self, community and world. When the
language is lost, so is the specifically Tibetan identity and the
Tibetan world; the culture, insights, values and behaviors of
numerically dominant cultures will inexorably pervade the vacuum, yet
the new world will be on in which Tibetans remain, forever, second
class citizens clumsily manipulating tokens of a world where they are
always removed may several orders of distance.
3. possible futures of tibetan language
To put it simply, Tibetan language is at a crossroads where in a
few decades use of Tibetan for reading and writing could become the
province of a few isolated monasteries, apart from which it is for all
intents and purposes dead. Spoken Tibetan could easily in the same time
period become rare among urban Tibetans, and increasingly under
pressures even in rural environments. Within two decades this could
come to pass.
Yet even while the factors bringing about the deterioration of
Tibetan language continue to gain strength, another future continues to
remain possible, even if increasingly a fragile possibility. It is
possible to envision a future over the next two to three decades where
Tibetans develop standard Tibetan into a widely understood vernacular
all across the Chinese provinces of the Tibetan Autonomous Region,
Sichuan and Qinghai; new and exciting products emerge in Tibetan
literature forms from the sublime to the trivial, from the curricular
to the commercial; and Tibetan language again becomes a densely
meaningful site for education and daily communication in spoken and
written forms. And all of this could be done while continuing
bilingualism with Chinese, especially in urban environments, and
without necessarily engendering political conflict with the Chinese
state. This is a possible future, but it is one that will only come to
pass with incisive action and committed support by forces internal and
external to cultural Tibet, leading to the fourth and final section of
these notes.
4. opportunities for american government
I would begin this final section by stating what is obvious to any
one conversant with Tibetan language and culture and who has spent
extensive amounts of time in ethnically Tibetan areas of China: as
committed and expert foreigners, we can make a difference in Tibetan
society and language. The possibility is there, it is only a lack of
financial resources in the hands of those with the relevant expertise
and commitment that hampers rendering these possibilities into vibrant
actualities. The position that nothing can be done, that the situation
is so corrupt and problematic in ``China's Tibet'' that any aid is
hopeless and even counterproductive, is profoundly mistaken.
Individuals--both Tibetan and Chinese--are plentiful with the ability,
will power and commitment to make a difference on issues pertaining to
Tibetan language. The government's stated policies on the subject are
often positive, even if there is little practical support; however
various government organizations in China are willing to have others
help support these policies if the support is done in responsible and
politically viable fashion. Of course easier said than done, but the
point is it can be done, and is year after year by people working
within the constraints of very limited resources.
What is boils down to is funding. Developmental work benefiting the
medical and economic situation of Tibetans is of extreme importance;
but it is essential that we do not lose sight of the equal importance
of Tibetan language and culture. And the appropriate foreign experts to
contribute to aid in these areas are, not surprisingly, those who know
Tibetan language and culture from a life time of study. Over the last
two decades a committed body of scholars have developed with fluency in
spoken and written Tibetan, extensive professional experience in Tibet
itself, and a strong commitment to working within system to support
Tibetan language in educational, publishing, computing and other
environments. It is remarkable, however, how little support these
initiatives have garnered from external sources of funding--most US
government support for Tibetan language/literature-related initiatives
has been for initiatives based back here benefiting US citizens, or has
taken the form of one time student and faculty exchanges. What is
necessary is an investment in Tibet, working with dedicated
professionals to help transform and buttress the local institutional
infrastructure of Universities, publishing initiatives and other
intellectual-literary forums that are best poised to take leadership
roles in addressing the creation of new technologies for using Tibetan
in the digital age, new curricular materials for deployment in school
systems, new literary and spoken products that are compelling for a
young child looking for illustrated stories to a teenager looking for a
Web chat room to an adult looking for a good read.
While academics are often justly criticized for their philosophical
narcissism and lack of commitment to real world solutions, I believe
that in Tibetan Studies we have made great strides over the last decade
toward responsible and intelligent partnerships with Tibetan and
Chinese institutions and individuals on this front. We are now in a
position to help develop new generations of technology that allow
Tibetans to use Tibetan almost as fluidly as we use European scripts in
digital and Web environments, along with the concomitant revolutions in
desktop publishing, dissemination of knowledge, and daily forms of
written communication. Tibetans in China have the intelligence, passion
and willpower to accomplish these revolutions; they only need help in
acquiring the supporting resources and tools. The potential impact is
tremendous, with effects rippling out to affect secondary education as
well as broader areas of public culture. If, however, we simply rely
upon market forces or the luck of the draw, the other future, a future
of linguistic collapse and degradation, is all but sure to ensue.
These emerging partnerships offer another vision of a better
tomorrow, one in which Tibetan and Chinese languages can co-exist, and
Tibetans can remain, well, Tibetan, even if situated within a broader
Chinese nation. But they require investment of financial resources;
ultimately what is at stake is difference, in this case the value of
the preservation of the Tibetan difference, a unique identity shaped
over centuries which is now in direct danger of succumbing to the
forces of sameness that has consumed so many cultures and languages in
the preceding century.
The following are practical proposals that would have tremendous
impact on raising the prestige of Tibetan and facilitating its use as a
colloquial and literary medium for communication, education and
entertainment.
Computing and Web support for Tibetan script
<bullet> Implementation of Tibetan Unicode as global standard for
Tibetan script in computing
<bullet> Specific support for use of Tibetan Unicode within various
programming languages, software and computing tools
<bullet> Translation programs from and to Tibetan, including conversion
programs to automatically generate Roman script phonetic rendering
of Tibetan
<bullet> Chat room support
<bullet> Specific curricular and Web site initiatives in terms of
content
Establishing vernacular spoken and literary standards
<bullet> Support institutional project to standardize spoken Tibetan
and vernacular
literary involving an inventory of extant, published materials in
proto-standard; proposing; standard principles of establishing
orthography; building lexicons by applying principles and making
exceptions (all keeping in mind that the situation is too urgent to
build consensus slowly, and rather must utilize key figures and
institutions to establish a reasonable plan that is then made
compelling by virtue of the resources behind implementing it)
<bullet> Building dictionary and reference grammar using these
standards
<bullet> Building digital tools based on these standards
<bullet> Building popular literature and curricular products based on
these standards
<bullet> Building curricular materials based on these standards which
are of high quality, relevant content, and compelling content
Literary and intellectual competitions
<bullet> Establish competitions with prizes/events in spelling,
calligraphy, creative writing, essays and Web sites with Tibetan
language content
<bullet> Do competitions in specific regional settings involving
schools, and inviting visiting expert authors, musicians, etc. to
participate as a festival of Tibetan language with poetry readings,
etc., and contents for locals judged by visiting experts
<bullet> Hold broad, transregional competitions promoted and carried
out using radio, TV and Web
<bullet> Link to establishing communal libraries with innovative
approaches and resources
Publishing venues
<bullet> Support projects to create vernacular literary versions of
great classics of
Tibetan literature
<bullet> Support projects to create vernacular literary versions of
great classics of foreign literature
<bullet> Disseminate literary products over Web, in print, on Radio,
and in audio versions on tapes
<bullet> Support comic books, children's picture books, teen novels and
other such products in vernacular literary
<bullet> Collect unpublished proverbs and tales from rural/nomadic
areas and publish
<bullet> Document regional musical traditions across Tibet and make
available over Web and in tape/CD formats
______
Prepared Statement of Losang Rabgey
april 7, 2003
Thank you for the opportunity to address this Commission. In
addition to my doctoral research in feminist anthropology on the
Tibetan diaspora, I am also writing and pursuing research on Tibetan
language issues as well as the production and consumption of Tibetan
media. The following presentation is intended to be a brief background
for those who are interested in Tibet but not necessarily specializing
in the area.
1. setting the scene: the paradox of litang
Subdivisions and signs
In the course of working on a new primary boarding school in Litang
county, I was struck by a number of paradoxes. Since my last visit, a
new subdivision had been built in Litang. The broad paved streets and
electric wires appeared typical of any new subdivision. However, all
the new homes were built in traditional Tibetan architecture. Street
after street, the sight of large comfortable Tibetan style homes
resting in neat rows was a sight I did not expect and which I found
impressive. The city's planners could easily have followed most other
Tibetan towns and cities by constructing non-descript concrete homes
and apartment blocks. Yet, despite this subdivision, I was at the same
time, also struck by the number of public signs only in Chinese
language. Most signs for streets, shops, hotels, restaurants, and so on
are still in Chinese and rarely in Tibetan.
Chubas and Chinese medium
In another example, in attending a number of meetings with local
county education officials, I was impressed by the Tibetan dress
protocol insisted upon by the county head. The county head insisted
that all Tibetans attending official meetings must don Tibetan chuba or
traditional robes. He himself is never without his Tibetan chuba and is
rumored to have sent some Tibetans home to retrieve their robes before
re-joining a meeting. Yet I was also struck by the fact that at these
countless meetings, much of the conversation was being held in Chinese
language. The population in Litang includes many more Chinese settlers
now than a decade and a half ago. However, the majority of the local
population and county officials remain Tibetans. The Tibetan officials
were educated in Tibetan and Chinese but use Chinese as the language of
official business. So, therefore, the paradox is that while there is a
clear consciousness of the importance of Tibetan culture and language,
there are profoundly important ways in which this consciousness is not
being realized. Simply adding Tibetan language to the curriculum or
solely advocating a bilingual education will not necessarily suffice.
It is clearly a complex problem that requires complex solutions.
2. school in chungba valley
Synopsis
Fifteen years ago on our first return to the Litang area, it was
clear that basic education was a critical need in the area. Aside from
the monastery, there was in fact little local interest in education as
parents then feared their children would exclusively learn Chinese. But
in recent years, with the opening of the region, schools and other
projects have become possible. We recently began to raise the necessary
funds for the capital expenditure for the school and worked with local
government to set up the school's infrastructure and administration.
The school currently consists of 210 students from ages 7 to 12, a
principal, 10 teachers, 5 cooks, a groundskeeper and guardians for the
younger children. Due to the scattered geography of the hamlets and
villages, the children could not travel on foot to school on a daily
basis. It was, therefore, necessary to build a boarding school that
could house approximately 240 individuals. The project began 2\1/2\
years ago and the school opened its doors to students in September
2002. Focus on Tibetan Language
From the outset of our working relationship with Litang County
education officials, we stated our clear interest in two factors.
First, we expressed our committed interest in working for a bilingual
school that focuses on Tibetan language as the medium but which also
teaches Chinese language well. Second, in recognition of the long
overdue attention needed for girls' education, we expressed serious
interest in seeing gender parity in the study body. The local education
officials are also very interested in Tibetan language acquisition
along with Chinese language instruction. Chinese is taught as a second
language while the main medium at the school is
Tibetan.
In terms of curriculum, the students are following the standard
curriculum of the other Tibetan schools in the county--history, math,
science, physical education, Tibetan and Chinese. The availability of
Tibetan-language textbooks is a tremendous resource. However, much more
can be done in the field of writing and translating books into Tibetan
language to interest and encourage Tibetans of all ages to read more in
their native language. Like many other rural and nomadic Tibetan areas,
the school in Chungba Valley has the added challenge of dealing with a
particular sub-dialect of the Kham dialect of Tibetan. As such, the
school has one teacher who speaks the local dialect and can facilitate
the learning process using a vernacular that the children already know.
Currently, there is an active effort to identify more teachers who
speak the local vernacular to facilitate the students' critically
important early learning years.
Instructional interventions: Tutoring and remedial classes
At this very early stage in the project, we have introduced a
number of practices that are new to schools in the Litang area. First,
classes are taught 6 days per week. Second, there are tutoring sessions
during the mid-day break for students wishing further instruction.
Also, there are remedial classes for those students who need extra
guidance and assistance with their lessons. To help compensate for the
teachers' long work hours, they are offered a significant increase
above the standard teacher salary. Although the majority of these 210
children have never set foot in a school before, they have learned
quickly to apply themselves to their studies. In December the students
took their grade one exams and to the surprise of many, they placed
first in the county for their grade level. In fact, they were tested
twice to ensure the results were accurate. It was recently announced
the students have placed first in the prefecture in a number of
subjects. Despite the novice status of this school, county and
prefecture level education officials are becoming interested in some of
the teaching methods at the school.
3. bilingual and bicultural in diaspora: parallels to tibet today
Similar challenges
In considering the issue of Tibetan language and bilingual
education for Tibetans in Tibetan areas today, I find it quite
interesting that in a number of ways, there are many parallels between
the situation for Tibetans in diaspora and for those in Tibetan areas.
I am from the first generation of Tibetans to be raised in the western
diaspora. Growing up in working class neighborhood in a small town with
only a few other Tibetan families, there was no context whatsoever for
Tibetan culture. My parents faced the typical immigrant challenge of
transmitting a distant culture to their children. We managed to learn
and then retain the Tibetan language by
following a rule of speaking only Tibetan in the home. The Tibetan
linguistic environment at home was supplemented by occasional Tibetan
lessons at an informal ``Sunday School'' taught in turn by various
literate parents in the community.
Whether Tibetans live in Washington DC or Beijing or a town like
Litang, the issue of retaining Tibetan language and finding a way to
make it seamless part of life is a challenge. When Tibetans from Tibet
visit Tibetans in the US or other western countries, they are often
dismayed to encounter many of the Tibetan children who no longer speak
Tibetan, sometimes even after years of Tibetan language education in
India. A parallel situation is found in large Chinese cities such as
Beijing where many of the young Tibetans may understand some Tibetan,
but cannot speak, read or write in their native language. I have even
encountered Tibetan children in Tibetan towns who also do not speak
Tibetan and they tend to be children who attend Chinese medium schools
and speak Chinese at home with parents in the white collar work force.
4. challenges and opportunities ahead
Developing a Tibetan economy
Over the years, I have spoken with many Tibetans educated at
universities in Tibet and China. It is their experience and feeling
that the current system produces a cyclical effect. Tibetans who study
Tibetan language become teachers who in turn teach young people who
eventually become Tibetan language teachers. Although there is a clear
and growing need for Tibetan language teachers, my point here is that
Tibetan must become a language that is used in fields other than
government work and teaching. In short, what is needed is an economic
context actively supportive of and supported by Tibetan language.
Expansion of Tibetan contemporary terminology
There is a burgeoning literature on Tibetan education written in
Chinese by both Tibetan and Chinese researchers. I am sure members of
the Commission are following that conversation and I would recommend a
consideration of this literature to others interested in these
important questions. A primary opportunity and challenge ahead for
Tibetans is to become not only bilingual but also bicultural. To teach
and learn either Tibetan or Chinese at the exclusion of the other will
eventually present further obstacles in the future. Yet being bilingual
is also not enough. Tibetans need a Tibetan cultural and economic
context in which to express, use and
further develop their language and their communities. The emergence of
larger numbers of Tibetans who are conversant and comfortable
functioning in Tibetan and Chinese societies will be an asset to their
communities.
The need for support
I would like to conclude by stating that Tibetans are now at a
critical juncture. Whether inside Tibet or in diaspora, Tibetans have
never before faced a period of such rapid social, political and
economic change. It is in the hands of the current generation of
Tibetans and those interested in Tibet to set the ground work for
positive and productive change. The opportunities are tremendous.
Clearly, Tibetans need education. But in order to meet that need,
Tibetans need resources and support. There are a host of
organizations--local level governments, Tibetan and foreign NGOs, and
so on--need the basic capital investment necessary to build schools,
clinics, vocational training centers, adult learning centers,
libraries, and so on. Tibetan trainers need training. There is a
tremendous shortage of Tibetan human resources at all levels. The
energy, commitment and intellectual resources are there but funding is
needed to train a generation of Tibetans in Tibetan areas who are eager
to make a solid contribution.
The opportunity to learn and travel affords researchers not only
added perspective but also gives them further responsibility to engage
with the realities they encounter. There are the detractors who present
rationalized accounts of why educational and Tibetan language
engagement in Tibetan areas is hopeless. Some point to Inner Mongolia
and even Manchuria as the future of Tibet. But if I did not believe
from research and direct experience that positive and measurable change
was possible, I would not be here before you seeking support for the
survival of Tibetan language and education. As a researcher, a refugee/
immigrant and as a Tibetan with roots in a rural mountain village, the
issue of the future of Tibetan language and education is clearly a path
that needs to be traveled.
Fifteen years ago, the parents in the local community did not wish
for their children to attend school because they feared losing their
cultural identity. Today, after the construction of new boarding school
with Tibetan architecture, Tibetan teachers and even some positive
preliminary test results by the children, there is clearly a new energy
in this relatively remote community. I only wish I could convey to you
at this roundtable what it feels like to experience that kind of
excitement at the local level. Now, the challenge ahead with the school
is to assist the students in sustaining their new found enthusiasm for
learning in a bilingual context.
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