I heard a joke, probably about an old lady from a small town who came to a big city to look after her little grandson. The old lady is not used to living in a big city, and it is difficult for her to go back to her hometown, so she teaches her little grandson to speak a strong hometown dialect. As a result, the young couple in the city took the initiative to persuade her to return to her hometown.
Speaking "dialect" is a shame, which affects English learning. The products of stage thinking consciousness, such as "literate people speak Mandarin" and "Don't let children lose at the starting line", social changes and the contradiction between urban and rural development, have made more and more young parents stop speaking dialects themselves and prevent their children from speaking dialects. In addition, social development, urbanization, population migration and integration, emphasis on English education and many other social objective factors have also led to the gradual fading of more and more dialects with regional characteristics, and Mandarin, like other ethnic and regional traditional cultures, is slowly disappearing.
One side of the soil and water, one side of the people. The differences in dialects reflect the differences in living environment, behavior habits and ways of thinking. Local languages are often influenced by the culture of one mountain, one water, one grass and one tree, which is a reflection of regional culture. People's life is enlightened and grown up in dialects and local accents. Dialect is a symbol of life experience, and the brand of local accent and nostalgia is accompanied by life.
We have all had this experience. Being in a foreign land, we heard our local accent and went home to visit relatives during the New Year. It has been a long time. The closer we are to our hometown, the stronger the dialect around us, the more excited we are, and our hearts seem to be restless. The charm of dialect makes us want to stop. Without dialects, where can we place our homesickness? The biggest homesickness in modern society is the loss of local culture and traditional local accent-dialect.
I quite agree with this statement: once the dialect is farther and farther away from us, the traditional cordiality of hometown will be farther and farther away, everyone's homesickness will be gradually exhausted, and the protection of traditional culture will be lacking. UNESCO said: "The death and disappearance of a language means that we have lost an irreplaceable part of our knowledge and understanding of human thought forever." Mr. Hu Shi once said that dialect is the most natural language and "a truly living language". Learning dialects can improve the ability to use languages.
Preserve dialects. Advocating Putonghua and using dialects are not the opposite. Dialects with national and regional characteristics and charm make the cultural trend of the modern civilized and open "global village" era more colorful.
But Mandarin must be a language that everyone should master. China has been promoting Putonghua for many years, but there are still 400 million people in China who are confined to one-way communication. Even quite a few people don't understand Mandarin. As one of the working languages of the United Nations, Mandarin has become an important bridge for cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries and the first choice for foreigners to learn Chinese. When I graduated from college, I had a Putonghua test and a certificate.
Many parents worry that if the baby is in a multilingual environment, it will make the child confused about the language and increase the difficulty of language learning. In recent years, studies have found that every child's language differences exist, but learning another language will not delay the baby's speech. Some studies have even found that children who grow up in bilingual environment are more prominent in social and cognitive aspects than those who grow up in monolingual environment.
There is a very important criterion to define whether two languages are bilingual, that is, the degree of mutual understanding between the two languages. China is a vast country with different sounds and customs. Speaking dialects in many places will make it difficult for people who can understand Mandarin, but they don't understand each other very well. In other words, if dialects are very different from Mandarin and it is difficult to understand each other, they can be said to be bilingual.
A study by Cambridge University once found that people who can speak both Chinese and English have certain advantages over monolinguals in memory, attention and cognitive ability. Some studies also show that bilingual children do better in reading, math and other tests. It can be seen that speaking dialect and Putonghua together is good for the baby's brain development.
Therefore, young parents can rest assured that the elderly taking care of their children in dialects will not affect their normal development. On the contrary, it will sometimes help their children's brain development, and their children will definitely learn standard Mandarin after school. Many children can switch between dialect and Mandarin at the age of 3.
From this, I thought of the phenomenon of speaking dialects. Everyone can feel that there are fewer and fewer children who can speak dialects around them now. Even in rural areas, many parents deliberately speak Mandarin to their children instead of local dialects. In many places, such as Shanghai and Guangzhou, some people spontaneously organize activities to protect dialects and call on the society to pay attention to the crisis of rapid decline or even disappearance of dialects.
Regarding the cognition of dialects, Baidu Encyclopedia is quoted as saying, "There have always been two opposing views: one is that dialects represent China's diverse regional culture, and if dialects disappear, the regional culture they carry will suffer huge losses, which is not conducive to cultural diversity; Protecting dialects is contrary to the long-standing policy of promoting Putonghua. Unified language is more conducive to communication, while dialects create obstacles to communication. "
It should be noted that if you want to learn a language, it is very important to input correct information (such as pronunciation and grammar) in the early stage. If parents or the elderly at home insist on teaching them to speak Mandarin, their own Mandarin is not standard, but it will bring bad results. At present, children don't have to worry about not learning standard Mandarin in kindergarten. Therefore, if the elderly take care of their children, Mandarin is not very standard. It is suggested that the elderly simply speak dialects with their children.
Whether speaking only dialects to children since childhood, learning Putonghua after he entered school, or speaking dialects and standard Putonghua to him at home at the same time since childhood will not affect his Putonghua level. Children have a strong ability to distinguish between other languages and Putonghua, and there may be a period of confusion in the middle, but they will soon get over it and finally achieve the natural switch of "talking to people and talking nonsense".
Of course, it is not easy for many young parents who are far away from home and working hard in big cities to teach their children dialects. Unless you have a chance to stay in your hometown for a while and immerse yourself in your studies. From a practical point of view, dialects are not as practical as English. If parents themselves have the conditions to tutor their children in English, it is no pity to give up dialects. After all, the purpose of language is communication. Although speaking dialects can exercise children's learning ability, there are many ways to exercise their brains. There is no need to hang yourself on the tree of dialect.