With one national language often spoken poorly, and thousands of regional dialects and ethnic minority tongues, China is having to employ multilingual officials as it embarks on its latest round of environmental inspections across the country.
The government has pushed Mandarin for decades to give a common means of communication in a country with huge linguistic diversity, but a large number of people, especially in rural areas, either speak it badly or not at all.
In areas with large numbers of ethnic minorities, such as Tibet and Xinjiang, Mandarin skills can be just as limited.
Seeking to address this and give everyone equal access to complain about pollution, the Chinese Ministry of Environment is employing not only ethnic minority language speakers, but also those who can communicate in Chinese dialects, which are often mutually incomprehensible with Mandarin.
The ministry yesterday said on its news site that its inspection teams had been recruiting those who speak languages, including Tibetan and Kazakh, though not Manchu — the language of China’s last emperors which is now almost extinct.
Those with complaints or tip-offs about pollution can call operators who speak their language to “give the masses a feeling of closeness,” the ministry said.
However, the two Korean speakers employed in the northeastern province of Jilin had yet to take a call in Korean, despite being fully prepared, it said.
A bigger issue has been with Chinese dialects, with the southern island province of Hainan and eastern province of Zhejiang particularly problematic because of the large number of linguistic variations, it said.
“Although the inspection teams have operators who can speak different minority languages and dialects, it is hard to have full coverage,” the ministry said.
“If calls come in with a minority language they cannot speak, or if the dialect is rather strong, the operators will first suggest asking a friend or family member who speaks Mandarin to help, or failing that to offer a report in writing,” it said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not