Only more than 400 people understand the use of ancient words

Dialect business card

Stone clam pond vernacular

Scope: Shi Clam Tang Village in Sanjiang Town, Liannan Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan, Guangdong Province, only more than 400 Shi Clam Tang villagers are left to use.

Features: One of the many unnamed vernacular dialects in northern Guangdong. The language retains some of its unique vernacular sounds, and some words also inherit the usage of ancient words. At present, it is only used as a way of internal communication within the village, and its cultural inheritance function has been greatly reduced.

In the village of Shi Clam Tang in Sanjiang Town, Liannan Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan, Guangdong Province, there is still a "Stone Clam Pond Native Dialect" that only the people in the village can understand. Surrounded by the Hakka dialect commonly spoken locally, Shi Clam Tang Village is like a dialect island, with more than 400 Shi Clam Tang villagers becoming the only remaining speakers of the language.

According to Zhuang Chusheng, a professor at the Research Center for Chinese History of Zhejiang University, earlier, the Shi Clam Tang dialect has been listed as an endangered Chinese dialect survey project in the Sino-Chinese Language Resources Conservation Project, and the audio and video recordings and corresponding text and phonetic transcriptions have left the corpus of this dialect.

The only endangered language that exists in the village

White stone markers stand tall at the mouth of the village, and the three words "stone clam pond" are particularly clear. This is a Han village under the jurisdiction of Sanjiang Town, Liannan Yao Autonomous County, Qingyuan - Shi Clam Tang Village. There are more than 80 households in the village, with a total of more than 400 people. "Stone Clam Pond Dialect" was conceived and born in this small village and is the mother tongue of the villagers. It has been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth and continues to this day.

This unique dialect is only used among the people of Shi Clam Tang Village, out of Shi Clam Tang Village, the whole county mainly uses the Hakka dialect as the common dialect.

"I think it's smoother to speak than Cantonese and Hakka." Mr. Liao, a 38-year-old from Shi Clam Pond Village, decided to return to his hometown in 2013 as a migrant worker in the Pearl River Delta, "That year, I had my second child, so I decided to return to my hometown to develop. Mainly I want to raise and educate my children personally, and my parents are also getting older. ”

In addition to shi clam tang dialect, Mr. Liao also speaks Hakka and Cantonese, and he said that most people in the village speak multiple dialects. When communicating with people outside the village, they use other dialects such as Hakka. But back in the village, the villagers almost all communicate in stone clam pond dialect.

In academic circles, this dialect is also known as "Stone Clam Pond Dialect", which is one of the many unnamed dialects in northern Guangdong. Over the years, Zhuang Chusheng went to Shi Clam Tang Village several times to investigate and study this local dialect, and completed the book "Guangdong Liannan Shi Clam Tang Native Dialect" with Ding Zhan, associate professor of the School of Chinese of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. The book was included in the "Endangered Languages of China" and was published by the Commercial Press in 2019.

Cultural functioning has severely atrophied

In July, just in time for the summer harvest, the villagers of Shi Clam Pond are busy in the rice paddies against the steaming heat.

There is a saying in the Stone Clam Pond people, "It is better to plant sweet potatoes until the white dew is summer, than to borrow rice to cook." "It means that even if you miss the season, you still have to plant, which is better than no harvest."

Zhuang Chusheng and others found that in the shi clam pond dialect, "莳田" means planting seedlings, and the use of this word is the same as that of Hakka and Cantonese dialects. In addition, they also call farming "ploughing fields" and cultivated land "ploughing fields".

At the same time, the Stone Clam Pond dialect also retains some of its unique rural sounds. For example, the people of Shi Clam Pond use "this dynasty" to represent the morning, "Yan tou" at noon, and "this Yan" in the afternoon.

Some words inherit the usage of ancient words and can be found in Lu You's poems. For example, the stone clam pond dialect retains the "?" Usage - Lu You's "Spring Day" wrote that "late garden taste boiled wine, Japanese wind garden? New silk "medium"? It means to dry.

Unfortunately, the cultural function of the stone clam pond dialect has seriously shrunk. Today, this vernacular is more like a symbol, as a racial marker of the Stone Clam Pond people.

"As a weak dialect, the stone clam pond dialect is not only used in small numbers, but also has a weaker cultural function." Zhuang Chusheng told nandu reporters that this is manifested in the fact that there are almost no operas, songs, and folk stories passed down in the dialect of Shi Clam Tang.

Some changes are also gradually emerging, and Mr. Liao, a villager, realizes that there is a difference in the use of language between the two generations. He told Nandu reporters that nowadays, children are accustomed to speaking Mandarin at school, and sometimes when they return home, they naturally communicate with their parents in Mandarin. In contrast, when communicating with their fathers, their generation is more accustomed to using the stone clam pond dialect.

Through interviews and observations, they found that because the students in the school came from different villages, the children in Shi Clam Tang Village generally used the Hakka dialect and Mandarin to communicate with people at school. Even among children in the same village, they will be embarrassed at school and often use the Hakka dialect instead of the vernacular dialect to communicate. Some of the children who were sent to study in further areas were even separated from the language environment of the vernacular from an early age.

According to the research and analysis, the language vitality of the stone clam pond dialect has been gradually lost among the new generation of children.

Retain the vernacular with an audible corpus

Zhuang Chusheng introduced that in recent years, the Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission have launched the Sino-Chinese Language Resources Protection Project. Shi Clam Tang Dialect was listed as an endangered Chinese dialect survey project in the project, and a survey point was set up in Qingyuan Liannan Yao Autonomous County.

According to the requirements of the language protection project, in the process of investigation, they found four speakers for elderly men, elderly women, young men and young women, and through audio and video, they collected thousands of dialect words, words, sentences and articles, retaining these precious dialect corpora.

"Culture should be diverse. Whether it is the diversity of cultures or the diversity of languages, it is the source of human innovation and creation. Zhuang Chusheng believes that it is necessary to do a good job in protecting endangered and vulnerable dialects. Even in the development of Mandarin, it is inseparable from the motivation provided by dialects. "When there is less and less language, our values and worldview will become more monotonous and narrow."

He said that although in many cases, the decline of endangered dialects is not subject to human will, but it should not be left unchecked, and this diversity should be maintained as much as possible through research and appeal.

Villager Mr. Liao is also aware of the endangered state of the stone clam pond dialect, but he is still confident about the future fate of the hometown dialect. In his view, some people have a heritage, "we will all say that there will be more and more people in the village." ”