Abstract：Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka are considered the three major dialects in Southern China and they have spread across the world along with Chinese immigrants. These dialects have eventually become an important link that binds people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and overseas Chinese diaspora together in serving as their cultural identity. In this sense, they are very valuable language and cultural resources. The use of these three regionalects in practical communication is often interwoven with different ideologies, for which the situation in regions of Taiwan and Hong Kong deserves special attention. For instance, there is a genetic relationship between the dialects in these two regions and those in Mainland China from an academic perspective. Although in the foreseeable future, for the major dialects such as Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka, there is no need to worry about their collective extinction, but the decline of these dialects in bordering areas and in some representative cities such as Guangzhou, Chaozhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou, Quanzhou and Meizhou has become increasingly evident and is alerting to us. At present, it is very crucial for us to adopt more positive and reliable measures to ensure the safety of the Hokkien, Cantonese, and Hakka dialects from the ecolinguistic perspective, and effectively maintain the cultural link between the Mainland and Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao that stemmed from the same heritage root. Because of its practical and strategic significance to maintain and enhance the vitality of these dialects, we would like to make three suggestions: 1) striving to reach the broadest societal consensus among the users and strengthen the social development planning in a scientific manner, 2) developing a mechanism of speaking dialect as mother tongue through ‘grabbing from the baby’, with an aim to form combined commitment in dialect protection between family, school and society, and 3) integrating the three major dialects into a national ecosystem of cultural heritage for the overall management with a special focus on dialect protection.
庄初升. 论闽、粤、客方言的保护传承问题[J]. 语言战略研究, 2022, 7(5): 87-96.
Zhuang Chusheng. Study of Issues Concerning Maintenance and Transformation of Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka Dialects. , 2022, 7(5): 87-96.
