Presentation given at the workshop on Minority Languages of the Chinese Tibetosphere at Uppsala University, Nov 3-4 2014.

1. Struggle for Acceptance:
My Experience and the Fate of 'Ghost' Languages
in the Greater Tibetan Region
Tunzhi
LaTrobe Univesity
2014.11.2

2. Ancient
Present
Future
Identity
A Tibetan birth
Identity crisis
Return to my roots
‘Our Language’
Terms
Distribution
Social domains
Seasonal workers
Religious ritual
Official meetings
Language contact Educational settings
Terms
Distribution
Social domains
Language Contact
UNESCO’S factors
The ‘Dge bcu khrims’ movement
Maintenance of Horpa language
Creation of writing system
Documentation of its oral
traditions

3. My relationship with Horpa language
Birth or Rebirth: A Tibetan Birth
འཇའ་ཚོན། ndʑa dzi.dzi.χə.na
ལྷུན་གྲུབ། θə.ndʐə

4. Language is just a way of expression
• It was a collective life
• Our Ake Tonpa stories were similar to those of other Tibetans
• We danced our dance to Tibetan songs
• I was taught that everything has life, and therefore even picking
flowers was not a joyful thing to do as a child
• My brother and I competed to see who couldchant the ‘Six Sacred
Syllables’ most in a week.
• Most evenings were occupied with two things: either telling of ‘The
Smart Tibetan’ story or sitting around and taking turns to turn the
prayer wheel that has the mantra of Manjusri printed on it. My mom
believed doing that would make me smart and knowledgeable.
• My dream of becoming a monk was inculcated and nurtured in
the local language

5. The beginning of era of TVs
• The appearance of TV in the family and community in 1999 marked
the beginning of new life.
• We no longer chanted scriptures,instead we were arguing about
different characters in TV series.
• We no longer wanted to hear stories from our ancestor,instead we
cried for the little brave soldier killed by the Japanese army.
• It was also the first time I saw my father beating my mom, because
she stayed up so late to watch a TV series that she could not wake
up on time to make breakfast when my father was ready to leave for
work
• We replayed fighting scenes between the cowardly Japanese and the
brave Chinese. I got very angry when I was on the Japanese side.
• By the time I was in grade four, all I wanted was to become a soldier,
since then, and until middle school I wore a soldier’s hat.

6. Identity Crisis
ཡིག་ནོར་ཆེན་མོ་བ།
错别字大王
King of Misspellings
The ghost language
Speaker
འདེའི་སྐད།
dʐa.mda.wa
བྲག་མདའ་བ།

7. Re-socialization into the ‘mainstream’
Tibetan culture

8. Language Shift in 1950s
 Language shift is the process in which a speech community in a contact
situation gradually abandons one language in favor of another (Fishman
1991)
• Access to roads/ 318 National road
• Availability of educational facilities
• Intermarriage
• Communal life
• General attitude towards ‘minorities’
• Religious rituals
• Cultural celebrations, songs and Tibetan circle dances

9. Restabilization of language endangerment situation in 1980s
• Communal life ended in the 1980s
• Brag mda’ farmers remained in their community and contact
with outsiders become less frequent
• A local primary school was established
• Only 11 out of 370 villagers who could read and write
• The first college student from the village graduated in 2008

10. • However, other communities closer to the national road had more contact
with outsiders.
• Cross-cultural marriage became a solution to poverty
• Schools were established and many students left their home communities to
go to schools in town.
• Increasing numbers of people began seasonal works far away from their
home communities, e.g, construction sites.
• They remain largely trilingual; Kham Tibetan, Sichuan Chinese and Ergong
• But Ergong was used only when talking to people from Brag mda’ village

11. • In 2005 I found the name of ‘Our Language’ - Ergong
• My relationship with ‘Our Language’ became personal.
• Finding a name for ‘Our Language’was like finding my own identity
• I began learning more about Ergong from literature
• Surprisingly, villagers not only refused the name but also thought I was
making a fool of myself going to college to learn about a language that they
thought has no value
• That initial direct confrontation with villagers has pushed me to look closer
at the phenomenon of language shift in our community

12. Horpa
Ergong
Dejiao Hua
Daofu/Dawo/Rtau
Geshen Zha
Minya
Bawang
Danba
Nyarong-Minyag
Huo ‘er
Hor

13. Background information
•  尔龚（Ergong） ཡར་སོ།• Our language 
• Language code: ISO 639-3
• Horpa is a rGyalrongic language of the Tibeto-Burman family
• It is spoken by about 45,000 people in three different counties
in western Sichuan Province, PRC.
• Language status: 6a (Vigorous)
The language is used for face-to-face communication by all
generations and the situation is sustainable. (Ethnologue 2014 )

14. Current Status of Ergong
• In the past five years 69 local young men and women left the village to live with
their spouses in other communities
• There were 42 cases of marriage between local villagers and people from other places
where the wedded live in local community
• Local primary school was ended and children have to go to the county town to begin
school where they grow up speaking Kham Tibetan and Sichuan Chinese
• 35 villagers found government jobs
• ‘Tibetan Language Movement’

15. • absolute speaker numbers: 35,000
• relative speaker numbers: 45,000
• intergenerational transmission
• Pressure from both Tibetan &Chinese languages; local villagers
wish their children to speak good Tibetan or Chinese.
• literacy and education;
• Due to lack of writing system formal education in Horpa is not
possible
• quality and quantity of documentation;
• Horpa is not being documented,
• government policy and social attitudes regarding the languages;
• Local villagers don’t have positive attitudes from the wider
Tibetan community as diversity is not much appreciated within
the Tibetan ream.
• community attitudes to their languages; and responses to new
domains.
• Sense of belong to local community and as a part of communal
life is much highly regarded among villagers and Horpa is an
important feature that distinguishes from other communities

16. བོད་སྐད་གཙང་མ།་Tibetan Language Campaign
• Encourages people not to speak mixed languages
• Lamas refused to be present at weddings or funerals as traditionally
required if villagers didn’t speak ‘pure Tibetan’—not mixing with
other languages, including Horpa.
• If you are heard speaking mixed-language people will laugh at you
• Local villagers are pressured to speak Tibetan
• Diversity within the Tibetosphere is not appreciated

17. Discussion: Ethnolinguistic Identity
• The Horpa language is perhaps the last marker of Brag mda’
Community.
• Physical cultural characteristics and practices are identical to
neighboring Tibetan communities.

18. • Access to roads/education/work and intermarriage are the primary
reasons for accelerated shift to Tibetan and Sichuan Chinese
• The general attitude among the Brag mda’ Community is that
shifting to Tibetan and Chinese is a natural process and cannot be
stopped.
• Ethnolinguistic Identity and Ethonolinguistic Vitality of Brag mda’
are village-specific

19. Future work
Creation of writing system
• There are numerous examples of successfully creating writing systems for languages
that don’t have one, but Horpa is exceptional;
• Cultural and ethnic sense of Tibetan is strong, so creating a writing system
in other than Tibetan alphabet would not be readily accepted by local people
• But the Tibetan alphabet can’t, in their traditional pronunciation, represent all
the contrastive phonemes Horpa has.
Documentation of oral literature
• Due to lack of writing form,ethical and cultural teachings are all transmitted orally,
therefore Brag mda’ villagers have accumulated vast oral literature, e.g., songs,
legends, cultural norms, ethical teachings