The Inheritance And Vicissitude Of Tujia Minority Language In Yanchong

Recently, the academe has its focused concern on an endangered language—Tujia language, in the background of the contemporary advocation to rescue and preserve the nonmaterial cultural legacy. There has been a great many achievements in Tujia language research made by the scholars of grand old man from the angel of endangerment, to explore the reason for its gradual comedown and conclude the rule in the development of weak language, including Tujia language. But they almost merely hold a pessimistic attitude about its outlook: due to the improvement of transportation and people's living standard, and the more frequent communication between Tujia community and the outside world, the communicative function of Tujia language may devolve and disappear, and therefore, Tujia people are bound to borrow quickly the more convenient and stranger language—Chinese. The writer, by means of a careful field study of Tujia people and their language in detail in Yanchong(a Tujia village ), finds that the feature in the language use and tendency of its development in this community is quitedifferent from the other Tujia people's village.My paper records in detail the traditional cultural background in Yanchong Tujia community and present state and feature of Tujia language use, including its vocabulary preservation, and distribution, the borrowed words from Chinese in a large scale, neology and change in its tone. Through the analysis about present state and feature of Tujia language use and the comparison with the situation of language use in those surrounding Tujia communities, such as Lasidong and Pojiao, the writer discovers some features of Tujia language's inheritance and vicissitude as the following: high frequency in Tujia language use forms the situation of using Tujia language and Chinese simultaneously; there is no a tendency of astogeny among the people using it; Tujia vocabulary has been enriched by the borrowed words from Chinese; the long-term effect from Chinese has caused lots of borrowed words and variation in Tujia vocabulary. local people's consciousness is likely to improve the preservation and devolution of Tujia language;The above-mentioned features exist amazingly in the background of Yanchong people's not bad living condition and convenience in transportation make the writer hold the viewpoint that there still is its vitality in the existence and development. And the writer sums up the reasons for its long-term survival: the active effect from good humanities environment, self-identity in nationality, family influence and the future development in tourism. Based on this viewpoint, the writer prospects about its future development: when the people give up using their own language—Tujia Language in some communities, for instance, Lasidong, because of the influence from the improved living condition in transportation and economy, the people in other communities, for example, Yanchong will continue to use because the variation in the contemporary language can meet the needs of their daily communication. Thus, despite that number of the people using it is decreasing and the range for its use is shrinking, Tujia language will not die out and the offspring can feel and use it for the people's improvement in their diathesis and the fortified awareness in their own national culture.