Language Use And Language Attitude Survey In Beijing, Mongolian Youth

This article made a survey on Beijing Mongolian youth about their language using and their language attitude by adopting sociolinguistics methodology like questionnaire, interview and observation in order to find the positive as well as negative influences of rural environment on Mongolian language using and language attitudes and to pursue the effective countermeasure for the development of ethnic language, which will supply a base for the protection of mother language in the development of cities.In the aspect of language mastery, 94% of testees' first language is Mongolian, which was learnt mainly from their family; but written language of Mongolian, Chinese and foreign language are mainly learnt through the school education. 99% of testees have a good command of at least two languages among which Mongolian and Chinese take a majority. 49% of testees have a good command of Mongolian and Chinese while 45% of testees have a good command of Mongolian, Chinese and foreign language.In the aspect of language extent, with some exceptional individuals, the testees' Chinese ability level is the best including writing, reading, listening and speaking abilities. The language of Mongolian takes the second place, and writing, reading, listening and speaking abilities of it are declining. Foreign language takes the third place. The writing and reading abilities are better than listening and speaking abilities, that is to say, their written foreign language is better than their oral language.In the aspect of language using, language adoption mainly is based on conversing objects. 99% of testees carry Chinese when they converse other nationalities and carry their mother tongue or bilingual with their national people, only 10% of whom couldn't speak their mother tongue. In their families, most of them use their mother tongue to converse with their parents, while with their spouse or children, they are likely to adopt bilingual or even pure Chinese after they arrived in Beijing. The net language is more bilingual, but the Chinese written language use is higher than Mongolian.In the aspect of language attitude, most testees have high sympathy to the Chinese language. In the aspect of function, Chinese written language has been still occupying the first approval place. In their mind, Chinese and Mongolian share the same important place. In the aspect of emotion, Beijing every testee has an intense love to their national language.The investigation revealed that the urban environment has promoted the language proficiency among Mongolian youths, which has positive influence rather than the negative ones to mother tongue and enables Mongolian youths improve their love to their national language. Above all, the development of national language results mainly from the setting up right consciousness, strengthening national education and right attitude toward intermarriage.