Scholars have called for greater protection and preservation of local dialects, after a recent survey carried out by Shanxi Evening News found that they are slowly fading away in the province.
The survey's central question asked respondents what they believe their mother tongue to be, with half saying that it was their dialect and the other half saying that it was Mandarin. People over 50 were more inclined to say their dialect was their mother tongue.
The survey found that in many cases children were not able to speak dialects, but were able to speak Mandarin.
"Many young people refuse to speak Shanxi dialects because of its rough sound, and many parents are unwilling to teach their children," said professor Qiao Quansheng, a linguistics expert from Shanxi University.
Qiao expressed his concerns about the diminishing use of Shanxi dialects and said they hold many important aspects of Shanxi culture and history.
"Shanxi dialects consist of many ancient pronunciations and characters which are real treasures for academic researches."
The country's Ministry of Education and the State Language Commission started a project to protect language resources of China in 2015. As a pilot area of the project, Shanxi province has collected and filed dialects from 26 counties on paper, audio and video in the past two years.
"There is a total of 41 counties on the list. Another 15 will be completed this year," said Qiao.
