NATIONAL LANGUAGES KUN CHANG 'National languages' are the non-Chinese languages spoken by the various nationali- ties or ethnic groups in China: in southern China, the Miao-Yao, Li, Kam-Tai, Tibeto-Burman, and Mon-Khmer languages; in northern China, the Altaic and Iranian languages. Since 1951, with the cooperation of the central and local governments, hundreds of field workers, some of them members of the nationalities concerned, have engaged in extensive surveys of more than forty national languages. (Preparation for this work consists in most cases of a brief training program.) By 1960, they had designed alpha- bets for sixteen languages: Miao, Li, Kam, Chuang, Pu-i, Tai, I, Hani, Lisu, Lahu, Nahsi, Chingp'o, K'awa, Mongolian, Uigur, and Kazax. A great effort has been made to translate works on Communism and government documents into these lan- guages. Newspapers have been published in various national languages. Institutes and schools established for the nationalities have textbooks written in their own lan- guages. Linguistic research less practically directed has focused particularly on Chinese borrowings in the national languages. In this article I shall present a chronological account of work done on the national languages from 1951 through 1961, a general bibliography, and brief accounts of some of the individual languages, together with annotated bibliographies of these languages. In view of the number of languages involved and the unevenness of the published material, I can give here only an indication of their genetic relationships and geo- graphical distributions. I shall, further, omit what may be found elsewhere in this volume: Tibetan, the Mongolian of Outer Mongolia, and linguistics in Taiwan are treated in separate chapters; Chinese work on Thai is included in the treatment of linguistics in Thailand. All publications cited in this article are in Chinese (a few are Chinese translations of Russian works); I have translated the titles into English - at times rather freely, of necessity - for the convenience of the reader who may not know Chinese. The * indicates works reported as published which I have not seen. I have left untranslated some terms for administrative units. The common series is PAO, HSIANG, CH'U, district (HSIEN), CHUAN-CH'U, and province (SHENG). In areas where nationalities predominate, the organization is in terms of PAO, HSIANG, CH'U, autonomous district, autonomous CHOU, and autonomous region. 152 KUN CHANG CHRONOLOGY 1951 March Preliminary work is completed on an alphabet for the 1 languages of the, at that time, Province of Hsi-k'ang (later incorporated into Szu-ch'uan). This alphabet is the product of a combined effort by the I people, the Committee of Military Control in Hsi-ch'ang, Hsi-k'ang, and a visiting delegation from the Central Government. June 11 The Central Institute of Nationalities in Peking establishes its Department of Languages. October 6 The Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences convenes a conference on the national languages of the South and Southwest. October 12 A Steering Committee for Research on National Languages is established within the Committee of Cultural and Educational Affairs of the Central Government's State Council. November 2 The Association for Reform of the Chinese Writing System and the Institute of Linguistics convene a conference on the alphabetization of Chinese and national languages. November The Institute of Linguistics dispatches a team of field workers to Szu-ch'uan and Hsi-k'ang to study the I dialects in the area of Liang- shan. (In the next five years, material on the I dialects, including the native syllabic writing system, was gathered from eighteen districts in this area.) 1952 February The Institute of Linguistics dispatches a team of field workers to study the national languages of the Province of Yiin-nan, i.e. the Tai, Chingp'o, Lisu, Hani, I, Lahu, K'awa, Pulang, Ach'ang, Nung, Sha, and Hsifan languages. This team, assisted by the members of the Language Research Center of the Committee of Affairs of Nationalities in the Province of Yiin-nan, is divided into several groups which work on different languages (including their indigenous writing systems). July Ts'ai Mei-piao of Peking University and Liu Lu of the Institute of Linguistics survey the national languages of the Northeast (Man- churia), Inner Mongolia, and Sui-yiian, as members of the delegation sent by the Central Government to visit these areas. (This trip lasted more than two months; Ts'ai and Liu's findings were reported in Chung-kuo yu-wen [abbr. CKYW] 4.33 [October, 1952] and 6.9-11 [December, 1952].) August Students of the Miao language at the Central Institute of Nationalities are sent to K'ai-t'ang Hsiang in the K'ai-li District of Kuei-chou NATIONAL LANGUAGES 153 Province to practice the Miao language. Ch'en Ch'i-kuang is the leader of this group; Chang Yung-hsiang is their language teacher. (Cf. CKYW 6.32 [December, 1952] for Ma Hsiieh-liang's brief report on this project.) September A newspaper in the I language is published in Hsi-ch'ang as a supple- ment to the Chinese newspaper, Ch'un-chung-pao ("The masses"). September The Institute of Linguistics sends a team of field workers to the province of Kuei-chou to study the Pu-i language. (This trip lasted for a year. The material collected was incorporated in a report published in August, 1959.) September The Institute of Linguistics and the Central Institute of Nationalities send Ma Hsiieh-liang, P'an Ch'ang-jung, and T'ai Ch'ang-hou to study the Miao language in Kuei-chou, southern Szu-ch'uan, and western Hu-nan. (During this four-month trip they recorded material in twenty-one places. Ma Hsiieh-liang and T'ai Ch'ang-hou published a part of their results in Yti-yen yen-chiu [abbr. YYYC] ["A journal of linguistic research"] 1.265-82 [December, 1956]: A preliminary comparative study of the Miao dialects in south eastern Kuei-chou.) The Chuang language of the Province of Kuang-hsi was also studied in 1952; a report by Yuan Chia-hua and others was published in November, 1953. 1953 April The local government of the Province of Hsin-chiang establishes a steering committee to reform the writing systems of the national languages of that province. July A Society for Research on the Mongolian Language is established in Inner Mongolia. September 14 The Institute of Linguistics holds extensive meetings on national to languages. In addition to the section meetings, two general meetings were held, on September 26 and 27. (A brief report on these meetings October 20 was published in CKYW 17.29, 18 [November, 1953].) The Department of Information of the Central Communist Party November convenes a meeting to discuss the problems of designing writing systems for the national languages. 1954 May 20 The State Council resolves that governmental help be given the nation- alities in developing their writing systems. July 10 Meng-ku yii-wen ("Mongolian language and writing"), a quarterly, 154 KUN CHANG is founded in the city of Kukuhoto (Huhehot). (Publication changed to monthly January 15, 1957.) July A Society for Research on the Kirgiz Language is established in the Kyzyl Su Autonomous Chou for the Kirgiz people in Hsin-chiang. September The Institute of Linguistics dispatches a team of field workers to Kuang-hsi to study the Chuang dialects. (By 1955 they had recorded the Chuang dialects of fifty-one districts.) September A Committee on Language Research is established in the Autonomous Region for the Chuang people in Kuang-hsi. October The Soviet linguist G. P. Serdyuchenko comes to the Institute of Linguistics and the Central Institute of Nationalities as a consultant. Accompanying him is B. X. Todaeva, a Soviet expert on the Mon- golian language. (Serdyuchenko returned to the Soviet Union in July, 1957. Lo Ch'ang-p'ei describes his activities and achievements during his stay in China in CKYW 65.10-3 [November, 1957]. From 1955 to 1956 he played an active part in the preparation, organization, training, and dispatching of teams of field workers. He himself visited the cities of Nan-ning and Wu-ming, in the Autonomous Chou for the Chuang people [April-May, 1955]; K'un-ming and other cities in the province of Yiin-nan [September-October, 1955, and November- December, 1956]; the cities of Shen-yang, Harbin, and Talien in the provinces of Liao-ning and Hei-lung-chiang [April-May, 1956]; the city of Kukuhoto in the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia [May, 1956]; Urumchi in the Autonomous Region for the Uigur people in Hsin-chiang [October-November, 1956]; the city of Kuei- yang in the province of Kuei-chou [October-November, 1956]; the city of Ch'eng-tu in the province of Szu-ch'uan [December, 1956]; the city of Kuang-chou in the province of Kuang-tung and the city of T'ung-shih on the Island of Hai-nan [February, 1957].) 1955 April The Hungarian Orientalist L. Ligeti visits China. April 27 A conference on the writing system for the Chuang language is held to May 3 in the city of Nan-ning, Kuang-hsi. May The Institute of Linguistics and the Central Institute of Nationalities to dispatch two teams of field workers, one to study the Turkic-Mon- June golian languages in the north, the other to study the Miao languages in central and western Kuei-chou, the Autonomous Chou for the Chuang people in Kuang-hsi, and eastern Yiin-nan. June 6 The Institute of Linguistics convenes a conference on the creation NATIONAL LANGUAGES 155 and revision of writing systems for the national languages in Yun-nan, Kuei-chou, Kuang-hsi, and Hsi-k'ang.