cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30223092
Tibetans have worked to protect the Tibetan language and resisted efforts to enforce Mandarin Chinese. Yet, Tibetan children are losing their language through enrolment in state boarding schools where they are being educated nearly exclusively in Mandarin Chinese. Tibetan is typically only taught a few times a week – not enough to sustain the language.
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[Beijing’s] Government policy forces all Tibetans to learn and use Mandarin Chinese. Those who speak only Tibetan have a harder time finding work and are faced with discrimination and even violence from the dominant Han ethnic group.
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Meanwhile, support for Tibetan language education has slowly been whittled away: the government even recently banned students from having private Tibetan lessons or tutors on their school holidays.
Linguistic minorities in Tibet all need to learn and use Mandarin. But many also need to learn Tibetan to communicate with other Tibetans: classmates, teachers, doctors, bureaucrats or bosses.
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The government refuses to provide any opportunities to use and learn minority languages like Manegacha. It also tolerates constant discrimination and violence against Manegacha speakers by other Tibetans.
These [Chinese] assimilationist state policies are causing linguistic diversity across Tibet to collapse. As these minority languages are lost, people’s mental and physical health suffers and their social connections and communal identities are destroyed.
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I haven’t voted for your comment. I’m just wondering how a police state dystopia is THE favourite. As you said, considering a multitude of pros and cons, isn’t there anything else?
Would you ever believe it if it wasn’t a police state dystopia? I wouldn’t feel this way if I believed it was. Have you gone out of your way to do extensive research on the politics, history and quality of life in China over the course of months or years and looked for multiple sources from multiple parts of the world? Or have you just read/watched the news and had history class? Maybe found a book in a library one time? You don’t need to question whether I love dystopias. Do question if I know or at least think I know what you know.
It’s not about the messenger, you are not attacked and don’t need to react as such.
My comment was that wouldn’t there be other options if one considers “extensive research on politics, history and quality of life”, multiple sources etc. anywhere.