Bouchenaki Mounir, assistant director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said here Thursday that China and UNESCO are now jointly protecting the endangered languages in China.

At the on-going World Chinese Conference, which opened here on July 20, Mounir said more and more languages in the world were endangered, including Shui Shu, a Chinese language specially used by the local women in south China's Hunan Province. Some languages have a large population of speakers while some have few, therefore the native speakers for the less-spoken languages are no longer willing to use them.

Statistics from the UNESCO showed there are 6,000 languages in the world. China's 56 ethnic groups speak more than 70 languages, among which mandarin holds the largest number of speakers totaling more than one billion. And the Chinese speakers also speak in 100-plus dialects.

"The UNESCO is dedicated to promoting local people's consciousness of using their native language," Mounir said. To this end, a joint project between UNESCO and the Chinese government has been launched in south China's Yunnan Province in an effort to help the local minority ethnic groups compile specific textbooks, and cultivate their own teaching staff.

According to Mounir, the UNESCO is now collecting information of endangered languages worldwide, marking them on the map on-line and showing them to the public. The UNESCO also joined hands with TV stations and Discovery channels to record endangered languages.

"Language is the carrier of the human intangible culture, and we should attach much importance to the protection of them," Mounir concluded.

The two-day conference, with the theme of "the Development of Chinese in a Multi-cultural World", attracted nearly 600 government officials, Sinologists and Chinese learners from 67 countries and regions, among which more than 350 came from overseas. 
 
(Xinhua News Agency July 22, 2005)