Report on Language Life in China in 2011
In 2011, the language life in China was full of vitality, health and colorful. The overall situation is as follows: the central government attaches great importance to the cause of language and writing; The vision and field of national language and writing work have been further expanded; Vigorously promote and standardize the use of the national common language, and scientifically protect the languages of all ethnic groups, with outstanding highlights; The language and writing rights of people with disabilities are effectively guaranteed; The public is widely concerned about language life; Language problems in the process of internationalization and marketization are concerned; Academic exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are active; The use of words in the media and teaching materials is stable.
1. The central government attaches great importance to the cause of language and writing.
(1) In October, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Deepening the Reform of Cultural System and Promoting the Great Development and Prosperity of Socialist Culture", proposing to "vigorously promote and standardize the use of the national common spoken and written languages and scientifically protect the spoken and written languages of all ethnic groups", putting forward clear requirements for the language and written undertakings, highlighting the strategic position of the language and written work in the construction of socialist culture, and reflecting the great importance and ardent hope of the party and the state for the language and written undertakings.
(2) In January, Liu Yandong, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and State Councilor, delivered an important speech on behalf of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council at the symposium to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the promulgation of the Law on the National Common Language and Characters, pointing out that "strengthening the popularization and popularization of the national common language and characters is a strategic measure to safeguard national sovereignty and dignity and reflect the core interests of the country", expounded the principles and policies of the language and characters, emphasized the position and role of the language and characters work, and made clear the direction of the language and characters work in the new period, which is of great significance to the current and future period.
(3) A number of documents issued by the State Council in 2011 are related to the language and writing work, including the protection of the language rights of the disabled, the language and writing work of ethnic minorities, and the international exchange of language and culture, such as the Action Plan for Prospering the Border Areas and Enriching the People (2011-2015), Several Opinions on Promoting the Sound and Rapid Development of Pastoral Areas, the Twelfth Five-Year Action Plan for the Suppression and Prevention of AIDS in China, and the State Council’s Revision of the Regulations on Publishing Management.
(4) A number of documents issued by relevant ministries and commissions in the State Council in 2011 attach importance to the content of language and writing work, such as:
1. In June, the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the People’s Bank of China and the the State Council Poverty Alleviation Office jointly issued the Plan for Supporting the Development of Ethnic Minorities with Less Population (2011-2015), which involves promoting bilingual education, promoting the standardization, standardization and informatization of spoken and written languages, supporting the publication and distribution of ethnic cultural products, and strengthening the rescue and protection of endangered languages.
2. In July, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued the Grading Criteria for Marriage Registration Offices, which stipulated that marriage registrars should use Mandarin in a unified way, and that marriage registrars of foreign-related marriage registration offices should be proficient in at least one foreign language.
3. The Ministry of Health issued the Code of Conduct for Employees in Medical Institutions (Draft for Comment) in December, requiring employees in medical institutions to be civilized in speech, conscientiously implement the medical document system, standardize the writing and proper preservation of medical records, and correctly use medical terms.
4. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued the Notice on Further Strengthening the Quality Management of Teleplays in February, demanding that "teleplay production institutions should check the quality of teleplays produced, ensure that the words used in teleplays are correct and standardized, avoid subtitle typos, and minimize pronunciation errors, word errors and expression errors." "TV drama censors should formulate a clear and strict text quality supervision system and strengthen the quality control of TV dramas submitted for review."
5. In February, the General Administration of Press and Publication issued the "Notice on Initiating the Donation of Xinhua Dictionary to Rural Primary and Secondary Schools in Poverty-stricken Areas in Central and Western China", proposing to donate the paperback edition of Xinhua Dictionary to rural primary and secondary school students in poverty-stricken areas in Central and Western China, offering love to children in poverty-stricken mountainous areas and effectively solving the problem that students in rural areas lack genuine dictionaries.
The General Administration of Press and Publication and the General Administration of Customs jointly issued the Measures for the Administration of the Import of Audio-visual Products in March, stipulating that the published imported audio-visual products should use the approved Chinese program names; Foreign language programs should be marked with Chinese and foreign names on audio-visual products and cover packages; The language used for publishing imported audio-visual products shall conform to the language and writing standards promulgated by the state.
Two, vigorously promote and standardize the use of the national common language.
(a) the national medium and long-term language reform and development plan
The Outline of the National Medium-and Long-Term Reform and Development Plan for Language and Literature (2010-2020) was basically finalized. The formulation, promulgation and implementation of the Outline of Language and Character Planning plays an important role in adapting the language and character undertakings to the development of the situation, fully implementing the Outline of Education Planning, and ensuring the comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development of the national language and character undertakings. The Outline of Language Planning will be further revised and improved according to the requirements of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, such as "vigorously promoting and standardizing the use of the national common language and scientifically protecting the languages of all ethnic groups".
(B) the construction of language norms and standards
On August 17th, the Chinese Character List of General Specification was deliberated and adopted by the executive meeting of the State Council. The List of Chinese Characters for General Specification is an important Chinese character specification that implements the National Law on Common Languages and Characters and adapts to the needs of Chinese characters application in all fields of society in the information age. Three national standards urgently needed by the society, such as Usage of Numbers in Publications, Usage of Punctuation Symbols, and Spelling Rules of Chinese Phonetic Alphabet of China Names, have been issued, which are helpful to improve the standardized level of language application in all fields of society.
(3) Promotion of Putonghua
The 14th National Publicity Week of Putonghua Promotion was widely held throughout the country. In September, the opening and closing ceremonies of the publicity week were held in Erdos City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Lhasa City, Xizang Autonomous Region. The publicity theme of this year’s Pushing Week is "to improve the application ability of the national common language and carry forward the excellent Chinese cultural traditions".
National putonghua proficiency test. In 2011, a total of 4,090,167 people participated in the national Putonghua test, including 99,469 civil servants, 338,752 teachers, 3,378,127 students, 7,127 radio and television systems and 266,692 other social workers.
(D) the State Language Commission’s "Twelfth Five-Year" scientific research work
In 2011, the State Language Commission set up a total of 136 "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" scientific research projects, covering the key work of the State Language Commission, including language policy, language and writing standards, promotion and testing of Putonghua, national language ability, Chinese classic reading, bilingual education, Braille sign language standards and so on.
(5) improve the national language ability.
Breakthrough progress has been made in the Chinese proficiency test. In December, the Chinese proficiency test was launched in Beijing, Inner Mongolia, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Yunnan and Nankai University, with a total of 2,442 participants.
Other language tests for the society are carried out in an orderly manner, including the Chinese character application level test, the Chinese proficiency test for ethnic minorities, the oral Chinese proficiency test, the new Chinese proficiency test, the Chinese proficiency test and the national professional Chinese proficiency test.
Promote standardized Chinese character writing education. Held the "Chinese chanting? 2011 Global Chinese Students and National Students Standardized Chinese Character Writing Competition "; Organize and carry out the evaluation of national-level standardized Chinese character writing education characteristic schools; Held the first training course for teachers to standardize Chinese character writing and calligraphy; A forum on standardizing Chinese character writing education was held.
(6) Chinese chanting? Classic reading action
The Ministry of Education and the State Language Committee issued the "About Carrying out" Chinese Recitation in Schools? Notice on the pilot work of Classic Reading Action; The national education system has carried out red classic reading activities, in which 14 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) such as Tianjin, Jiangsu and Zhejiang have organized nearly 50,000 red classic reading activities, with nearly 14 million teachers and students directly participating and observing, and 15,000 participating schools; Organize the "Chinese chanting"? 2011 classic reading contest ""Chinese chanting? 2011 Composition Competition for Primary and Secondary School Students and other activities.
(seven) the construction of national language standardization model school.
In April, the General Office of the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Application and Identification of the Third Batch of National Model Schools for Standardization of Languages and Characters", requiring all localities to attach importance to the construction of model schools and actively organize the application. After evaluation and review, the Ministry of Education and the State Language Committee awarded 506 schools the title of National Model School for Standardization of Language and Characters in December.
(eight) the new period of Putonghua pronunciation.
A seminar on Putonghua pronunciation examination in the new era was held in May. The Putonghua Audition Committee was established in Beijing in October, and the "Putonghua Phonetic Standardization Network (Putonghua Audition Network)" was launched at the same time. In the new period, the work of Putonghua pronunciation evaluation will focus on the formulation of the principles of Putonghua pronunciation evaluation and the revision of the Table of Putonghua Pronunciation Evaluation, so as to further improve the standard of Putonghua pronunciation and meet the needs of the development of language life in the new period.
Third, scientifically protect the spoken and written languages of all ethnic groups
(A) the construction of audio database of Chinese language resources
The construction of Chinese language resources audio database Shanghai database, Beijing database and Liaoning database has been started successively. The pilot summary meeting on the construction of audio database of Chinese language resources was held in Nanjing. The meeting summarized the pilot experience of Jiangsu Province, affirmed the working mode of "government-led, scholars’ commitment and social participation", and opened the exhibition network of audio database of Chinese language resources (Jiangsu Database).
(B) minority language test
The Mongolian Standard Phonetic Proficiency Test was held 11 times in 14 test sites in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and the total number of candidates reached 2,500. The development of Zhuang language proficiency test was started in 2010. In 2011, the simulation test and topic analysis were completed in some test sites in Guangxi.
(C) the study of minority languages
The project "Research on Modern Tibetan Grammatical Information Dictionary Database" passed the expert appraisal in December, and the results of the project laid a foundation for further development of Tibetan text grammar tagging, automatic word segmentation by machine, and Tibetan-Chinese machine translation. "Daur, Ewenki and Oroqen Phonetic Acoustics Parameter Database" passed the expert appraisal in November. The achievements of these projects are helpful to the protection and development of the phonetic resources of minority languages in China. The Report on Standardization and Informatization of Chinese Minority Languages and Characters was published.
(4) Chinese font project
The General Administration of Press and Publication issued the Development Plan of the Press and Publication Industry in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, and proposed to build the "Chinese font project". This project will collect the Chinese characters and minority characters in the existing literature and materials, establish inter-character relations, and make the codes and main font character libraries of Chinese characters and minority characters that meet various application requirements according to the requirements of publishing, printing and network digitalization.
(5) Press and publication of minority languages.
During the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" period, the national "Key Folk Language Publishing and Translation Project" subsidizes key folk language (including bilingual books in Chinese and in Chinese) and folk language audio-visual products every year, and subsidizes the folk language translation of excellent Chinese and foreign language publications. Since December, the project of "500 kinds of books in five ethnic languages enter thousands of villages and schools" has given away 500,000 books free of charge to five provinces and regions where ethnic minorities live in concentrated communities: Mongolia, Tibet, Uygur, Kazakhstan and North Korea.
(VI) Training of bilingual judges of ethnic minorities
The Supreme People’s Court carried out investigation and research around the establishment of bilingual judges’ training bases in western ethnic areas, organized and funded the compilation of bilingual judges’ training materials in Xinjiang, Qinghai and Inner Mongolia, and completed the Dictionary of Sino-Tibetan Comparative Law.
Fourth, effectively protect the language rights of people with disabilities
(1) Providing barrier-free information exchange services
The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council publicly solicited opinions on the Regulations on Barrier-free Environment Construction (Draft for Comment), which stipulated that barrier-free information exchange services should be provided when releasing government information and broadcasting TV programs; Urban public service places and public transport should create conditions for barrier-free information exchange; Websites and libraries should gradually provide barrier-free information exchange services. Services include: text prompts, sign language, voice prompts, screen subtitles, visual guidance, hearing AIDS, audio books, Braille books, Braille ballots, Braille papers, etc.
(two) to promote the national common sign language and Braille.
The China Disabled Persons’ Federation issued the "Twelfth Five-Year Development Outline for the Disabled in China", which incorporated the research and promotion of sign language and Braille into the national language and writing work plan, established sign language and Braille research institutions, standardized and promoted the national common sign language and Braille, improved the information level of sign language and Braille, and established a system of training, certification and dispatching service for sign language translators.
(3) Implementing the Braille Publishing Project
The General Administration of Press and Publication issued the "Development Plan for the Press and Publication Industry during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan", proposing that the country should implement the "Braille Publishing Project" during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan period, strengthen the construction of the Braille publishing base, and allocate braille engraving machines and braille plate-making printing production lines; Develop braille music scores, reference books, periodicals and digital audio books that meet the cognition of the blind; Building Chinese Braille Library; The establishment of blind information technology research and product development projects.
Fifth, the public is widely concerned about language life.
(A) Chinese inventory in 2011
In December, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center, the Commercial Press and other units hosted the "Chinese Inventory 2011" activity, which released "annual words", "annual buzzwords" and "annual new words". The domestic and international annual words are "control", "can’t afford to hurt" and "debt" and "European debt crisis" respectively; The top ten buzzwords are: the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the opening of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, a cultural power, food safety, rendezvous and docking, the Japanese earthquake, the European debt crisis, the Libyan situation, Jobs and Durban Climate Conference; The top ten new words are: I can’t afford to hurt, Yunqi, Tiger Mom, Government Affairs Weibo, Beijing Spirit, Change of Business, Microfilm, Name Tax, Taobao Style and cloud tv.
(2) Chinese proficiency test
Xinhuanet reported in July that the "Chinese Proficiency Test", which took three years to develop, will be piloted this year. This news has aroused great concern in society. Proponents believe that the current test is still the main means to promote learning, and the implementation of Chinese proficiency test is conducive to improving the national mother tongue ability and promoting the healthy development of Chinese. Questioners worry that the test will increase students’ learning burden and damage the education and learning of Chinese.
The Chinese proficiency test adheres to the principles of non-mandatory, non-selective and non-profit, and is a public welfare social test.
(3) renaming of place names
The renaming of "Xiangfan" city in Hubei as "Xiangyang" has aroused social discussion. Supporters believe that Xiangyang has a higher status than Fancheng in history, and the name change highlights Xiangyang’s historical and cultural heritage, which is conducive to attracting investment or tourism development. Opponents believe that Fancheng’s history and culture are equally profound, and it will cost at least 100 million yuan to change its name to modify various maps and official seals.
(D) Taobao application
Taobao body admission notice. In July, Nanjing University of Science and Technology sent a "Taobao style" admission message to freshmen: "Dear, congratulations! You have been admitted to South Institute of Technology. Not bad! 211 colleges and universities! ……”。 Some people think that the short message is very kind in a way that young people like to see and hear, but skeptics think it is not serious enough.
Taobao wanted order. The police in Xuhui, Shanghai issued a "Taobao-style wanted order", in which the fugitives were called "relatives" and some words commonly used by merchants such as "discount", "customer service hotline", "reservation" and "package" were used. Skeptics believe that this form of expression blurs the boundary between police and criminals, dispels the seriousness of justice, and makes solemn law enforcement entertaining.
Taobao body recruitment announcement. In August, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Weibo’s "Diplomatic PHS" issued a recruitment announcement for the "Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat of China, Japan and South Korea". The announcement begins with the title of "pro" and ends with "no postage". In the middle, words with roaring features such as "wood" and online emoticons are also used. Critics believe that "diplomacy is no small matter" and the language used by the diplomatic department should not be too casual.
VI. Language Problems in the Process of Internationalization and Marketization
(a) the development of "foreign language translation and writing norms in the field of public service"
The Committee of Experts on Standard English for Foreign Language Translation and Writing in Public Service was established in Beijing in August, and the website of Foreign Language Translation and Writing in Public Service was launched at the same time. The draft of Standard English (General Rules) for Foreign Language Translation and Writing in Public Service was reviewed and approved in December. The norms of foreign language translation and writing in the field of public service in China will include four languages: English, Russian, Japanese and Korean, covering more than ten fields such as transportation, tourism, entertainment, sports, health, commerce, catering and accommodation.
(B) the country’s foreign language ability is concerned
Some experts pointed out that at present, China’s national foreign language ability is far from meeting the needs of the country’s rapid development, mainly because the number of foreign languages is insufficient; The quality of foreign language resources is not high; Lack of high-end foreign language talents; The degree of control, development and utilization of existing foreign language resources is not enough. It is suggested that relevant state departments take measures to strengthen unified management.
(3) Language service industry
According to the information currently available, by the end of 2009, there were 15,039 language translation service enterprises in China, with an annual output value of about 12 billion RMB. The scale of language training market is expected to reach more than 40 billion yuan in 2013, and will maintain an annual growth rate of more than 15% in the next three to five years; Xinhua Dictionary, published by the Commercial Press, has distributed more than 400 million copies at home and abroad, which can be called "the largest dictionary in the world". The Global Chinese Dictionary has been listed as a major project in the National Twelfth Five-Year Plan.
Seven, cross-strait language academic exchanges
(A) the use of simplified characters in Taiwan Province increased.
In June, mainland tourists’ individual trips to Taiwan were opened. In order to attract mainland tourists and expand business opportunities, some merchants in Taiwan Province began to use simplified signs, logos, product manuals, restaurant menus, etc., and some also changed the names of Taiwan Province dishes to names familiar to the mainland. Some organizations’ websites have started to use simplified characters.
(2) Cross-strait cooperation in compiling Chinese language reference books
Great progress has been made in the co-editing of Chinese language reference books across the Taiwan Strait. In December, the compilation of Cross-Strait Common Dictionary (Simplified Chinese Dictionary), the construction of Chinese language knowledge base website retrieval system, the construction and processing of 50 million words corpus were completed, and the Chinese language knowledge base website realized cloud technology service.
(C) Cross-strait academic exchanges in language and writing
In September, the 2011 Cross-Strait Chinese Character Art Festival opened in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. During this period, calligraphy works collected by the National Palace Museum in Taipei were exhibited, "Writing Chinese Characters-Contemporary Art Exhibition in Mainland China", "Cross-Strait Famous Seal Carving Exhibition" and "Digital E-Pen Painting and Calligraphy Exhibition" were held, and activities such as dialogue with famous artists and art lecture halls were held. In November, the Sixth Symposium on Modern Chinese across the Taiwan Strait was held in Macau with the theme of "Centennial Mandarin Movement". Participants conducted in-depth discussions on Mandarin Movement, dialects, Chinese vocabulary, Chinese pronunciation, Chinese education and language policy from various angles.
Eight, the media language situation
The annual usage of Chinese characters in newspapers, radio and television, and internet (news) can reflect the actual language use of the media in the year. From the usage of these words and expressions, we can reflect the annual social life and current affairs.
(A) the national common language media usage survey
In 2011, the survey of Chinese characters used in the national common language media was conducted on the 2011 National Language Resources Monitoring Corpus, with a total of 1,167,751 texts and 1,292,983,007 characters, of which 1,054,313,804 characters appeared in Chinese characters.
1. The use of Chinese characters
There are 10,590 words in all the language materials of this survey.
(1) The number of Chinese characters with 80%, 90% and 99% coverage is 593, 957 and 2396 respectively, and the use of high-frequency Chinese characters is stable. Compared with 2010, the number of Chinese characters with the same coverage and the types of Chinese characters used are slightly different.
(2) Among the high-frequency Chinese characters, the Chinese characters with great frequency changes reflect the characteristics of using Chinese characters every year and record social life. For example, in mid-2011, the Chinese characters with significantly higher frequency of use are: "Hai, Xu, Wei, Party, Debt, Card, Food, Limit, Nuclear, Vinegar, Joe", etc., and the 90th anniversary of the 1911 Revolution, the Syrian situation, Weibo, small and micro enterprises, the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the European debt crisis, Gaddafi, food safety, and so on.
(3) The number of low-frequency Chinese characters is large. Throughout the years, the survey of Chinese characters shows that the coverage rate is from 99.99% to 100%, which is the range of the annual unique characters. The unique words of the year are all low-frequency words, and most of them appear in names, proper names, terms and dialect words.
2. Usage of words
The total corpus is 619 752 369 words and 2 369 349 words. Among them, there are 231 272 words in newspapers, radio and television, and internet (news), accounting for 9.76% of all words. The usage of words in the three media is quite different, which shows that different media have their own topics of concern except Chinese words and hot events.
There are 13,656 high-frequency words with a coverage rate of 90%, accounting for 0.58% of all the words. These words use 2732 Chinese characters, of which 2658 appear in the top 3000 high-frequency Chinese characters in the annual vocabulary. The use of high-frequency words in the three media has a strong commonality.
Characteristics of media words:
(1) The number of high-frequency words and the number of words used in high-frequency words are relatively stable. The number of high-frequency words is stable at more than 10,000, and the number of words used in high-frequency words is stable at around 2,700. These high-frequency words are mainly Chinese words, but also include a few proper nouns and time expressions.
(2) Among the high-frequency words, words with great frequency changes reflect the annual social life. Compared with 2010, the frequency of use of the following words increased significantly in 2011, reflecting the social picture of 2011: Gaddafi, purchase restriction, school bus, property tax, revolution of 1911, European debt crisis, clenbuterol, Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail, plasticizer and Jobs.
(3) The frequency of a large number of words in the media is low, and the words that account for 91% of all the words in the year only cover 1% of all the corpus. These words are mainly names of people, places, organizations, time and numbers.
3. New words
In 2011, 594 new words were extracted from the National Language Resources Monitoring Corpus. Among them, three-character words are the most, accounting for 51.68%; Followed by four-character words, accounting for 21.04%; Two words account for 15.66%. The proportion of three-character words continues to be dominant, which is related to the use of popular formats to create words in recent years. In 2011, the format of "×× door, ×× family, ×× brother, ××× body and micro××" continued in 2010, in which "×× body and micro×××" are particularly active, such as "Roaring body, Taobao body, Baodai body, supporting body, high-speed rail body, micro-movies, micro-interviews and micro-sports.
Of the 594 new words, 573 are completely composed of Chinese characters, accounting for 96.46%; The other 21 articles are mostly alphabetic words, such as "CDI (Comprehensive Development Index), U Station, 4D newspaper, hold Live" and so on.
From 2006 to 2010, a total of 2,977 new words of the year were collected. In the corpus of 2011, 40% of these new words of the year can survive, and the annual usage frequency is more than 10, such as blog, Weibo, EMU, post-80 s and affordable housing; There are 1/4 low-frequency users, and the annual frequency is below 10, such as sun friends, high-paying blue, seconds kill, thunder words, invoice slaves; Another third will retire and disappear from the language life, such as bumping into peaks, tanning people, bowl people, broken buildings and vulgar bribes.
4. Last name
There are 704 835 different names (including appellations with surnames, such as "Ms. Ouyang") in all the corpus, and these names or appellations appear together.
13,364,915 times. There are 785 surnames, including 497 single surnames, 278 two-character surnames and 10 three-character surnames.
The top 100 single surnames are: Li, Wang, Zhang, Chen, Liu, Yang, Zhou, Huang, Wu, Zhao, Sun, Ma, Hu, Xu, Guo, Lin, Zhu, Jin, Zheng, Gao, He, Song, Luo, Liang, Xie, Yao, Han, Feng and Xu. Niu, Wei, Cheng, Meng, An, Liao, Xia, Dai, Shao, Long, Qian, Qi, Qin, Mao, Tang, Qiu, Hong, Qiao, Yu, Hua, Mo, Mei, Xiong, Xue, Mu, Yi, Hou, Yin, Gu, Duan and Fu.
The two surnames that appear are Ouyang, Sima, Zhuge, Shangguan, Situ, Murong, Luqiu, Huangfu, Ximen, Weichi, Gongsun, Dongfang, Hu Ling, Shen Tu, Duanmu, Xiahou, Dongguo, Huyan, Tuoba, Wanxi, Changsun, Dan Tai and Xianyu.
(B) Chinese blog language status
The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center takes the blog posts published by users in the list of famous blogs published by Sina, Netease and Sohu as the investigation objects, and makes a multi-angle investigation and analysis on a total of 201,488 blog posts published by 1,728 blog users in 2011.
1. Posting volume
The number of users posting less than or equal to 50 per year accounts for 53.29% of the total users; Users whose posts are less than or equal to 300 account for 90.68% of the total users, and these users post 102,445 posts, accounting for 50.84% of the total posts. There are 161 users who post more than 300 posts a year, accounting for 9.32% of the total number of users, with a total of 99,043 posts, accounting for 49.16% of the total posts. Users who post more than 1,000 posts a year are mainly some advertising media organizations, political and economic critics, etc., from which we can see the role played by a few organizations and individuals in online publicity.
2. Length distribution of blog posts
Blog posts with length less than or equal to 3000 characters account for 81.76% of the total number of posts, and blog posts with length less than or equal to 5000 characters account for 91.19%. The shortest blog post is only 7 characters, and there are 802 posts with a length of less than 30 characters, mainly blog posts with titles and pictures.
3. Language use of blog users of different genders
Among 1728 blog users collected in 2011, 350 male blog users and 350 female blog users were selected, and their blog posts were investigated and counted by the method of frequency difference. The results show that men and women are different in the use of words.
The ten words that men use more are: country, school, China, politics, people, behavior, literature, education, year and society; Women use more: me, female, you, one, her, no, good, love, affection and male.
Ten nouns commonly used by men are: society, problems, country, government, students, culture, politics, history, school and university; Women use more: women, men, time, women, love, friends, children, beautiful women, stars and mothers.
The top 10 names that men use more frequently are: Mao Zedong, Confucius, Chiang Kai-shek, Lu Xun, Cao Cao, Sun Yat-sen, Hu Shi, Yuan Shikai, Stalin and Marx; Women use it more frequently: Cecilia Cheung, Yang Mi, Qiong Yao, Nicholas Tse, Zhao Wei, Yao Chen, Zhou Xun, Lin Chi-ling and Liu Yifei.
From these data, it can be seen that the topics concerned by male users’ blog posts are more related to politics and society. Women are more concerned about life, emotion and entertainment.
(3) A survey of words used in Tibetan media
For the first time, the use of words in Tibetan newspapers and online media was investigated. The corpus comes from all the texts of four Tibetan newspapers and news reports of three websites in 2010, with a total of 2,247,821 words and 31,403 words. The number of words with 90% coverage of all corpus is 2326.
The use of words in Tibetan media has the following characteristics:
1. The use of high-frequency words is relatively concentrated. When the coverage rate reaches 90%, there are 2166 words in newspaper media and 2261 words in online media, of which 2104 words are the same, and the sharing rate reaches about 95% of their respective high-frequency words; Comparing 2,326 high-frequency words with 90% media coverage with 2,220 words with 90% coverage in Tibetan language textbooks (primary school, junior high school and senior high school), there are 2,065 identical words, and the sharing rate is about 90% of their respective high-frequency words. It can be seen that the use of Tibetan high-frequency words is relatively concentrated.
2. Comparing all 31,403 words in the survey corpus with the words in 8 Tibetan-Chinese dictionaries, neologisms dictionaries and Tibetan glossary, accounting for 32.43%. This shows that in 2010, the vocabulary used by newspapers and internet (news) as mass media only accounted for one third of the total vocabulary of these dictionaries. Most of the new words in high-frequency words in the media belong to policies, regulations and economic words.
Nine, the situation of Chinese characters in teaching materials
This year, the National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center conducted a survey of basic education textbooks including the national common language, minority languages and overseas Chinese.
(A) Basic Education Mathematics and Physics Textbooks
According to the popularity, application scope and evaluation of teaching circles, two sets of teaching materials were selected in mathematics, physics and chemistry as the survey objects.
1. Word usage
According to the survey data, there are 2,391 words used in mathematics textbooks, 2,425 words used in physics textbooks, 2,053 words used in chemistry textbooks, and 3,014 words used in three subjects, of which 1,610 words are shared, accounting for 53.04%. Each subject has some unique words, most of which are subject words.
There are 5070 words in Chinese textbooks for basic education, and 2927 of the 3014 words used in mathematics, physics and chemistry are shared with Chinese textbooks, accounting for 97% of the total; There are 87 unique characters, such as "chlorine, potassium, aluminum, magnesium, neon, fluorine, tungsten, power and lithium", most of which refer to chemical elements or compounds.
Comparing 3,014 words of mathematics, physics and chemistry with 3,500 words of Modern Chinese Common Words List, 267 words of Modern Chinese Common Words List are not found, such as "uranium, Han, spring, dryness, gorgeous, tungsten, sticky, platinum, ironing, purple, skeleton, comet and dolphin".
2. Word usage
There are 10,647 words used in mathematics textbooks, 8,927 words used in physics textbooks, 5,913 words used in chemistry textbooks, and 17,537 words used in three subjects, of which 2,406 words are shared, accounting for 13.72%, and the proportion of words used alone is as high as 68.39%. It can be seen that the words used in different disciplines are quite different. Unique words in mathematics such as square, function, inequality, denominator and multiplication; Unique words in physics such as magnetic field, kinetic energy, buoyancy, electric power and friction; Unique words in chemistry such as chemical formula, hydrochloric acid, solute, sodium chloride and magnesium.
There are 50,670 words in the first Chinese textbook of basic education, and 10,413 of the 17,537 words used in mathematics, physics and chemistry are shared with the Chinese textbook, accounting for 59.38% of the total. There are 7124 unique words, accounting for 40.62%, most of which are subject words, and as many as 3269 words only appear once, indicating that there are many subject words and the recurrence rate is low.
It can be seen that although the words used in the textbooks of mathematics, physics and chemistry are not large in total, they complement the Chinese class to a great extent and undertake the task of cultivating students’ language ability together with the Chinese class. These courses not only have the function of imparting natural science knowledge, but also play an important role in cultivating students’ language ability, which should attract the attention of textbook writers and teaching workers.
(B) Uighur language teaching materials for senior high schools
The survey selected the experimental textbook of the new curriculum standard of Uygur language published by Xinjiang Education Publishing House, including compulsory textbooks and elective textbooks.
There are 139,880 words, 32,125 words and 15,895 stem words in the compulsory course textbooks. There are 333,306 words, 57,518 kinds of words and 23,031 kinds of stem words in the elective textbooks. By comparing the two, we can see that the required textbooks are smaller than the elective textbooks in terms of corpus size, word types and stem types, and the vocabulary of the required textbooks is concentrated and basic knowledge is emphasized; Elective textbooks use a large amount of vocabulary and are rich in words, which are used to expand vocabulary and knowledge fields.
A unified survey of the word usage in high school textbooks, primary school textbooks and junior high school textbooks shows that there are 33,248 stems involved in Uyghur language teaching from primary school to senior high school, including 24,568 stems learned in primary school and junior high school and 26,124 stems learned in senior high school. There are 17,444 common stems in the two stages, accounting for 71.00% and 66.77% of the total stems respectively. It can be seen that high school education is the consolidation, extension and expansion of the knowledge learned in elementary school and junior high school, and high school is also the stage of rapid growth of students’ vocabulary.
Comparing the 33,248 stems involved in Uyghur language teaching from primary school to senior high school with the 31,452 stems in the "Survey of Words Used in Modern Uyghur Websites" published in China Language Life Report 2009, there are 23,493 stems in common, accounting for 74.70% of the total online stems and 70.66% of the stems in Chinese textbooks for primary schools, junior high schools and senior high schools. This data shows that students can basically read online media materials after studying Uighur language in primary and secondary schools.
(3) Chinese textbooks for Kazakh primary schools
The National Language Resources Monitoring and Research Center conducted a survey of Kazakh textbooks for the first time this year. The survey selected two sets of Kazakh primary school Chinese textbooks published by Xinjiang Education Publishing House, which are the regular class version and the bilingual class version respectively.
According to the survey data, 108,515 words, 26,679 words, 6,975 stem words and 273 suffix words were used in the regular class edition. Bilingual class edition uses 54,396 words, 16,607 words, 6,065 stem words and 239 suffix words. From the perspective of the use scale of words in the textbook, the ordinary class version is almost twice as large as the bilingual class version, and the number of words is 2/5 more, which shows the different nature and characteristics of the two sets of textbooks.
The distribution of word types and stems in each volume of the two sets of textbooks is basically the same, and the largest number of word types and stems is in Volume 8, which shows a certain regularity.
(D) Malaysian primary school Chinese textbook "Chinese"
Chinese teaching in Malaysia belongs to the first language teaching. Chinese is a unified textbook for Chinese primary schools in Malaysia, with 6 volumes and 230 texts. The object of this survey is the text words in the textbook, and it is compared with the new curriculum standard Chinese for primary schools published by People’s Education Publishing House and the corpus of major Chinese media in Malaysia.
Chinese uses a total of 30 089 words and 6924 words. There are 132,401 words and 13,950 words in Chinese. They share 4535 words, accounting for 65.50% of the words in Chinese and 32.51% of the words in Chinese. The data show that "Chinese" is far larger than "Chinese" in both the length and vocabulary of teaching materials.
There are 180,428 words and 38,013,207 words in the corpus of major Chinese media in Malaysia. The first 6,924 words (covering 88.32% at this time) are compared with all the words in Chinese. The number of words shared by them is 2,807, accounting for 40.54%, and the number of words used alone is 4,117, accounting for 59.46%. The unique words in Chinese are mostly intellectual words in daily life, such as frog, earth, kite, sea and stars, which are suitable for children’s cognition and reflect the characteristics of Chinese textbooks in primary schools. The unique words in the corpus of major Chinese media in Malaysia are mostly people’s names, place names, current political words and Malaysian special words, such as Datuk, news, parliamentarians, parliament and general elections.
(Report on Language Life in China (2012) will be published by the Commercial Press)