A lisu girl who speaks bai langu

  By Cynthia

      Are you a minority? Can you speak minority languages? Why are there  fewer and fewer people speak their own native  languages now and even don't know much about their own culture?

    Lisu is one of the China's minority nationalities, it mainly lives in nujiang lisu autonomous prefecture of yunnan province, and other places are lijiang, diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Dali bai autonomous prefecture and sichuan province.I am a lisu girl living in Dali bai autonomous prefecture. I can speak bai language but I don't understand lisu language or even anything about lisu.

    My grandparents are both lisu, my grandma lives in a lisu autonomous township and my grandfather lives in a place arround by bai and han people. My grandfather left home when he was young because he didn't get along well with his stepfather. Then he met my grandmother and married with her. Under the influence of people around, my grandparents can speak lisu, bai and han language. But later my mother did not inherit the lisu language of my grandparents, so I cannot speak lisu naturally. My father is a han nationality, and he met my mother at the place where they worked and got married to her. So I was taught two languages at an early age:han and bai.

    There are a lot of people like me， they can't speak their own language, they don't understand their own culture, they have only a tittle of minority. There are many reasons for these phenomenons, such as the influence of the surrounding environment, the education of the family and even the minority discrimination.

    The problem of minority discrimination exists in our life more or less，it affects the inheritance and dissemination of minority languages and cultures in a certain extent.I remember when I was in primary school, my han classmates looked down upon our minority children. Students who grew up speaking only minority languages are often ridiculed because they speak mandarin with a strong accent. But I don't think there is any shame in being a minority. Minority students are not bad than others. At least we can speak many languages like han, bai or lisu, and maderin.I was even has a little happy at that time,because the han people can't understand our language and they don't know what we said.When I got to middle school and then got to college, maybe because everyone is more mature, there is no minority discrimination like in primary school. On the contrary,they are interested in our minority language.Sometimes,my classmates would ask me to teach them some simple bai language.For example,"you ca "means "have lunch ",an fei "means "beautiful",and so on.

    Minority languages are interesting, aren't they？

A lisu girl who speaks bai language A lisu girl who speaks bai language A lisu girl who speaks bai language A lisu girl who speaks bai language