ABSTRACT

China is a vast country with a population currently approaching 1.4 billion, yet not all these people speak Mandarin, nor necessarily any other form of Chinese. At least 9% of the population belong to one of the 55 recognized ethnic minorities, each of which by the standards of any European country would represent a small nation in its own right. For example, there are an estimated 16.2 million speakers of the Tai languages, known as Zhuàng 壮 in China, who are principally located in the Guangxi Autonomous Region in South China, 1.9 million speakers of Korean, and 8.4 million speakers of the Uyghur language in Xinjiang (Zhang & Xiong 2012: 15-16).