ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the fate of a Chinese “dialect” speaker in his mother tongue and his later attempts to develop and maintain Chinese as his heritage language. When Chinese is used to refer to ethnicity or national origin, it is necessary to note that ethnic Chinese may be speakers of any language. However, in discussions of Chinese language programs in the United States, the term Chinese is generally assumed to mean Mandarin. Essentially, there are seven major mutually unintelligible spoken varieties of the Chinese language. In addition to the regional varieties of Chinese, there is a spoken norm that is called Guoyu. Script policies on the Mainland have received extensive attention since the Communist victory in 1949. There was considerable debate regarding whether Chinese characters should be simplified or replaced by a phonetic system. In addition to the emphasis on Mandarin, there has also been some effort to promote bilingual education among Chinese ethnic language minorities.
