Mother tongue gives taste of home

Dialects have their limitations, but they also have their place in our culture. While social mobility is working against them, it seems rash to relentlessly push them over the cliff of usefulness.

A recent proclamation from the regulating agency for the television industry has made it clear that hosts for TV shows must not use dialects, but Mandarin (Putonghua) only.

This surprised me a bit because, living in Beijing, I have not heard any programs in dialects. When I was growing up in Zhejiang province, I could tune in to radio programs in the Shanghai dialect; and while I was a graduate student in Guangzhou, a few TV shows were in Cantonese. As far as I know, dialect programs have always been in a small minority.