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Ancient language preservation
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2004-09-23 08:36 China is preparing to submit
Shuishu - the written language of the Sui ethnic minority - to the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a heritage of
humanity.
Many chinese and overseas linguists regard Shuishu as a "living
fossil" of pictographic characters and an important component of Chinese
culture.
China's central Archives designated a collection of books
written in Shuishu as "supremely important" in March 2002.
Pan chaolin, a
noted folklorist specializing in Shuishu, is making essential preparations for
the collection's inclusion.
Experts have discovered a great deal of
ancient writings from Central China, where many ethnic groups migrated from the
north.
Archaeologists discovered that a dozen symbols from the written
language of the Sui ethnic minority match symbols on pottery unearthed from the
Xia Dynasty (21st century-16th century BC), the first ever recorded historical
period in China.
This indicates that the written symbols of this ethnic
group had definite links to the Xia.
Members of the Sui ethnic group
still exist. About 407,000 of them live on the Yunnan and Guizhou Plateau in
southwest China.
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